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By Agence France Presse

4 minute read

14 Feb 2023

Yacht, homes of Equatorial Guinea’s vice president seized in South Africa

Obiang's furniture from his two residences in cape town's affluent suburbs have already been auctioned..

Vice President of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (Photo by Michele Spatari / AFP)

Two homes and a superyacht belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s vice president have been seized in South Africa after a local businessman sued for unlawful arrest and torture, a lawyer said Monday.

A high court ordered the seizure of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue’s properties, along with his superyacht docked in Cape Town. 

The orders arose from a lawsuit by South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg.

He said he had been unlawfully detained and tortured for 491 days in a notorious Equatorial Guinea jail when a business deal went sour in 2013, his lawyer told AFP.

“We attached (seized) two houses…in Cape Town in a formal application two weeks ago and the superyacht last Tuesday,” lawyer Errol Eldson, told AFP. An application to auction the assets has been filed.

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R40 million in damages.

A Cape Town high court in 2021 ordered Obiang — the son of the iron-fisted President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo — to pay Janse van Rensburg around 40 million rand ($2.2 million) in damages.

The lawyer said his client had been hired by an Equatorial Guinea politician, Gabriel Angabi, “to set up an airline” in the oil-rich but impoverished country. 

After nearly two years of setting up the airline and “everything in place and aircrafts were ready to start flying”, the businessman was called by Angabi for what he assumed would be the airline launch, according to Eldson.

ALSO READ: Equatorial Guinea rights activist arrested as tries to receive award

“When he got there, Angabi said ‘we don’t want to do this anymore, we want our money back’,” said the lawyer.

Having spent all the money on the project, Janse van Rensburg failed to refund Angabi, who is allegedly related to the first family.

“He picked up the phone to vice president Obiang and within 10 minutes the rapid force intervention was there… they picked Daniel up and threw him into Black Beach prison”.

This video is no longer available.

In his memoir published in September, Janse Van Rensburg wrote “what was supposed to be a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea turned into a journey to the depths of hell.”

Obiang’s furniture from his two residences in Cape Town’s affluent suburbs have already been auctioned.

His lawyer Victor Nkhwashu refused to comment. 

– Playboy image –

Obiang’s father, 80-year-old father is the longest-serving head of state alive today, excluding monarchs.

He seized power in August 1979, toppling his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was then executed by firing squad.

Firmly suppressing dissent and surviving a string of attempted coups, he has remained at the helm of the oil-rich central African state ever since.

ALSO READ: Equatorial Guinea president dissolves government after polls

He has long been considered to be grooming his son, usually called Teodorin, to be his successor.

However, the scion’s image has been stained by a playboy reputation and scandals abroad over assets suspected to have been acquired illegally.

France, Britain and the United States have ordered him to forfeit millions of dollars in assets, from mansions to luxury cars, while France also handed him a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 30 million euros (dollars).

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South African court seizes superyacht and palatial homes of Equatorial Guinea vice-president in $2.2m lawsuit

• South African officials have seized a superyacht and two homes owned by Equatorial Guinea's Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang.
• The court ordered the seizures after a local businessman won a lawsuit against Obiang for unlawful arrest and torture, demanding compensation of about $2.2m.
• This is the latest in a series of rulings against Obiang by courts worldwide, as he and President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo have been accused of abusing Equatorial Guinea's wealth and resources.

Officials in South Africa have seized two palatial homes and a superyacht belonging to Equatorial Guinea's Vice-President, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, after a local businessman won a lawsuit against him for unlawful arrest and torture. The businessman, Daniel Janse van Rensburg, has demanded compensation of approximately £1.8m ($2.2m). According to Van Rensburg, he was unlawfully detained for 500 days in Equatorial Guinea following a failed business deal.

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The vice president, who is also the son of Equatorial Guinea's long-serving ruler, has yet to comment on the case. However, he and his father have faced allegations of treating the oil-rich country as their personal fiefdom and abusing its resources. This seizure is the latest in a string of rulings against the vice president by courts around the world, according to BBC .

