E.Guinea ruling party says Obiang conviction a ‘farce’

Equatorial Guinea’s ruling party on Thursday condemned a French decision to uphold the conviction of the country’s vice president Teodorin Obiang for accumulating luxury properties with illegally obtained funds.

In a statement, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) said Obiang’s suspended three-year prison sentence, 30 million euro ($35 million) fine, and the confiscation of all seized assets were “partial and discriminatory”.

The case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangu, 52, whose father has ruled the country since 1979, was the most advanced of several opened in France against mainly African elites over ill-gotten gains.

His assets could now be redistributed to the oil-rich but poverty-stricken West African country’s people under a new French law passed this month.

The PDGE said the move sought to “humiliate the people of Equatorial Guinea”.

The statement described the trial as a “judicial farce” and a “neo-colonial plan carefully pre-conceived by the French Republic in a nostalgic, unquenchable desire to continue to torture and dispossess the African people”.

French judicial authorities have estimated at 150 million euros the amount Obiang laundered in France.

New legislation passed by parliament on July 20 should see the value of the assets redistributed to the people of Equatorial Guinea rather than being absorbed into the French budget.

It was not immediately clear what mechanism would be used to divvy up the wealth among the poorest sections of society in the oil-rich country.

Despite Equatorial Guinea’s oil riches, most of the central African country’s 1.4 million people live below the poverty line.

Obiang’s lawyer has said he will appeal the conviction to the European Court of Human.

Investigations against such assets in France were launched from 2010 after complaints from watchdogs Transparency International and Sherpa.

Teodorin Obiang was the first to be convicted, and cases are ongoing against the families of Gabon President Ali Bongo, the son of long-serving ruler Omar Bongo, and Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

“With this decision, the French judicial authorities have confirmed that France is no longer welcoming the money embezzled by senior foreign leaders and their entourage,” said Patrick Lefas, president of Transparency International France.

On Thursday the French military said six of its soldiers were being held at an airport in Equatorial Guinea’s financial hub after authorities there claimed they made an unauthorised landing.