Equatorial Guinea's playboy "prince" feels the heat

DAKAR (Reuters) - Even blasé Parisians gaped as, one by one, a selection of some of the world's most exotic sports cars emerged slowly out of a chic address a few steps from the Champs Elysees and were loaded onto a waiting transporter.

The Maserati, Bugatti and 14 other supercars were the toys of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, farm minister in a small central African country. But if their seizure by order of French judge last September was a cruel blow to a man with a self-confessed taste for luxury, he may have worse to come.

Favoured son of the president of the small oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea, Nguema Obiang - known as "Teodorin" (Little Teodor) to his friends and "Prince" to his servants - is in the cross hairs of investigators on both sides of the Atlantic.

Just this week, French judges announced they were seeking an arrest warrant for Teodorin on money laundering charges. On Wednesday, U.S. authorities filed to seize his private jet, alleging it was bought with cash embezzled from his country.

"This is an attempt to de-stabilise (Equatorial Guinea). It is clearly politically motivated," Olivier Pardo, a lawyer for the country, said by telephone of what he sees as mainly a bid by lobby groups to force changes in human rights conditions.

The government of Equatorial Guinea accused France of provocation.

Teodorin had already seen his $30 million Malibu mansion and collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia seized last year in a still-pending action named "United States v. One White Crystal-Covered 'Bad Tour' Glove et al".

"This is the first time U.S. authorities have gone after the assets of a foreign government official, let alone one viewed as next in line to the throne," said Human Rights Watch senior researcher Lisa Misol, referring to speculation Teodorin is being groomed for the presidency.

"There is real momentum to push this case," she added, suggesting the actions by U.S. and French judiciaries were producing a unique combination of pressure on the target.

WORLD OF BLING

Teodorin is not the first offspring of an African leader to be accused of extravagance. Late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi was one such progeny to enjoy the good life - a taste now crimped by house arrest in the West African state of Niger.

But Teodorin's fate has attracted interest because his country - the third biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa - is among the prime destinations in the latest global rush for Africa's untapped resources, and a strategic energy partner for the United States.

Moreover, his world of bling has attracted particularly fierce criticism because of its stark contrast with the plight of ordinary people in a country ranked among "the worst of the worst" civil liberty abusers in democracy group Freedom House's 2011 survey.

According to the survey, the country's authorities have been accused of "widespread human rights abuses, including torture, detention of political opponents, and extrajudicial killings."

Equatorial Guinea hit the headlines in 2004, when an attempted coup organised by British mercenary Simon Mann and involving Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was foiled.

Before the discovery of oil in the 1990s, life in the tiny former Spanish colony nestled in the Gulf of Guinea had its privations even for Teodorin and his family.

According to leaked U.S. cables, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo was so strapped for cash a decade after his 1979 seizure of power that the U.S. envoy of the time made personal loans for him to "buy gasoline to go to local political events."

But all that was to change in a few short years as mostly U.S. oil companies started to make a series of lucrative offshore finds and Obiang Nguema woke up to the commercial value of the pristine national forests covering its soil.

According to U.S. legal filings seen by Reuters, the president in 1993 awarded his 24-year-old son a concession to harvest 25,000 hectares of forest for timber and followed up with a second concession for 11,000 hectares a year later.

At the age of 30, Teodorin was named to his current post of Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. The young minister would embark on a remarkable spree of conspicuous consumption.

"LUCKY IN BUSINESS"

Between 2001 and June 2011, Teodorin spent over $100 million on personal expenses, the U.S. filings show. The months from April to June 2006 alone saw the purchase of the Malibu mansion and the $38 million Gulfstream G-V Jet.

The 'Bad Tour' forfeiture filing asks how he could make such purchases on a monthly ministerial salary of $6,799 - enough to keep the Gulfstream in the air for two hours and 15 minutes.

For Teodorin, who steadfastly denies wrongdoing, the answer is clear.

"I've been very lucky in business," he told a U.S. diplomat according to a leaked 2009 cable. "And I like to live well. My house in Malibu is now worth twice what I paid for it."

In one month in 2004, he is recorded as having spent $80,000 at Gucci and $50,000 at Dolce and Gabbana in the United States. Two racing boats set him back $2 million in 2005 and the job lot of Jackson souvenirs cost $3.2 million.

In June 2008, a broker acting on Teodorin's behalf put down a deposit with a German yacht-builder for the design of a "mega-yacht". Teodorin shelved the purchase after the price tag of $380 million was leaked to the media.

GOSSIP COLUMNS

Gossip columns have written about his on-off romance with U.S. rapper Eve and courtship of starlets such as "Booty Call" actress Tamala Jones. But as the legal heat mounts, the political ramifications of Teodorin's case are likely to become more sensitive.

Equatorial Guinea last November began the process of appointing the president's son as representative at world cultural body UNESCO, a move which could give him diplomatic immunity.

Moreover the French judges' request for a warrant can go no further without an opinion from the state prosecutor which, weeks after the original demand was made, is still absent.

Lawyers for Teodorin reject any suggestion that he is seeking diplomatic immunity and argue the arrest warrant is in any case destined to go nowhere because any request to hear their client would need the green light of the government of Equatorial Guinea - which it has refused.

With Teodorin's father the longest serving leader in Africa with 33 years in power, questions are growing as to when the 69-year-old will seek to hand over power. A constitutional change late last year creating the post of vice-president only added to speculation his son will be eased into the top job.

HRW's Misol said it was still open how the political leaders of the United States and France would view any judicial action that could ultimately hurt their countries' ties with an important supplier of energy and other resources.

Equatorial Guinea slammed the French judges' move on Friday as "open provocation" and warned Paris it could retaliate.

"If France wants a rupture of relations with the Equatorial Guinean State, unilaterally, they should state it clearly," a government statement said, warning that French companies would feel the "negative consequences" of the French actions.

Teodorin has recently been spending time at home on development work, including a project to improve the lot of poor families with a campaign to provide new zinc roofs for their country shacks. Local cameras also showed him handing out gifts to children around Christmas this year.

"He is looking at programs that will benefit the population of the country. That is a priority of his," said Matt Lauer of Washington-based Qorvis, which has been hired to carry out public relations for Equatorial Guinea.

"He doesn't feel that is recognised very widely."

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; Thierry Leveque and John Irish in Paris; David Lewis in Dakar and Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburtg; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Giles Elgood)