Equatorial Guinea: President Obiang’s son arrested on corruption charges

Equatorial Guinea’s son, President Ruslan Obiang Nousse, has been arrested and placed under house arrest on suspicion of selling a plane for the state airline, state television (TVGE) reported Tuesday.

At the end of November, authorities launched an investigation “after becoming aware of the disappearance of an ATR 72-500 aircraft belonging to the state-owned company,” Ceiba Intercontinental, which has been regularly updated in Spain since 2018, told TVGE.

According to the same sources, Obiang Nsue would have sold the ATR aircraft to Binter Technic, an aviation maintenance specialist based in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain.

Former Secretary of State and current Director of Ceiba Airport, Ruslan Obiang Su, was the first Deputy Director and then Managing Director of Ceiba Intercontinental.

“Ruslan Obiang confessed that he was the one who sold Ceiba’s ATR. I have ordered his extradition to ,” his half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nugema Obiang Mange, nicknamed “Theodorin,” said on Twitter.

Théodorine Obiang himself was convicted by the French judiciary at the end of July 2021 to a three-year suspended prison sentence, a fine of €30 million and confiscation of his assets in France. About the “unjust enrichment” case.

In July 2021, London also froze his financial assets in the UK and expelled him from its territory following an anti-corruption investigation. Malabo then closed its embassy in the country to protest the decision.

The arrest of one of the president’s sons, Ruslan Obiang Nusue, is unprecedented for a member of a presidential family in a small Central African oil-rich state.

Last December, news of the plane’s disappearance and its alleged sale by Obiang Su sparked public outrage.

Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo for over 43 years. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has just been re-elected to a sixth seven-year term and holds the world record for the longest living head of state other than his monarch.

Equatorial Guinea is the third richest country in sub-Saharan Africa by GDP per capita in 2021, according to the World Bank, but ranks 172nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Barometer .