Congo president’s $19m seized in San Marino after ‘spending more than $2m on watches and crocodile shoes’
One of Africa’s longest-serving presidents has been accused of laundering €19million (about 20 million dollars), using shell accounts in Europe.
The republic of San Marino, a small country landlocked by Italy, launched an investigation into a money-laundering scheme allegedly masterminded by Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
According to the Telegraph,
President Nguesso and his co-conspirators diverted €69 million ($76
million) to San Marino from 2006 to 2011 and the country has been able
to confiscate €19 million ($20 million), which is reported to be one of
the biggest amounts to be seized by the republic.
Nguesso allegedly used the money to fund his overly extravagant
lifestyle. He bought a pair of crocodile skin shoes for a whopping
€114,000 ($125,000) and with his taste for the fine things in life, he
spent €2.3 million ($2 million) on watches.
Presiding over a former French colony, the Congolese leader often
travelled to Paris, allegedly paying €11,000 ($12,000) a night in
hotels.
To divert attention from his money laundering schemes,
the money was kept in 36 different accounts making his relatives
account holders, the investigations said. For the people of San Marino,
this bust is a big win for them because they are keeping the seized
funds.
Nicola Renzi, the country’s foreign minister, said: “This was an
important result which crowns the investigations by the courts of the
Republic of San Marino. It demonstrates our capacity to fight against
international money laundering.”
Nguesso’s family name has been involved in several corruption
allegations. In August, an investigation revealed that the son of
Congo’s president, Christel Sassou-Nguesso, has misappropriated $50
million of public money by routing it through shell companies and
secrecy jurisdictions.
According
to Global Witness, six countries in the EU, the U.S. state of Delaware, and
the British Virgin Islands, all played a key role in Denis-Christel
Sassou-Nguesso’s scheme.
The campaign group said the money was siphoned off through
an apparent sham contract the Congo-Brazzaville had with a Brazilian
infrastructure company.
The alleged embezzlement dates from 2013 and 2014 and is
linked to the Cypriots Companies that are secretly owned by Sassou-Nguesso.
The money-laundering scheme said to have been used by
Sassou-Nguesso, an MP, as well as, the son and namesake of the man who has
spent 35 years as president, is similar to the one his sister Claudia allegedly
used to steal $20m of state funds, part of which she used to buy a
luxury apartment in the Trump Tower in New York; allegations she has denied.
Investigators obtained documents that they said showed $675m
left Congo-Brazzaville’s treasury, and that sums totalling more than $50
million subsequently went through companies in Delaware and the British Virgin
Islands before reaching Cyprus.
Global Witness said Cypriot companies, which are secretly
owned by Sassou-Nguesso, received the money through which he used it to make
payments to companies based in Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
“As we followed the trail of money we found that it was
funnelled through several jurisdictions which pride themselves on having strong
anti-money laundering regimes, such as the EU and the US,” said Mariana Abreu,
who led the investigation.
Congo-Brazzaville has large oil reserves, but almost half of its people live
in poverty.
A Portuguese businessman, José Veiga, who is already under
investigation for corruption, allegedly facilitated
part of the money-laundering, by helping secure public works contracts in
Congo-Brazzaville for the Brazilian company Asperbras.
Denis-Christel Sassou-Nguesso is son of Congo-Brazzaville president and an MP and is believed to have embezzled funds worth $50m | Alwihda Info |
According to Global Witness, Asperbras
was contracted to carry out a geological survey, and subcontracted
part of the work to a Cypriot company called Gabox Limited, despite the fact
that Gabox had been set up just two days before the deal was signed, and had no
employees or capital.
Gabox was to receive 25% of what Asperbras got from the
Congolese government – $50m of the $200m that the Swiss NGO Public Eye said
the project was worth.
Veiga, who is a former director of Benfica football club and
was reportedly known as the “Portuguese
wizard” of the Congolese president, was briefly arrested in 2016 as part of
an investigation, still ongoing, into money laundering and international
corruption.
He was released after three months in jail and a
further two under house arrest. In 2017, responding to the Public Eye
investigation, Veiga denied all the allegations against him, saying everything
he had done was legal.
Documents obtained by Global Witness allegedly show that in
November 2013, a department responsible for managing Congo-Brazzaville’s
treasury transferred roughly
$675m to a Delaware-based Asperbras subsidiary called Asperbras LLC,
seemingly for major public works contracts.
According to Global Witness, 11 days later, Veiga set up a
company in Cyprus called Gabox Ltd. Two days later, said Global Witness, this
company signed a contract with Energy & Mining, an Asperbras LLC subsidiary
based in the British Virgin Islands, ostensibly to carry out part of a
geological mapping project in Congo-Brazzaville.
Global Witness, which has long campaigned for public
registers of beneficial ownership in jurisdictions where it is difficult to
ascertain who really owns companies, said the investigation showed that there
were major
gaps in the implementation of anti-corruption measures in European
countries.
Earlier this year the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness
also released documents that showed that the daughter
of the president of Congo-Brazzaville had allegedly misappropriated
public funds to buy a luxury apartment in the Donald Trump residential and
hotel complex in New York.
Claudia Sassou-Nguesso, who is also the president’s director
of communications, allegedly purchased the $7 million apartment in Manhattan in
the summer of 2014, raising new concerns about Trump’s ties to international
money laundering.
No comments
Your comments and Encouragement are welcome