* US prosecutors say Teodorin sought bribes
* Prosecutors say president’s son levied ‘personal tax’
* US administration seeking to seize assets worth over $70
mln
* Teodorin representatives decline comment
By Bate Felix
DAKAR, June 15 (Reuters) – Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son
of the president of Equatorial Guinea, spent more than $300
million during a decade of high living financed by bribes and
embezzlement, according to a new filing by U.S. prosecutors.
The filing this week came after a judge told prosecutors in
April they must provide more evidence of wrongdoing to be able
to seize assets including a $30 million Malibu estate, private
jet and Michael Jackson memorabilia collection.
The new account, obtained by Reuters, nearly triples past
estimates of spending since 2000 by the man widely known as
“Teodorin”, alleging that he used his post as forestry minister
of the oil-rich state to demand kickbacks.
“Nguema (Teodorin) refused to sign timber export licenses
unless applicants first paid him these personal fees,”
prosecutors said, adding that Teodorin also requested 15,000 CFA
francs ($28.80) for every log exported.
Prosecutors alleged that Teodorin also operated schemes to
embezzle millions of dollars of funds by securing government
contracts through his own companies and then receiving payments
well in excess of the official size of the contracts.
“For every year between 2000 and 2011, (Teodorin’s) enormous
personal expenditures vastly outpaced and were inconsistent with
both his official salary of less than $100,000 per year, and the
fraudulent income he purportedly generated from his companies,”
prosecutors said.
They also cited the example of Isoroy, a French forestry
company, which obtained an agreement to harvest timber from
57,053 hectares of wilderness in 1995 after paying Teodorin an
initial 15 million CFA francs and making subsequent payments.
“Isoroy … paid Nguema in or around the equivalent of
$104,000 every one or two months in order to be able to continue
to operate in Equatorial Guinea from 1993 to 1996,” they allege.
The U.S.-based public relations company hired by Equatorial
Guinea said it had no comment on the new filings and pointed to
previous statements by his lawyers that he became wealthy thanks
to a legal concession he won to harvest timber in his country.
A spokeswoman for Paris-based Isoroy said by telephone she
had no details or recollection of the company’s activities in
Equatorial Guinea during that period and noted that the company
no longer had operations there.
Teodorin’s father, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo,
has ruled the former Spanish colony for more than three decades,
making him one of the Africa’s longest-serving leader, and
rights groups have labelled his regime one of the world’s most
corrupt.
Teodorin is widely seen as a potential successor after his
appointment in May as vice-president.
“The filing provides a new wealth of detail of how Teodorin
supposedly accepted bribes, inflated contracts and had his hand
on the government till,” said Robert Palmer of governance and
human rights watchdog Global Witness.
($1 = 520.7450 CFA francs)
(Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Giles Elgood)
