Two houses and a superyacht belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s vice president have been seized in South Africa, a lawyer said Monday after a local businessman sued him for illegal detention and torture.
A high court has ordered the confiscation of the property of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue’s and his luxury yacht docked in Cape Town.
The orders stem from a lawsuit filed by South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg.
He said he was illegally held and tortured in a notorious Equatorial Guinea prison for 491 days when a deal went awry in 2013, his lawyer told AFP.
“We seized two houses in Cape Town two weeks ago on official request and the luxury yacht last Tuesday,” attorney Errol Eldson told AFP. The assets were ordered to be auctioned off.
A Cape Town high court in 2021 ordered Obiang – son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – to pay around 40 million rand ($2.2 million) in compensation to Jhansi van Rensburg.
Also, read; Zambia Declines Calls to Allow World Bank Restructure its Chinese Loans
The lawyer said his client was hired by an Equatorial Guinean politician, Gabriel Angabi, to “set up an airline” in the oil-rich yet poor country.
After nearly two years of establishing the airline and “everything was in place and the planes were ready to fly,” Angabi called the entrepreneur to start the airline, according to Eldson.
“When he got there, Angabi said: “We don’t want to do this anymore, we want our money back,” said the lawyer.
After spending all the money on the project, Janse van Rensburg was unable to repay Angabi, who is said to be related to the first family.
“He picked up the phone to vice president Obiang and within 10 minutes the rapid force intervention was there… they picked Daniel up and threw him into Black Beach prison”.
In his memoir published in September, Janse Van Rensburg wrote “what was supposed to be a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea turned into a journey to the depths of hell.”
Obiang’s furniture from his two homes in Cape Town’s affluent suburbs hve already been auctioned.
Obiang’s father, the 80-year-old father, is currently the oldest non-royal head of state.
He seized power in August 1979, overthrowing his uncle Francisco Macías Nguema, who was executed by firing squad.
He brutally cracked down on dissent, survived a series of coup attempts, and has remained at the helm of the oil-rich Central African country ever since.
As a successor, he always considered the care of his son, usually called Theodorin. However, the heir’s image has been tarnished by Playboy fame and scandals abroad over allegedly illegally acquired assets.
