South African authorities have confiscated a superyacht and two luxurious houses belonging to Equatorial Guinea Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang.
After local businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg won a lawsuit against Obiang for unlawful arrest and torture, a court ordered the seizures. He has asked for $2.2 million in damages. He claims he was wrongfully held in Equatorial Guinea for 500 days after a business transaction went bad.
The vice president, the son of the world’s longest-serving ruler, has yet to make a statement on the matter. He and President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo have long been accused of treating Equatorial Guinea as a personal territory and squandering its riches and resources. This is the latest in a series of verdicts delivered by courts around the world against him.
“We attached two houses… in Cape Town in a formal application two weeks ago and the superyacht last Tuesday,” the businessman’s lawyer, Errol Eldson, told the AFP news agency. He also stated that an application to auction the assets had been submitted.
Mr Van Rensburg has fought the vice-president in South African courts for years, and this year he wrote a book on how a business trip to Equatorial Guinea in 2013 turned into a voyage to the depths of hell” after his incarceration in the notorious Black Beach prison.
According to Mr Eldson, his client established an airline in Equatorial Guinea with a local politician who withdrew at the last minute and sought a financial payback.
Following the disagreement, the politician called Vice-President Obiang, and within 10 minutes, an elite security force team picked Daniel up and tossed him into Black Beach prison, according to the lawyer.
Obiang is largely regarded as being groomed to succeed his father, who has been in power for 43 years.