Errol Eldson, the lawyer representing Van Rensburg, has filed an application to auction the seized assets, including a superyacht and two houses in Cape Town. The businessman has been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the vice president in South African courts and published a book last year recounting his "harrowing incarceration" at Equatorial Guinea's notorious Black Beach prison.

According to Eldson, Van Rensburg set up an airline in Equatorial Guinea with a local politician who later withdrew from the venture and demanded a refund. After the dispute was escalated to the vice-president, an elite security force unit picked up Van Rensburg and threw him into the notorious prison, Eldson said.

Obiang has been accused of corruption in various countries and is known for his lavish lifestyle. In 2014, US authorities seized a $30m mansion in Malibu and a Ferrari car, alleging that they had been purchased with proceeds of corruption. Swiss prosecutors later seized 11 luxury cars belonging to him, which were auctioned off for approximately $27m. In 2021, a French court handed him a suspended sentence and a fine for using public money to fund a luxurious lifestyle in France, which he denied. The same year, the UK imposed "anti-corruption" sanctions on him, alleging that he had misused public funds to acquire a collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including a crystal-covered glove worn by the late pop star on his Bad tour. UK officials said that the sanctions targeted individuals who had enriched themselves at the expense of their citizens. Obiang is widely seen as being groomed by his father to succeed him.

As this case continues to develop, it remains to be seen how it will impact Equatorial Guinea's political landscape and relations with other countries around the world.

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Dutch Seize Luxurious Yacht from Son of Africa’s Longest-Serving President

A few weeks after 11 lavish vehicles belonging to Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue , the son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, were seized in Switzerland, a 250-feet luxurious yacht belonging to him has been confiscated by the Dutch, reports Quartz Africa .

The $120 million yacht was reportedly seized on Saturday, after it attempted to leave Makkum, Netherlands, for Malabo, the capital city of Equatorial Guinea.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Photo credit: Mirror

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Mangue, who is the first vice president of the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, has been under investigations in Switzerland over the alleged misappropriation of public funds in his country .

However, he has continuously denied ownership of the luxurious possessions, arguing that they belong to the government of Equatorial Guinea.

Controversial Leadership

Mangue’s political career has been marred by controversy, with U.S. law enforcement officials accusing him of amassing wealth through corruption. They say most of his luxurious possessions come from oil and gas reserves in Equatorial Guinea.

In 2004, Mangue reportedly spent more than R10 million over a weekend in South Africa on champagne, property renovations, a black Bentley Anarge, a cream Bentley Continental R, and a Lamborghini Murcielago.

He currently own two houses in South Africa, worth a total of R50 million and a $31 million property in Malibu, California. Mangue is also reported to own a 5,000-sq-foot home in Paris and hip-hop music recording label TNO Entertainment .

Seized cars. Photo credit: NewsTimeAfrica

In 2011, two of his Bugatti Veyron cars and nine other vehicles belonging to him were seized by French officials investigating corruption. They were eventually auctioned off in 2013.

Observers say Mangue was appointed the vice president of Equatorial Guinea in a bid to ensure he succeeds his father, President Mbasogo, the longest-serving president in the world, when he retires.

Several other expensive properties belonging to Mangue have been seized in the United States and France.

Longest-Serving President  

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Photo credit: GuineaEquatorialPress

President Mbasogo has been in power since 1979, after ousting his uncle  Francisco Macias Nguema  in a military coup.

He has also served as the chairman of the African Union between January 2011 and January 2012.

Over the 37 years he has been in power, President Mbasogo has been accused of corruption and abuse of power. His nature of rule is regarded as non-democratic, especially since the country’s opposition is hardly tolerated.

Equatorial Guinea is currently a non-party state controlled by the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea . The country’s constitution extends the president’s powers by giving him the right to rule by decree.

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The Dictator’s Son Wanted His Yacht Back. That’s When Trouble Started for Two Oilmen.

Vice President Teodorin “Teddy” Nguema Obiang was in a mood for payback.

