A stepbrother of the Vice President of Equatorial Guinea was arrested for the sale of a state-owned plane

Jan. 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Equatorial Guinean authorities have announced the arrest of Ruslan Obiang Nsue for his role in the sale of a plane from the Ceiba Intercontinental company to the Spanish company Binter, after the device was sent to the Canary Islands in 2018 and without it since then there has been news about the whereabouts of it.

The Equatoguinean vice president, Nguema Obiang Mangue, has shown his “outrage” at the fact that the sale of the device, an ATR-72-500, was the work of Obiang Nsue, former deputy director of Ceiba Intercontinental and stepbrother of the politician himself.

“Ruslan Obiang has confessed today that he was the person who sold the #Ceiba ATR. As I said from the beginning, I am not going to get carried away by familialism (sic) or favoritism, which is why I have ordered his immediate arrest, brought to justice and the proposal to terminate his functions”, Obiang Mangue stated through his account on the social network Twitter.

Thus, the Equatorial Guinea Press and Information Office has pointed out that decisions were made “without the consent of the State on a property that it managed” and added that “the plot was covered up under the excuse of a review.” “For the same aircraft, a large amount of money was released that has been diverted to personal accounts, revealing corruption within the state entity,” he pointed out.

The report of the commission of investigation reveals that Binter confirmed the payment for the aircraft and states that a lawyer from the Equatoguinean company explained that the plane was sent to the Canary Islands between October and November 2018 for a review, after which in 2019 A commission formed by the then director and deputy director of the company submitted a report on the “abandonment” of the device and the accumulated debt.

The lawyer, identified as Raquel Teresa Seron, affirms that a sales contract was sent to Obiang Nsue, who approved and signed it, something he himself confessed. Later, it was proposed that the money from the sale should not be deposited in the Ceiba Intercontinental account in a branch in Madrid, since it was frozen, but in another account, and that the debts with other subcontractors be paid.

The investigation has determined that the deposit was made in the personal account of Obiang Nsue, after the Board of Directors of Ceiba International took legal action against Binter for violation of the contract and maintenance when verifying that the plane had been scrapped and sold by parties, as collected by the Equatorial Guinea Press and Information Office.

On the other hand, a total of 700,000 euros released by the Government of Equatorial Guinea for the maintenance of the aircraft remain unaccounted for, although investigations suggest that they were transferred to a bank account in Malaysia and later to another in the United States. The vice president of Equatorial Guinea has promised to clarify the whereabouts of these funds.

Sergio Abeso Tomo, legal adviser of the Equatorial Guinean company, has indicated that “there has been fraud in the sale of the aircraft” by the lawyer hired by Ruslan Obiang Nsue and has highlighted “that she used technicalities in the company’s nomenclature to create the legal possibility of selling the plane without the consent of the Malabo Board of Directors”.

Finally, the vice president of Equatorial Guinea has ordered the creation of another commission to obtain all the supporting documents for the transactions with Binter and the bringing to justice of Obiang Nsue, while he has ordered the end of the house arrest of former director Luciano Esono Bitegue for the evidence. presented in the case of the disappearance of the plane. However, the suspects in the case will not be allowed to leave the country without permission from authorities until investigations are complete.