Dictator and Diplomat
Why is this man smiling? Here's a hint: It has something to do with oil
The answer, in part, is due to high-level corruption-reportedly including payoffs, diverted oil revenues, and construction contracts awarded to companies owned by Obiang's family and political allies. In 2004, Senate investigators discovered that some $700 million from oil revenues had been deposited in the Riggs National Bank in Washington and were under Obiang's exclusive control. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also found that the major oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea had made millions of dollars in payments directly into more than 60 Riggs accounts held by Obiang, his family, and members of his government.
The Equatorial Guinea government denied illegal diversion of money, and some sources assert that Obiang sought to prevent corruption by exercising control over the money. Whatever the reality, Riggs was fined $25 million by the Treasury Department for "systematic violations" of money laundering laws. The accounts have been transferred to the Bank of Central Africa, a regional institution, where the money, still under Obiang's control, ostensibly is for infrastructure and other development projects.
While construction of roads, office buildings, football stadiums, and airports continues at a frenzied pace, the majority of the Equatorial Guinean people live in dire poverty. Newbuildings, a vast slum in the center of Malabo, is a case in point. Some 30,000 people are cramped into one-story wooden houses with rusted tin roofs. Most survive by selling African artifacts in front of their dwellings or used clothing and fruit and vegetables in nearby markets. Children kick around deflated soccer balls among piles of garbage and pools of fetid water. "There is no development plan; that's what's lacking in this country," says a United Nations official. "It's a slow evolution not going at the pace we would like, but they had an attempted coup in 2004 and canalized many resources into defense."
That attempted coup, in which 64 alleged South African mercenaries were arrested when their plane stopped in Zimbabwe on its way to Equatorial Guinea and 15 others were arrested in Malabo, was only the latest in a series of efforts to overthrow Obiang. The incident has led to an even more repressive atmosphere, with foreign journalists and political opponents followed by the secret police or watched by government informers in hotels, restaurants, and other public places. "The regime is phobic," says one well-connected Guinean. "Every white person is suspect."
Under intense international pressure, Obiang released 41 political prisoners on June 4, the day before his birthday, including some of the South Africans held in the failed coup. No one, however, knows exactly how many political prisoners still languish in the country's jails. "Human rights are at a standstill; there is no positive evolution as there should have been by now," says Fabian Nsue Ngume Obono, a human-rights lawyer who spent several months in Black Beach in 2002 and was recently summarily prevented from practicing law for a year because of his past defense of political opponents. "If no one is being detained right now it's because the authorities don't feel like it; they can arrest us at any moment."
Indeed, Obiang exercises firm control over the judicial and legislative branches and has reduced most of the political opposition to a supporting role in exchange for favors and patronage. The media, such as they are, are under full government control. There is not a single bookstore in the entire country.
Last month, Obiang fired the cabinet over what he said was incompetence and corruption. He then reappointed many of the same officials to top posts-including oil, finance, and defense-and for the first time named a prime minister from his own Fang ethnic group, a move seen by observers as further tightening his grip on affairs of state. "No one raises their voice here," says Felix Okende, one of the few political opponents willing to speak for attribution. "And those who do end up in Black Beach-or dead."
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