The Obiangs have run the oil-rich Central African country of Equatorial Guinea like a family ATM since 1979, accumulating mansions in Paris and Malibu, Ferraris and Bugattis, and at least three superyachts, according to court documents. And now a South African court was seizing Nguema Obiang’s two high-end Cape Town villas and the Blue Shadow, the yacht that carries his jet-ski collection while he vacations on one of the other two.

He lashed out at “racist scammers” and “white slaver lawyers from Cape Town.” He threatened to bar South African ships from Equatorial Guinea’s waters and South African planes from its airspace.

Days later, Equatorial Guinean police arrested two South African oil workers, accused them of trafficking cocaine and threw them in prison. The men’s family members, employers and U.S. officials say their arrest was direct retaliation against South Africa by Nguema Obiang, son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and de facto head of the country’s feared security services.

“This is something that Teodorin is known to do,” says Mark L. Asquino, a former U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and now a senior adviser to Horizon Engage, a New York-based political risk consulting firm. “He can be quite vengeful.”

A year on, the oil workers, Frederik Potgieter, 54 years old, and Peter Huxham, 55, remain in an isolated prison in a forest clearing deep in the Central African hinterlands.

Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador in Washington says that, as far as the government is concerned, justice is being done to a pair of drug dealers in a case that has nothing to do with the vice president’s assets. But he also hints the Obiangs might be open to a trade.

State hostages

The world has recently seen a spate of state-sponsored hostage-takings, with governments using humans as pawns in diplomatic negotiations.

Venezuela, for instance, recently freed 10 Americans for President Nicolás Maduro’s moneyman, who was facing money-laundering charges in Miami. Last year, the U.S. recovered five Americans jailed in Iran in exchange for several Iranians held in the U.S. and the release of $6 billion in seized Iranian oil revenue.

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison for more than a year. Both have been accused in separate cases of espionage, allegations they deny, and the U.S. government has declared them wrongfully detained.

The Biden administration lists nine countries, from Nicaragua and North Korea to Iran and China, where U.S. citizens face an elevated risk of wrongful detention. Equatorial Guinea isn’t among them.

The imprisonment of oil workers Potgieter and Huxham, family members and U.S. officials say, shows even the smallest countries playing the hostage-taking game, in this case to gain leverage in an international property dispute.

“To us it’s quite clear what’s going on here,” says Shaun Murphy, spokesman for the families.

Oil riches and a strategic spot

The case alarms American officials. For decades, U.S. oil companies have drilled in Equatorial Guinean waters, and diplomats now routinely point to the case of the two South Africans to warn American firms their employees aren’t safe there.

Washington finds itself in a pinch, however. The Biden administration criticizes Equatorial Guinea’s human-rights record. But it is also worried the Obiangs, if at odds with the U.S., might allow China to build a naval base on the Atlantic Ocean. Washington sees the prospect of Chinese warships rearming and refitting at an Atlantic port as a national-security threat.

American officials have limited leverage in the case of the South African oil workers. The men aren’t American citizens. And while they were working on oil ships operated by Exxon Mobil and Chevron, they were employed by a Dutch oil-service company, SBM Offshore.

The story is a convoluted one, in which Potgieter and Huxham find themselves entangled in a legal dispute and diplomatic shouting match that originally had nothing to do with them.

Equatorial Guinea, with a population of 1.5 million, is composed of a series of islands in the Gulf of Guinea, and a rectangular chunk of mainland Africa wedged between Gabon and Cameroon.

Spain’s only sub-Saharan African colony, it gained independence in 1968, and soon fell under the rule of Francisco Macias. Macias declared himself president-for-life under the motto, “In politics, the victor wins and the loser dies.”

He burned the villages of his perceived enemies. His men murdered dozens in a soccer stadium while loudspeakers played the hit, “Those Were the Days.”

In 1979, rebellious troops ousted Macias from power. He escaped with suitcases full of cash, but was captured in the forest. The new junta tried him in a movie theater in Malabo, the capital city. Less than five hours after the guilty verdict, a firing squad executed him at the notorious Black Beach prison.

