Interpol has issued a "red alert" for the authorities to locate and detain Angolan Isabel dos Santos, confirmed the Reuters this Wednesday with the international police agency.

The "red alert" is not an international arrest warrant, as was suggested by the Lusa news agency two weeks ago, but a "request to police forces around the world to locate and preventively detain a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action". And that this alert had been issued at the request of the Angolan authorities,

The daughter of the former Angolan president - who had meanwhile dismissed the existence of an international arrest warrant for her - is wanted, according to the document to which Lusa had access, on suspicion of "crimes of embezzlement, qualified fraud, illegal participation in business, criminal association and influence peddling, money laundering", with a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison.

The same document also indicates that the Angolan is usually between Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.

Between 2015 and 2017, Interpol explains that Isabel dos Santos created financial mechanisms "with the intention of obtaining illicit financial gains and laundering suspicious criminal operations", through "information on public money from the Angolan state" that she obtained as a director of the state oil company Sonangol. The Angolan woman is alleged to have damaged the Angolan state by more than 200 million euros.

Isabel Santos has said in several interviews that she is the victim of "political persecution" in her home country. "There is no doubt that we are facing a scenario of political persecution. Looking at Angola and its legal system, it's easy to understand that the Attorney General receives orders directly from President João Lourenço. I believe that there is political revenge and political persecution against me and my family," he said on Tuesday in an interview with CNN Portugal.

In recent weeks, the Angolan woman has once again been in the middle of a controversy in Portugal after the former governor of the Bank of Portugal, Carlos Costa, accused the prime minister of meddling politically with the banking supervisor in order to defend Isabel dos Santos' interests.