Africa’s richest woman apparently failed in a bid to open a bank account using an island company she had created in the Isle of Man.

An island agent said it ’might prove challenging’.

The spotlight has fallen this week on Isabel dos Santos, who is known as ’the princess’ in Angola, the oil-rich nation her father ruled as president for almost four decades.

The Luanda Leaks, a probe led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is based on more than 700,000 emails, contracts and other documents.

She is now under scrutiny by her bank and the Angolan government.

A BBC Panorama programme on Monday night made no mention of the Isle of Man, but it appears the island has figured in a small part of the saga.

Isabel Dos Santos and her husband Sindika Dokolo say they are the subjects of a politically motivated witch-hunt led by Angola’s new president. Through their lawyers they have rejected any allegation of wrongdoing and denied being financed by state money.

According to the Guardian newspaper the files indicated that as the couple grew richer emails and board minutes show the number of banks prepared to have them as clients dwindled.

And the paper notes ’Company service providers in the Netherlands and the Isle of Man also turned down their business, the files suggest’.

According to Quartz Africa, a business-focused English-language international news organisation, the files also reveal that in 2014 Isabel dos Santos created a company called Silaba Real Estate Ltd in the Isle of Man, with the aim of investing in London property.

For the company to be of any use it needed a bank account.

An Isle of Man based company formation agent wrote this message in an email to her lawyers saying: ’We can attempt to open a bank account for the company but given the nature of the client this might prove challenging,’

Her people turned to Banco BPI, the leaked files show. The bank had no presence in the Isle of Man.

Business News has seen documents which show that the registered Isle of Man agent later resigned from representing Silaba Real Estate Ltd.

Silaba was finally struck off the Isle of Man Companies Registry on July 28, 2016 on the grounds that it had failed to file its annual return.

Business News approached the island corporate service provider where the former agent is a director and we were told he has started a two-week holiday this week and nobody else at the company wanted to comment.

A spokesman for the Isle of Man Government said: ’The Isle of Man meets all of its international obligations with regards to preventing fraud and anti-money laundering. Our accurate beneficial ownership register can provide law enforcement agencies with information within 24 hours or within one hour for urgent requests and we have made a commitment to public registers by 2023 in line with the European Union. No company can be anonymous on the Isle of Man; beneficial ownership information is readily available to the relevant authorities.’