His nephew, then-Lt. Col. Teodoro Obiang Nguema, seized power and has held it tightly ever since.

Human-rights advocates have accused the senior Obiang of human-rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial imprisonment of his opponents. Diplomats and international law-enforcement agencies say the president and his family helped themselves to public coffers filled by the discovery, in the 1990s, of vast offshore oil deposits.

Among other oil-fuelled projects, the president built a scaled-down version of St. Peter’s Basilica in his hometown, Mongomo, not far from where Potgieter and Huxham are now imprisoned.

But it is his son, Nguema Obiang, commonly known as Teodorin or Teddy, who has displayed his wealth most ostentatiously.

Nguema Obiang graduated from a position as his father’s minister of agriculture and forestry, to second vice president, to first vice president, head of the state security apparatus and heir apparent to the presidency. In many ways, Nguema Obiang is already doing his father’s job, including addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September.

The government touts him as the people’s champion in the fight against corruption and nepotism and he himself has said that his wealth came from legitimate government contracts. “The country cannot move forward with corrupt people,” he wrote last year.

The U.S. Department of Justice accused the younger Obiang of amassing $300 million on a $100,000-a-year ministerial salary “through relentless embezzlement and extortion.” In a 2014 settlement with the federal government, Nguema Obiang surrendered a $30 million cliff-top Malibu mansion, a $530,000 Ferrari 599 GTO and several life-size Michael Jackson statues, part of his large collection of Jackson memorabilia. One federal asset-seizure suit against Nguema Obiang was identified in court documents as “United States of America v. One White Crystal-Covered ‘Bad’ Tour Glove et al.”

In 2021, a French court upheld his conviction for embezzlement and laundering public funds. The court ordered the seizure of €150 million in ill-gotten assets, including a collection of supercars and a mansion on tony Avenue Foch in Paris. He received a suspended three-year prison sentence.

Crisantos Obama Ondo, Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador in Washington, said, “The accusations made against the presidential family of Equatorial Guinea are unacceptable, intolerable, disrespectful and above all unfounded.” The country, he added, has no “wealthy people” at all.

Villas and superyachts

Among the luxuries Nguema Obiang acquired are a seaside villa in Cape Town’s Clifton Beach, originally built for servicemen returning from World War II, and a house in the wealthy Cape Town suburb of Bishopscourt, immaculately kept by staff required to cover their shoes while inside. The two houses are worth an estimated $6 million.

Then there is the Blue Shadow, a 220-foot superyacht.

The boat was originally built for a wealthy Saudi, according to a former crew member. It briefly passed through the hands of an Emirati middleman and, on June 24, 2019, while the yacht was in the Mediterranean, the middleman formally sold it to Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Defense, according to ship documents.

Nguema Obiang soon fired the yacht’s French captain and crew members. His criminal conviction in France still stung, and he didn’t want Frenchmen aboard, according to the former crew member.

That summer, Nguema Obiang hosted shipboard parties as the Blue Shadow cruised around Sardinia, Capri and Sicily, the crew member says.

Nguema Obiang had personal use of two other superyachts, Ice and Ebony Shine, though they were also officially Ministry of Defense property. Blue Shadow served as the supply ship for the other two, carrying water-sports gear and women flown in for parties, mostly from Latin America, according to the crew member.

One Cayman Islands registry document shows the Blue Shadow carrying 24 smaller watercraft, including 15 jet skis; a 36-foot fishing boat that lists for $400,000; a James Bondesque Gibbs Quadski, which converts from an off-road vehicle into a jet ski with the press of a button; and a Seabreacher, a craft that can race along the surface at 60 miles an hour, dive 5 feet underwater, breach the surface and shoot 20 feet into the air. Nguema Obiang had the Seabreacher painted to resemble a marlin, according to the crew member.

“It’s not a military vessel in any way, shape or form,” says the former crew member.

The Blue Shadow did play a key role in legal battles to come.

A business deal gone wrong

In 2011, a South African businessman named Daniel van Rensburg tried to start an Equatorial Guinean airline with Gabriel Mba Bela, a member of the Obiang family, and then-mayor of Malabo.

