Spain Probes Equatoguinean Minister For Bribes, Money Laundering

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Spain is investigating the son of Equatorial Guinea’s ruler, Teodoro Obiang, for his alleged involvement in a money laundering and tax fraud network that has whitewashed millions of dollars from bribes paid by a Portuguese company to which he awarded a construction contract in the African country.

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Reported by

Antonio Baquero
May 23rd, 2024

“Gabriel Mbega Obiang Lima is under investigation by the court in Palma de Mallorca,” a press officer of the Superior Court of the Balearic Islands told reporters.

Apart from Gabriel, authorities are probing five others while two were detained in connection with the laundering of more than 10 million euros in bribes, authorities said.

The corruption was exposed by OCCRP and partners in 2021 and triggered the investigation that resulted in the operation announced on Thursday.

Obiang Lima is currently the minister of planning and economic diversification, but at the time of the alleged corruption, he was in charge of petroleum.

The group is believed to have funneled the dirty money through several offshore companies before parking it in bank accounts and real estate in Spain and investing it in a cosmetic products business in the Netherlands.

Police seized 11 properties on the island of Mallorca worth more than 5.5 million euros (US$5.9 million) and nine bank accounts with more than 200,000 euros in deposits, the Spanish Tax Agency said in a statement. Authorities also seized three vehicles valued at over 100,000 euros, 15 watches worth 150,000 euros, and a lifetime golf club membership worth 100,000 euros.

Spanish investigators worked on the case for three years, as did Portuguese officials who were looking into a Portuguese construction company conducting public works in Equatorial Guinea. The investigations were carried out “in the context of certain international press reports at that time,” the Tax Agency said.

The OCCRP published in January 2021 a report together with the exiled Equatoguinean news site Diario Rombe and Portugal’s Expresso newspaper that linked Gabriel Mbega Obiang Lima, to a network of companies to which millions of dollars in bribes were paid in exchange for a construction project awarded to Portugal’s company Armando Cunha.

The contract was signed in 2012 by Gabriel Mbega Obiang Lima, who at the time was serving as Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons in his father’s cabinet. Dictator Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea for almost 45 years with an iron fist.

Armando Cunha was to construct the country’s National Technological Institute of Hydrocarbons, where students from across Africa were to be trained for jobs in the oil industry. The project, originally budgeted at $81 million, ended up costing $139.5 million, also due to the payment of illicit commissions.

“The plot had formed a complex international corporate structure to channel illegal commissions, controlled through trusts and companies based in countries such as Cape Verde, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, Belize, and the Netherlands,” which was managed by the organizer, a Dutch citizen who acted as a “supervisor and beneficiary,” the Spanish Tax Agency statement said.

The agency searched 21 homes, collected 13,000 related paper documents, and extracted data in excess of four terabytes from 43 electronic devices, the statement said.

“This entire investigation has been highly complex, both due to the difficulty of the crimes investigated and the elaborate international corporate structure, which has required various requests for information from third countries and significant work analyzing the financial, commercial, and corporate operations,” said Spain’s Tax Agency.

Gabriel Obiang is not the only son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator to face accountability abroad for corrupt practices. In recent years, France, Brazil, and the U.S. have seized assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his half-brother Teodorin Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s vice president. Minister Gabriel Mbega Obiang Lima did not respond to a request for comment when contacted by reporters.