Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue/AFP
French magistrates probing alleged graft by African leaders had sought the warrant for Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, following searches at his upmarket Paris residence.
A government statement called on Paris to “take immediate steps to halt these destabilising measures,” and warned that otherwise “French firms will feel the negative effects from this situation.”
Malabo “reserves the right to react reciprocally: if France wants to sever ties with the state of Equatorial Guinea unilaterally, it should manifest this clearly,” it said.
The statement said Equatorial Guinea was “conscious that French judges, authorities and agents want to spark an internal destabilisation” in the oil-rich nation, stressing that it was “not a former French colony.”
The judges have since 2010 been probing the source of money spent in France by Obiang Nguema, Congo-Brazzaville’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso, and Omar Bongo, the late president of Gabon, in a case dubbed “ill-gotten gains” by the French media.
The charges were brought by Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption campaign group which alleges the leaders and their relatives spent state funds from their countries on lavish purchases in France.
The ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) on Wednesday said the country’s first son — also the party’s vice president — could not be judged by a French court.
“French courts are not able to judge a vice president of the PDGE and minister of state for agriculture, nor can they arrest him on grounds invented by a French non-governmental organisation,” party official Lucas Nguema Esono Mbang told national radio.
“We don’t need to look for problems where none exists. Equatorial Guinea is a country where peace reigns and many of its enemies don’t like it,” he added. TI alleges Obiang owned more than four million euros worth of vehicles in France, while altogether the three leaders had accumulated French assets worth 160 million euros ($210 million).
Obiang’s son is agriculture minister and deputy head of mission to UN cultural agency UNESCO, which is based in Paris. As part of that role he has diplomatic immunity.
In September last year, 11 of the family’s luxury cars were seized in Paris as part of the probe. Police in February searched an Obiang residence in an upmarket Paris district, removing vanloads of possessions.
Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron grip since seizing power in a 1979 coup d’etat, making him the continent’s longest-serving head of state.
His country is sub-Saharan Africa’s third biggest oil exporter but its people live in grinding poverty.
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