José Filomeno dos Santos is also barred from leaving the country, deputy Attorney General Luis Benza Zanga said.

Mr Dos Santos is the highest profile person targeted in new President João Lourenço’s anti-corruption drive.

He had led oil-rich Angola’s sovereign wealth fund during his father’s rule.

However, he was removed from this role in January, months after a BBC investigation into Angola’s $5bn fund and following an internal governance review.

The allegations against him relate to the $500m transferred to a British bank, which was then frozen by authorities in the UK. The UK say the money can now be returned.

Mr Dos Santos was formally named a suspect in the investigation, along with the former governor of Angola’s central bank, Valter Filipe da Silva.

Neither were immediately available to comment.

Mr Zanga said there was no chance of the case falling under any sort of amnesty currently being offered by the government.

“A pardon will not work… this case will run to its final outcome,” he said.

Mr Dos Santos was the second of the former president’s children to be dismissed by Mr Lourenço.

His sister Isabel was removed as head of the state oil company Sonangol last year.

Billionaire Ms Dos Santos is Africa’s richest woman; it is not known how much her brother is worth. Many of the former president’s children have government-linked roles.

Mr Dos Santos stepped down after 38 years in power last year. Mr Lourenço, also known as JLo, succeeded him with a promise of cracking down on corruption.

He has also developed a reputation for pushing aside powerful figures associated with his predecessor.

Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer.

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Source: BBC

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The party has received 64.57% of the vote in the first batch of results, the Angolan electoral commission said.

The main opposition Unita party, which has reportedly received 24.04% of the vote, disputes the commission’s count.

This week’s vote marks the end of nearly four decades in power for President José Eduardo Dos Santos.

The Angolan electoral commission said provisional results from Wednesday’s election show the governing MPLA party in the lead with nearly two-thirds of the votes counted so far.

The count, which was announced on Thursday, represents over 70% of the total vote, the commission said.

If the lead is confirmed and the MPLA party wins, the presidency would then pass to former Defence Minister João Lourenço, who has been anointed as the successor of Mr Dos Santos.

However Mr Dos Santos, whose 38-year reign makes him the world’s second-longest serving president, will remain in control of the MPLA party.

Meanwhile, the opposition Unita party said it had carried out its own count and that its results were very different from those announced by the commission.

The Unita party’s Isias Samakuva is the main challenger to Mr Lourenço.

Under Angola’s voting system, people were asked to choose both the candidate and party in the same election.

Voting in Angola’s parliamentary election ends on Saturday 26 August due to delays in getting the ballot papers to more than a dozen polling stations in remote areas.

The MPLA party has been the only party in power since Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975.

Critics have accused Mr Dos Santos’s government of corruption and repression, alleging that the country’s oil wealth has not spread beyond the ruling elite.

After the war, Angola was one of the fastest-growing economies in the world because of its huge oil reserves.

But when global oil prices dropped two years ago, it affected the whole economy.

While Mr Dos Santos is standing down as president, his children still hold several key positions of authority.

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