Two homes and a superyacht belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s vice president have been seized in South Africa after a local businessman sued for unlawful detention and torture, his lawyer said Monday.
The High Court has ordered the seizure of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue’s property, along with a super yacht docked in Cape Town.
The order arose from a lawsuit by South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg.
He said he was illegally detained and tortured for 491 days in a notorious Equatorial Guinea jail when a business deal went sour in 2013, his lawyer told AFP.
“We attached (confiscated) two houses … in Cape Town in the official application two weeks ago and the superyacht last Tuesday,” lawyer Errol Eldson, told AFP. An application to auction the assets has been submitted.
R40 million in damage
The Cape Town High Court in 2021 ordered Obiang – the son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – to pay Janse van Rensburg around 40 million rand ($2.2 million) in damages.
The lawyer said his client had been recruited by Equatorial Guinean politician Gabriel Angabi “to set up an airline” in the oil-rich but impoverished country.
After almost two years of setting up the airline and “everything is in place and the plane is ready to start flying”, the businessman was called by Angabi for what he thought would be the launch of the airline, according to Eldson.
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“When he got there, Angabi said ‘we don’t want to do this anymore, we want our money back’,” the lawyer said.
After spending all the money on the project, Janse van Rensburg failed to return Angabi, who was allegedly related to the first family.
“He picked up the phone to the vice president Obiang and within 10 minutes the intervention of the rapid force was there … they picked up Daniel and threw him to the Black Beach prison”.
In his memoirs published in September, Janse Van Rensburg wrote “what was supposed to be a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea turned into a journey into the depths of hell.”
Obiang’s furniture from his two homes in the suburbs of Cape Town has been auctioned off.
His lawyer Victor Nkhwashu declined to comment.
– Playboy Pictures –
Obiang’s father, his 80-year-old father, is the longest-serving head of state, not including the king.
He seized power in August 1979, overthrowing his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was later executed by firing squad.
Strongly suppressing the spread and surviving a series of coup attempts, he has remained the leader of the oil-rich central African country ever since.
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He has been considered for a long time to groom his son, usually called Teodorin, to be his successor.
However, the scion’s image has been tarnished by its playboy reputation and scandals abroad due to suspected illegal acquisition of assets.
France, Britain and the United States ordered him to forfeit millions of dollars in assets, from mansions to luxury cars, while France also handed him a three-year suspended sentence and a 30 million euro (dollar) fine.