Word: bongos
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...Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world's longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it's worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population (1.4 million) and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo's rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African...
...third of all Gabonese still live on less than $2 a day, and as the oil fields begin to dry up, Bongo's subjects are facing up to the reality that he sacrificed the country's future to fund his own fantastically opulent lifestyle. The government has made no effort to build alternative industries that might replace oil when it runs out. Yet at the time of his death from cancer, in a clinic in Barcelona, Bongo was facing French allegations of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. (See pictures of Africa...
...This week, France's senior investigating magistrate, Françoise Desset, ruled that a case brought by the anticorruption organization Transparency International against three African leaders had sufficient merit to warrant a full judicial investigation. The complaint accuses the trio - Gabon's President Omar Bongo, President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, and Equatorial Guinea leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema - of pillaging their impoverished nations and treating state money as their personal wealth to finance acquisitions in France. The ruling means Desset can use her judicial authority to examine banking and other records to determine the origins of funds...
...enrich himself. That, French foreign-policy specialists say, has been done with the complicity and connivance of successive French governments maintaining the traditional Françafrique policy of retaining influence among former colonies. French lawyers for each of the leaders have flatly refuted the allegations. In Gabon - where Bongo is in temporary seclusion to mourn the death of his wife - government spokesman Alain Akouala Atipault assured that "there's nothing concrete in this affair, and there will be nothing legally concrete." Though French officials initially refused to comment on Desset's ruling, Paris prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, announced Thursday...
...complained, has allowed its client regimes in Africa to quash political opposition, shackle democracy and siphon off untold fortunes from the national coffers for their personal use - even donations to French political parties of all stripes. According to the Transparency International complaint that Desset has decided to investigate, the Bongo and Sassou-Nguesso families hold 70 and 111 bank accounts in France respectively, and own a total of 31 pricey homes or buildings in and around Paris. They also boast entire fleets of cars in France. Listed in the Obiang Nguema family's holdings are two luxury automobiles...