The deal went south and, according to a 2021 a South African court ruling, Nguema Obiang sent his personal security force to arrest van Rensburg on Mba Bela’s behalf.

Van Rensburg was never tried. But he spent close to 500 days locked up, most of the time in Black Beach prison. Prisoners moved freely inside of the facility, van Rensburg recalls. Women and children were mixed in with criminals, political prisoners and others who had gotten on the wrong side of the regime. He remembers an 11-year-old being held for stealing a banana.

“It’s a free-for-all inside—it’s a survival thing,” he says. “You lie in open space, and you can be preyed upon if you’re weak.”

Van Rensburg says he saw other prisoners beaten while handcuffed. There wasn’t enough water to bathe regularly. There were two toilets for 400 prisoners, and no toilet paper. Twice he contracted cerebral malaria.

“I was just left in there to rot or die of some disease,” van Rensburg says. “It’s the worst possible thing you can think of.”

He got out in 2015 after a new judge realized he had never been charged, tried or convicted.

Van Rensburg took shelter at the South African embassy and eventually reached home. The judge fled the country.

Seized assets

Van Rensburg sued Nguema Obiang in South Africa in 2015, arguing that as de facto head of Equatorial Guinea’s security services, the vice president ultimately gave the orders that kept him imprisoned.

The Western Cape High Court sided with van Rensburg and, in 2021, ordered Nguema Obiang to pay almost 40 million rand, the equivalent of $2.8 million at the time, plus interest and legal costs.

“This is a case that epitomizes a sheer abuse of power and authority by the defendant,” the court said. Nguema Obiang “was hell-bent to ensure that the plaintiff does not leave prison and that he was tortured and abused,” it said.

Nguema Obiang has appealed the ruling.

Worried that Nguema Obiang wouldn’t pay up, van Rensburg asked to seize his South African assets as collateral.

The court initially allowed van Rensburg to sell off the furniture from the two villas. Early last year, the court ordered the attachment of both houses and the Blue Shadow, which was undergoing repairs in Cape Town.

On Feb. 7, 2023, a Cape Town sheriff seized the yacht.

When the South African ruling came down, Teddy Nguema Obiang lashed out on the internet. The Blue Shadow was a military vessel “that the racists of Cape Town” were holding to “cheat me out of $2 million,” he wrote.

“I have the $2 million,” he wrote, “but I will never pay it.”

A drug charge

Potgieter and Huxham worked as engineers on oil ships in the same tiny country for the same Dutch company, SBM Offshore, but, according to their bosses and families, they never met until Equatorial Guinean authorities accused them of running a joint cocaine-trafficking operation.

Potgieter worked on an Exxon Mobil ship, FPSO Serpentina, that collected oil from the Equatorial Guinean seabed. Huxham, a dual South African-U.K. citizen, was on a Chevron ship, FPSO Aseng.

Their routines were similar: some five weeks on the water, then home for a break. On Feb. 9, 2023, two days after the sheriff seized the Blue Shadow, their schedules overlapped and both men were at the Anda China Hotel, in Malabo, waiting to fly out the following day.

At 10:30 p.m., the hotel receptionist called them to the lobby. The men left their belongings in their rooms, according to SBM and court documents filed by the men’s attorneys, and headed down. Waiting there were police agents, who took them into custody, claiming to have found bags of cocaine in their backpacks.

But the police neglected to search the men’s hotel rooms, and never saw, much less seized, their backpacks, SBM staff say. Obama Ondo, Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador, says the investigation and the men’s subsequent conviction followed the regular judicial process, but declined to discuss details of the case.

Police took Potgieter and Huxham to a state security-service building, known to locals as Guantanamo. As a state-television camera rolled, agents interrogated the men in front of black plastic bags filled with white powder.

The men, wearing shorts and T-shirts, an edge of panic in their voices, denied any knowledge of the alleged drugs. “No, no– never in my life,” said Potgieter, vigorously shaking his head.

“It’s definitely not mine,” said Huxham.

