"I had unfortunately used a credit card that I wasn't authorized to use," Enevela says. "I started a process of restitution, which will be over soon. I accept full responsibility for that error."
But a shady history of crime doesn't end with Envela.
Williams, his longtime friend and campaign manager, is a member of one of Pittsburgh's most notorious crime families. In the 1990s, Williams' father ran a multi-million-dollar gambling empire in the city with his family. When he was caught in 1997, the younger Williams pled guilty to his role in the ring, and served six months probation.
"I ran numbers. It was an illegal gambling operation. That was it," Williams says. "My whole family was in it. They made a federal case out of it. It's nothing that I'm ashamed of, to be quite frank. My past is my past. There is nothing in my past that I am ashamed of to talk about."
Williams, who now owns eight parking lots in the Pittsburgh area, is listed as Envela's official campaign manager on his Foreign Agents Registration Unit (FARA) documents.
Envela says that he has learned from his mistakes, and will use those lessons learned as president. But it is hard to deny the irony of Envela's watchdog-styled E-mails, which warn of "greedy lobbyists," and praise "the spirit of transparency," as "guided by the law."
A number of influential people in Washington are familiar with Envela's political musings because of his verbose and regular letter campaigns, which detail the problems in Equatorial Guinea.
Envela splits time between Washington and Pittsburgh, where he is the president of Voice of Democracy, an Africa-focused consultancy.
He is infamous in Washington for his mailing lists, which target senior officials in the White House, political operatives, oil executives, media moguls, officials at the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, and anyone else in Washington Envela thinks could have a say in what happens in Equatorial Guinea. Many of these people receive E-mails from Envela in their private E-mail inboxes.
Envela has tenuous connections to some in his E-mail list. He says he dined with Democratic strategist James Carville, during which time he said they discussed solutions for Africa. He says he consulted for an NGO called Africa Global with Warren Weinstein, the American contractor who went missing in Pakistan and appeared in a video pleading for his life in May. And he says he met with the office of late California Rep. Tom Lantos, a proponent of human rights, about the abuses in Equatorial Guinea. (Carville did not respond to request for comment.)
"I want to say that... I did everything I could to sound the alarm," says Envela of his prolific E-mailing. "And that I did it even before there was oil, when no one cared about Equatorial Guinea."
Envela sounded the alarm to his E-mail list on Teodorin's mansion, on the Riggs Bank transaction, and on American lobbyists such as Lanny Davis who were employed by Obiang. It is unclear whether any action was taken as a result of his letters.
"There can only be good things coming from disseminating truthful information," says Tutu Alicante, executive director of human rights group Equatorial Guinea Justice. "And to the extent that [Envela] has been able to forward truthful reports, to the influential people in his E-mail list, that is helpful."
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