The Justice Department announced Tuesday it is seeking to recover more than $70.8 million from a government minister of Equatorial Guinea. The U.S. alleges that the millions are proceeds from foreign corruption laundered through the United States and is seeking to recover the funds as part of the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue
According to civil forfeiture complaints filed separately in the central district of California and the District of Columbia, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, Minister of Forestry and Agriculture and the son of Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mbasogo,used his position to profit from corruption related to extraction of the country’s natural resources. On an annual government salary of less than $100,000, Nguema was able to amass a personal fortune of over $100 million.
According to a Justice Department press release, Nguema used the money to purchase “more than $1.8 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia, a $38.5 million Gulfstream G-V jet, a $30 million house in Malibu, Calif., and a 2011 Ferrari automobile valued at more than $530,000.” The assets are among those named in the forfeiture complaint. View a slideshow of his extravagant living here.
“Through our Kleptocracy Initiative, we are sending the message loud and clear: the United States will not be a hiding place for the ill-gotten riches of the world’s corrupt leaders,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a statement.
Upon a criminal conviction, a court can order forfeiture of assets as part of the defendant’s sentence. But it is often impossible to criminally prosecute foreign officials in the U.S. because of immunity and jurisdictional issues. In these circumstances, the Kleptocracy Team can bring a civil forfeiture action to recover the ill-gotten gains.
The Justice Department has emphasized that the goal of seizing the assets is ultimately to repatriate the funds to citizens of the victim country. But it is unclear exactly how the DOJ will go about doing that.
Senior Trial Attorney Janet C. Hudson and Trial Attorney Woo Lee of the Criminal Division’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section are handling the cases.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations opened the case against Nguema after the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations released a report in 2004 naming Nguema as a major perpetrator of corruption.
Just Anti-Corruption interviewed the head of the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, Jennifer Shasky, in September. Shasky highlighted the challenges and expectations faced by the fledgling program.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced the initiative with great fanfare during a speech in Doha, Qatar in November 2009, but other than fleeting public remarks in the months that followed, few details were released about it.
Anticipation was amplified once again when Breuer announced the initiative’s first cases in May, targeting the U.S.-based assets of a former Nigerian official. But Shasky, the chief of the Criminal Division’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (AFMLS), said that expectations should be tempered.
A myriad of challenges faces the initiative. Prosecutors must navigate the complex web of international legal systems; locate monies that are often converted into movable assets and can be hidden in a maze of offshore accounts and shell companies; gather evidence from witnesses and governments who may not be forthcoming, or even honest; to name a few.
Yet another dilemma has opened a perhaps unlikely front: how to deal with private asset recovery specialists, a group increasingly focused on public corruption.
The burgeoning field has pushed hard for a public-private partnership in which private lawyers representing the victims of corruption could collaborate with prosecutors to recover stolen assets. So far, the Justice Department has rejected the overtures, in part because of legal limitations on information sharing.
At the moment, there are five attorneys exclusively assigned to the Kleptocracy Initiative. In addition, other AFMLS staff attorneys, contract investigators and financial analysts also provide support.
Nguema first came to the United States to study at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. According to the complaint filed in the District of Columbia, his tuition and living expenses were paid by an unnamed American oil company operating in Equatorial Guinea.
He returned to the United States numerous times and amassed assets including a Maserati, two Bugatti Veyron, eight Ferraris, seven Rolls Royces, five Bentleys, four Mercedes, a Porche, two Lamborghinis and an Aston Martin. Several of these vehicles were seized after being transported to France in connection with a French criminal investigation against Nguema.
