African Dictator’s Supercars Seized in Paris

From CarBuzz.com: "The President of Equatorial Guinea has just seen 11 of his supercars confiscated by the French National Police.

"Straight from Paris, France comes a story of 11 supercars that were seized by the French National Police.What is more compelling, however, is that these luxurious automobiles belong (or belonged) to African Dictator Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo.Mbasogo is the 'President' of Equatorial Guinea, a small African country that boasts an astonishingly poor poverty rate of 70 percent."

The haul included a Ferrari Enzo, a pair--a pair!--of Bugatti Veyrons, a Maserati MC12, a Porsche Carrera GT, a Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe and an Aston-Martin V8 V600 LM.

View pictures of the haul here: here.

As a reminder, do you know where Mbasogo gets the money to buy those cars? Oil!  Equatorial Guinea is the third largest producer of oil in Sub-Saharan Africa, with production estimated at 360,000 barrels a day.

But in the case of Equatorial Guinea, all the royalties go straight into the pocket of the dictator, while the vast majority of the population lives in squalor and abject poverty.

The French will auction the luxury cars: I suggest that the entire proceeds be devoted to building schools, clinics and roads for the impoverished inhabitants of Equatorial Guinea.  And as for Mbasogo, I'd give him a ride to jail--in a decidedly unluxurious Paris police paddy wagon,

Now that we've seen the politics part of this post, let's turn to the investing part to find out who is paying the kleptocrat Mbasogo for his country's oil: ExxonMobil, Hess, Marathon, Devon, and Vanco Energy.

Shareholders of those companies should be angered that the companies they own are shelling out millions to Mbasogo.  And he's not the only kleptocrat pocketing oil money--he's just the most corrupt of the bunch.


Learn more in this February 2012 article from the BBC.  France impounds African autocrats' 'ill-gotten gains' which discusses not only Mbasogo, but two other infamous African kleptocracies, that of Denis Sassou N'Guesso, in Congo-Brazzaville and the clan of Gabon's late leader Omar Bongo and its current leader, his son Ali Bongo.  Estimates of the assets in France of  these three kleptocracies total 160 million euros.

More information about Equatorial Guinea here:  Oil Corruption in Equatorial Guinea.

More data on the kleptocrats on this  French-Language site: Biens mal-acquis

And if you want to know how corrupt Equatorial Guinea was even before oil was discovered, read Tropical Gangsters: One Man's Experience With Development And Decadence In Deepest Africa by Robert Klitgaard, published back in 1991. 

Jagor