Financial Transparency Coalition

What do you do when your eldest son, already well-known for his reckless spending and extravagant lifestyle, becomes the focus of a corruption investigation in France? Well, if you’re the world’s longest-ruling leader, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, you brazenly attempt to thwart justice and the rule of law by appointing him to a position at UNESCO, a position that comes with a convenient perk: diplomatic immunity.

LONDON - Global Witness welcomes today's successful recovery by Libya of a £10 million London house, previously belonging to Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saadi Gaddafi. The High Court in London ruled that the property, in the up-market London suburb of Hampstead, rightfully belongs to the Libyan state as it had been purchased with diverted Libyan state funds.

This week, the lawyers of Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s longtime President, released a statement calling the Obama administration’s seizure of $71 million worth of assets a “character assassination.” In October of last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) unsealed an asset forfeiture claim against some of Obiang’s U.S. assets, including a $38 million Gulfstream private jet, a $35 million Malibu mansion, a Ferrari, and dozens of pieces of memorabilia of pop singer none other than Michael Jackson, which are worth about $2 million. Authorites came to Obiang’s home and seized much of these items, although...

WASHINGTON, DC – The past twenty-four hours has seen the publication of two reports and the disclosure of an asset forfeiture complaint which, collectively, lay bare the size and seriousness of a global money laundering epidemic—underscoring the need for better incorporation transparency measures.