EQUATORIAL GUINEA'S PLUNDER

On OCT 27, a Paris criminal court convicted Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the vice president of Equatorial Guinea and son of its president-

*Of money laundering and embezzlement of more than $100 Million*.

Mr. Obiang received a suspended three-year prison sentence and was fined $35 million. The judge rules that the French government would keep more than $100 million of Mr. Obiang's assets, seized by the police in Paris in 2012

They included a 100-room mansion and a collection of sports cars.

More than a decade earlier, CCFD Terre Solidaire, A French nongovernmental organization, denounced Western companies and governments for enabling dictators by welcoming their ill-gotten wealth.

This prompted the anticorruption groups Transparency International France and Sherpa to start legal proceeding against the  presidents of Equatorial  Guinea,  the republic of Congo and Gabon.

Mr. Obiang case is the first to go to trial.  His particularly contentious lifestyle raised questions about  corruption, with posts on-

Instagram showing him driving luxury cars or riding limited edition motorcycles.

In Paris, where he would spend a few months a year, he flaunted a fleet of  obscenely expensive cars  and motorcycles.

He displayed a $22 million art collection in his mansion, Bendedicte de Perthuis, the French judge who found him guilty said:

''Mr. Obiang had failed to produce a  'convincing justification of the irigin of his fortune.''

I was born in  Equatorial Guinea in 1979, writes the research author Lucas Olo Fernandes, when his father, President Teodor Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, took power in a coup.

He is still in power.

The corruption of the family and their retainers grew exponentially after oil was discovered in 1996.