SBM delivered mattresses, sheets and food for the men. A week after their arrests, Potgieter and Huxham were transported to Oveng-Azem prison, deep in the virgin forests of Equatorial Guinea’s mainland.

Van Rensburg quickly released the Blue Shadow, in part because of the potential maintenance costs should the court reverse itself and decide it was an Equatorial Guinean military yacht and not Nguema Obiang’s personal property.

Van Rensburg’s team also hoped the move might persuade Nguema Obiang to release Potgieter and Huxham.

Nguema Obiang triumphantly posted footage of the Blue Shadow leaving Cape Town and heading out to sea. “They underestimated us, and we showed them that we know how to vigorously defend ourselves,” he wrote. “This victory is a message to anyone who tries to disrespect us: You must understand that respect for our honor and sovereignty is not negotiable.”

Potgieter and Huxham went on trial in June.

By now the alleged cocaine, which authorities had previously displayed loose in black bags, was presented as trial evidence wrapped in half-a-dozen tight white bundles, according to a complaint filed to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions by the men’s lawyer.

Prosecutors never explained how the police found the alleged drugs, not having seized Potgieter and Huxham’s backpacks. Nor did they present any evidence that the powder was, in fact, cocaine, despite defense requests that the substance be tested, according to the appeal filed by the defendants.

Nevertheless, the court found the South Africans guilty: “After several months of investigation, the Criminal Police came to the conclusion and without any mistake, that the ANDA CHINA hotel was the place where the accused kept said product (Cocaine) for its later sale,” the judges wrote.

The court even stated, inaccurately, that the defendants had confessed. Each man was sentenced to 12 years in prison, $5 million in compensatory damages to be paid to the government, an unexplained $2,500 fine, and court costs.

“Equatorial Guinea guarantees the well-being of all the expatriates working in the country, but we’re also obliged to adhere to international norms against drug trafficking,” says Obama Ondo, the ambassador.

Diplomats and the men’s lawyers and families, however, complained the sentences far exceeded the three-year maximum set by Equatorial Guinean law, and that the enormous fines seemed less about compensating the state for damage inflicted by a scourge of drugs and more about compensating Teddy Nguema Obiang for the seizure of his villas and the Blue Shadow.

“The evidence presented at trial on the drug charge was not credible, and the penalty imposed was inconsistent with Equatorial Guinean law,” says the U.S. official.

Stuck in prison

Potgieter and Huxham have now spent more than a year in prison and appear in courtroom photos to have lost a great deal of weight. They have been allowed a handful of visits from South African and U.K. diplomats, and five family phone calls between them. In one, Huxham proposed to his longtime girlfriend; she accepted.

The men’s families praise SBM for exerting pressure to get Potgieter and Huxham freed. But they say Exxon and Chevron haven’t thrown their weight around on the men’s behalf.

An Exxon spokeswoman says the company supports SBM’s efforts, but adds that “these are sensitive matters, and we don’t comment on details involving employees of other companies.”

A senior Chevron executive joined a recent call with family members. Chevron’s local subsidiary “remains committed to the rule of law and ethical business standards in its operations and to its partnership with the Republic of Equatorial Guinea to develop its energy resources for the benefit of its people,” a spokeswoman says.

Foreign companies are wary of provoking the Obiangs. In addition to the money they have at stake in Equatorial Guinea, they have other employees in the country, as vulnerable to arbitrary arrest as were the South Africans. And Exxon, its Zafiro oil field’s production tapering off, is navigating its own exit from the country.

The families also fault the South African government’s response. A top South African diplomat, Zane Dangor, told Potgieter’s wife the government is hamstrung because an Equatorial Guinean court had convicted the men. But South Africa’s foreign minister is leading a delegation to Equatorial Guinea this week in hopes of negotiating the oil workers’ release, Dangor told The Wall Street Journal.

Obama Ondo says the men’s conviction “has nothing to do with a private case the vice president might have in South Africa.” But, he hints, maybe there’s a deal to be struck. “Diplomatic lines of communication are open to resolve this case,” the ambassador says. Daniel van Rensburg’s adviser, Errol Eldson suspects Nguema Obiang would free the men if he got his villas back. “But where would that leave Daniel?”

