The Millionaire “Minister of Chopping Down Trees”

By Ken Silverstein

Not even Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have dreamed up Teodorin Nguema Obiang, the skirt-chasing, champagne-swilling, nightclub-hopping, would-be president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. Teodorin would be a mere embarrassment if not for the fact that he's the son of the current dictator, Teodoro Obiang, and a strong candidate to succeed his ailing father.

The Bush Administration has embraced Equatorial Guinea, and State Department officials have even been known to claim (though never for attribution) that Obiang Sr. could be a “model” for African reform. That's like saying Enron could be a model for corporate reform. Obiang was “elected” with 97 percent of the vote in 2002 and is widely deemed to be one of the world's most kleptocratic rulers. Indeed, court papers I've acquired from South Africa show that Teodorin effectively acknowledges that ministers can legally plunder the treasury under his father's rule.

But first a brief profile of the man who would be king: Teodorin holds a cabinet post—he's the Minister of Forestry, or the “Minister of Chopping Down Trees,” as a recent New York Daily News article called him—but very rarely attends government meetings. That's because he spends most of his time abroad: in Beverly Hills, where he owned a lavish estate, started a music company called TNO, and dated the rapper Eve, who recently dumped him; in New York City, where several years ago he offered $11 million to buy a Fifth Avenue condominium owned by Saudi arms-dealer Adnan Khashoggi, only to be rebuffed by the condo's board; in Paris, where he tools around in a white Rolls Royce; and in South Africa, where he recently has bought several vacation homes.

Like his father and many other top government officials, Teodorin used to stash part of his loot at Riggs Bank in Washington—until a Senate investigation ignited a scandal that ended the relationship between the bank and Equatorial Guinea. A source familiar with Teodorin's outlandish spending habits told me that Junior would frequently call his personal banker at Riggs with imperious and extravagant demands. One day he'd want arrangements made to fly his friends to Rio for Carnival; on another day he'd need to have a Bentley airfreighted from London to Los Angeles; and on another still he'd demand that a helicopter be immediately dispatched to offload a female companion from a cruise ship because she fallen out of his favor.

Antony Goldman, a London-based risk analyst specializing in west African oil, has long followed Obiang Jr.'s antics. “Teodorin has many enemies in and outside of Equatorial Guinea but the allegations of impropriety and excess [that surround him] are well documented,” Goldman says. “If even a quarter were close to the truth, it would make him a particularly extraordinary character, and peculiarly ill-equipped to be president.”

Now a man named George Ehlers, the owner of a South African construction company, is suing the government of Equatorial Guinea. According to several stories in the Sunday Times of Johannesburg, Ehlers signed a contract to develop an airport in Equatorial Guinea seven years ago. But after becoming embroiled in a dispute with a government official, Ehlers had to abandon the project and surreptitiously evacuate his staff, which at one point had been jailed.

Ehlers was never paid for any of his work, and was forced to leave behind millions of dollars in equipment in Equatorial Guinea. He sued in Cape Town High Court and asked that he be compensated in the form of two homes that Teodorin purchased in the city in 2004 and that are worth a combined $6 million (about half of Equatorial Guinea's annual education budget). Ehlers claimed that while the homes were registered in Teodorin's name, they were purchased with state money and hence formally owned by the Obiang government, with which he had signed the airport deal.

Teodorin denies that, saying he paid for the homes with his own money and the properties therefore cannot be seized to pay a government debt. The court initially ruled in favor of Ehlers and attached the properties but it is now considering an appeal by Teodorin.

Either way, the questions remains as to how a humble public servant in Equatorial Guinea, whose official salary is no more than a few thousand dollars a month, could possibly afford to buy such lavish properties. In fact, the Sunday Times reports that the homes apparently “were not fit for the son of the president of one of Africa's most prolific oil-producing countries.” Teodorin's substantial expenditure on renovations and refurbishment included hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home-theater sound system, plasma-screen televisions, and bathrooms replete with spa baths, chrome fittings and marble surfaces. (The newspaper also quoted an unnamed security guard who had worked for Teodorin. The guard said his employer “always had a briefcase filled with cash on hand” and that he spent thousands of dollars on champagne and wining and dining female companions.)

So how does Teodorin foot the bills? In a notarized affidavit he filed in the case, he sought to explain the source of his income:

Cabinet Ministers and public servants in Equatorial Guinea are by law allowed to own companies that, in consortium with a foreign company, can bid for government contracts and should the company be successful, then what percentage of the total cost of the contract the company gets will depend on the terms negotiated between the parties. But, in any event, it means that a cabinet minister ends up with a sizable part of the contract price in his bank account.

The only thing that may prevent Teodorin from succeeding his father is intense opposition from other members of the country's tiny ruling circle, who fear that the kooky but menacing Teodorin will become an international laughingstock who will hog billions of dollars of oil spoils, most which is produced by American firms. If he does ascend to the throne, rest assured that the Bush Administration will find a way to justify continued warm ties with its “model” ally.

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