Equatorial Guinea has been ruled for more than 43 years by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has just been re-elected for a sixth seven-year term and holds the world record for longevity in power for a living head of state, excluding monarchs.
Equatorial Guinea is the third richest country in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of GDP per capita in 2021 according to the World Bank, but ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in the Transparency International corruption barometer.
According to the state TV (TVGE), the Son of Equatorial Guineas President, Ruslan Obiang Nsue, has allegedly been arrested for selling a plane (ATR 72-500 aircraft) to the company Binter Technic", which specializes in aviation maintenance and is based in Las Palmas, on the Spanish island, belonging to the country's national airline.
According to the same source, President Ruslan Obiang has confessed that; “it was the son who sold Ceiba's ATR, I will not allow myself to be carried away by familialism or favouritism, which is why I have ordered his immediate arrest and handing him over to justice," his half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, nicknamed "Teodorin", said on Twitter.
Teodorin Obiang himself was definitively sentenced by the French justice at the end of July 2021 to three years in prison with a suspended sentence and 30 million euros in fines and the confiscation of his assets in France for having fraudulently built up a luxurious patrimony within the framework of the "ill-gotten gains" cases.