Write to Michael M. Phillips at [email protected]

Corrections & AmplificationsFrederik Potgieter worked on Exxon Mobil’s FPSO Serpentina. Peter Huxham worked on Chevron’s  FPSO Aseng. An earlier version of this article misidentified which ship was affiliated with which company. (Corrected on May 6)

• The Inventory

Dutch authorities have seized a $120 million luxury yacht from this African president’s son

A 76-meter (250 ft) luxury yacht said to belong to Teodorin Obiang Nguema, the vice-president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea has been seized by Dutch authorities after it tried to leave Makkum, the Netherlands to head to Malabo.

Obiang Nguema, who is the son of president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Africa’s longest serving president , has been under investigation in Switzerland. The yacht, Ebony Shine , was seized  (in French) after a request by Swiss authorities. Last month, 11 of the world’s rarest and most expensive cars owned by Obiang Nguema were seized in Geneva , adding to the Obiang family’s international legal battles over alleged misappropriation of public funds. The vice president is believed to have a net worth of around $600 million.

Ebony Shine is one of two luxury yachts owned by the Equatorial Guinea. The other 90-meter yacht, called Ice , is docked at Tangier, Morocco, according to YachtHarbour.com. Ebony Shine was bought for $120 million. Both yachts are estimated to be worth around $250 million.

As well as yachts and cars, which include the Swedish-made Koenigegg One valued at $2.8 million, and a $2 million Bugatti Veyron, Obiang Nguema is also believed to own at least one private jet, including a Dassault 900.

He has denied ownership of the luxury items, claiming that they belong to his country’s government , according to Swiss publication L’Hebdo.

Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s third largest oil producer with a GDP of $15.53 billion in 2014, with a population of just over 1.2 million, according to last year’s census. That means it has one of Africa’s highest rates of GDP per capita. Yet, it’s ranked 138 out of 188 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.

The Swiss investigation comes five years after an investigation was launched in France into Teodorin Obiang. He is accused of having procured ill-gotten wealth and is scheduled to stand trial in Paris in January 2017. In 2011, French police sequestered luxury cars from Obiang’s $180 million residence in Paris, as well as furniture and art, including paintings by Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, worth $50 million.

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En Guinée équatoriale, Teodorín Obiang renforce son contrôle sur le gouvernement

Le président Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo a procédé, le 16 août, à un remaniement en nommant notamment un nouveau Premier ministre. Mais c’est l’influence de son fils et vice-président, Teodorín Obiang, qui en sort consolidée.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, dit Teodorín, vice-président de Guinée équatoriale et fils du chef de l’État, lors du sommet Russie-Afrique de Saint-Pétersbourg, le 27 juillet 2023. Equatorial Guinea’s Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue arrives for the plenary session of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum at the ExpoForum Convention and Exhibition Centre. St Petersburg, Russia, July 27, 2023. © Stanislav Krasilnikov/Tass/ABC/Andia.fr

Mathieu Olivier

Publié le 27 août 2024 Lecture : 2 minutes.

Manuela Roka Botey , première femme à occuper la fonction de Premier ministre en Guinée équatoriale , n’aura tenu que dix-huit mois. Le 16 août, elle a été remplacée par Manuel Osa Nsue Nsua , selon un décret signé par le président Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo , qui avait accepté la démission de son gouvernement quelques jours plus tôt.

Le chef de l’État n’avait pas été tendre en actant le départ de

Bien s’informer, mieux décider

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Contenus partenaires

Sur le même sujet, pourquoi l’épidémie de mpox se propage si vite en afrique, au sommet chine-afrique, un ballet de chefs d’état pour séduire pékin, air sénégal, kabila, wagner, mpox et agriculture high-tech : les 5 infos qu’il ne fallait pas rater cette semaine., au nigeria, l’hégémonie d’aliko dangote crispe ses concurrents, dix choses à savoir sur le togolais josé kwassi symenouh qui porte la réforme de la cci.