State television (TVGE) announced on Tuesday that one of the sons of the President of Equatorial Guinea, Raslan Obiang Nsoy, who is suspected of having sold a plane from the national airline, was arrested on Monday and placed under house arrest. At the end of November, the authorities opened an investigation “after observing the disappearance of the ATR 72-500 of the national company”, Ciba Intercontinental, which has been undergoing routine repair in Spain since 2018, explains TVGE.
According to the same source, Mr. Obiang Nsoe had “sold the ATR aircraft to Binter Technic,” an aviation maintenance company based in Las Palmas, on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria.
Former Minister of State for Sports and Youth, Raslan Obiang Nsoy, current director of Ciba Airport, was first deputy director of Ciba Intercontinental and then general manager.
“Raslan Obiang has admitted that he is the one who sold Ciba ATR, I will not get carried away with family or nepotism, that is why I have ordered his immediate arrest and release from justice,” his half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, aka “Teodorin,” wrote on Twitter. .
Theodorine Obiang himself was finally sentenced by French justice at the end of July 2021 to a suspended three-year prison sentence, a fine of 30 million euros and the confiscation of his property in France for fraudulently setting up a luxury company there. In the context of “ill-gotten gains” cases.
In July 2021, London also froze his financial assets in the United Kingdom and prevented him from entering its territory, following anti-corruption investigations. Malabo then closed its embassy in the country in protest of this decision.
The arrest of Raslan Obiang Nsoy, one of the president’s sons, is unprecedented for a member of the presidential family of this small, oil-rich Central African country.
Last December, the news of this plane’s disappearance and its supposed sale by Mr. Obiang Nswe sparked national outrage.
Equatorial Guinea has been ruled for more than 43 years by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has just been re-elected to a sixth seven-year term and holds the world record for longevity in power for a head of state other than royalty.
Equatorial Guinea is the third richest country in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of per capita GDP in 2021 according to the World Bank, but is ranked 172nd globally out of 180 in Transparency International’s corruption barometer.
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