Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, high-living son of the president of Equatorial Guinea and vice-president of the country where an estimated 75% of the population live below the poverty line, wanted by France and the United States on charges of money-laundering and embezzlement, is on the point of purchasing one of the world’s largest luxury yachts for the sum of 200 million dollars.
The transaction represents a remarkable snub to a French judicial investigation that has uncovered substantial and compelling evidence indicating that Mangue - commonly known as Teodorin - and his father have acquired massive personal fortunes through illegally stripping the assets of the small west-central African state, the third largest oil-producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
His father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has ruled the Spanish-speaking west-central African state for 33 years, overseeing an autocratic regime accused by rights groups of regularly practicing torture and arbitrary killings of opponents. The oil industry accounts for 78% of GDP, but employs only 4% of the labour force in a country with a population of about 700,000.
Mediapart has learnt how a company was especially set up in July in Equatorial Guinea’s capital Malabo to carry out Teodoro Nguema Jr’s acquisition of the yacht from the family of the late Saudi crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who died in October 2011. Originally commissioned by the Saudi prince, the German-built, 140-metre long yacht, the Al Salamah, has a helipad, cinema, hospital gymnasium and a spa, and can receive 36 passengers.
Up until his nomination as vice-president in May this year, Teodoro Nguema Jr had previously served for several years as Equatorial Guinea’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, for which his official salary was reportedly 3,200 euros per month. However, during this time he acquired several luxury properties, including mansions in California and Paris, a Gulfstream jet, a stable of limousines and sportscars and a collection of fine works of art.
The company created to manage the purchase of the Al Salamah was registered on July 23rd under the name of the Sociedad de transporte maritimo Guinea equatoriale, (Sotramar-GE), and figures on the Malabo company register against the number 2481. Intriguingly, a semi-public company already exists under the same name, set up in 1971 and which is involved in the trade of aluminium ore bauxite, another of Equatorial Guinea’s natural resources.
Contacted by Mediapart, both Teodoro Nguema Jr’s French lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, and the Paris-based representative of crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s family declined to comment on the yacht deal.
US prosecutors have calculated Nguema Jr spent over 100 million dollars on a luxury lifestyle in the country, including a 35 million-dollar Malibu mansion, between 2001 and 2011. In 2009, The New York Times revealed details of a US Justice Department memorandum, dated September 2007, in which it said it believed his assets camed “from extortion, theft of public funds or other corrupt conduct.” It said he transferred at least 73 million dollars into the United States, using shell corporations and offshore bank accounts to launder the money. This was in part derived, it added, from a “revolutionary tax” he ordered on timber. It said he “insisted that the payments be made directly to him”, rather than his country's finance ministry.
Nguema, meanwhile, has denied wrongdoing, claiming that his vast wealth was amassed through business deals.
On July 12th this year, Paris judges Roger Le Loire and René Grouman issued an international warrant for his arrest for his suspected embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, fraud and abuse of trust. The warrant was issued immediately after he failed, for the second successive time since March, to answer a summons for his formal questioning.
The magistrates are leading an investigation into evidence of widespread embezzlement by a number of African leaders and their families, including Teodoro Nguema Jr and and his father, and also the Republic of Congo's President Denis Sassou Nguesso, the late Gabonese President Omar Bongo and his son and successor Ali, all of whom are owners of vast assets in France, including luxury villas, mansions and penthouses, vehicles and sizeable bank accounts.
The case, which has become known in France as that of ‘Biens mal acquis’, or ‘ill-gotten gains’, was triggered by a private legal action lodged by independent anti-corruption organisations Transparency International and Sherpa, accusing the African despots of pillaging their nation’s resources.
In May this year, the authorities in Equatorial Guinea opened a tit-for-tat corruption case against the head of Transparency International’s French president, Daniel Lebègue.
A fleet of 14 cars, including a brace of Bugatti's
Following the issuing of the arrest warrant against Teodorin, it was revealed last month that Equatorial Guinea has asked the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order France to withdraw the warrant and to end its investigation into the ruling family’s financial affairs in France.
The move was based on the grounds of diplomatic immunity claimed by both Teodorin, named vice-president of Equatorial Guinea’s in May this year, and his father, the country’s head of state. In a statement released on September 25th, the ICJ said "Equatorial Guinea asserts that those procedural actions violate the principles of equality between states, non-intervention, sovereignty and respect for immunity from criminal jurisdiction.” However, France is under no obligation to accept the ICJ's jurisdiction in the matter.
Earlier this summer, the French judges seized Teodoro Nguema Jr’s six-story Paris mansion, estimated to be worth between 100-150 million euros. They also seized precious art objects and fine furniture that filled the opulent town house on the exclusive avenue Foche, close to Arc de Triomphe.
In separate raids beginning late last year, Paris police also seized 14 of Nguema Jr’s French fleet of luxury cars, including several Bugatti Veyron sportscars worth more than 1 million euros a piece, Maserati's, Porsche's and Mercedes'. Several of the cars were bought via bank transfer payments by a forestry company based in Equitorial Guinea called Somagui Forestal, of which Teodorin, the country’s agriculture and forestry minister, was the head.
A report by the French finance ministry’s anti-money laundering agency, Tracfin, described the acquisitions of the vehicles as “susceptible of having coming from the money-laundering of the results of embezzled public funds”.
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English version: Graham Tearse