The president of Equatorial Guinea's son, Ruslan Obiang Nsue, has been detained and placed under house arrest. He may have sold a jet that belonged to the nation's flag carrier, according to a report from TVGE on Tuesday.
Authorities launched an investigation at the end of November after becoming aware of the loss of the ATR 72-500 aircraft belonging to the national company Ceiba Intercontinental, which had been periodically inspected in Spain since 2018.
According to the same source, Mr Obiang Nsue "sold the ATR aircraft to the company Binter Technic," a Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain-based aviation maintenance company.
Ruslan Obiang Nsue, who is currently the director of Ceiba Airport, was first the deputy director and then the managing director of Ceiba Intercontinental. He served as the secretary of state for youth and sports as well.
Ruslan Obiang has admitted that he was the one who sold Ceiba's ATR, according to a tweet from Teodorin, his vice president and half-brother Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. I have ordered his immediate arrest and turned him over to the law because I won't let familial or favouritism get the better of me.
Teodorin Obiang was formally sentenced by the French justice system at the end of July 2021 to three years in prison with a suspended sentence, 30 million euros in fines, and the forfeiture of his French assets for having deceptively accumulated a sizable patrimony within the context of the "ill-gotten gains" cases.
His U.K. assets were frozen after anti-corruption investigations, and he was expelled from London in July 2021. Malabo shut down its embassy as a form of protest.
Ruslan Obiang Nsue, a son of the president and the tiny oil-rich central African state's first arrest, was one of the president's sons.
Widespread public outrage was sparked by the disappearance of the jet and rumours that Mr Obiang Nsue had sold it in December.
The longest reigning head of state currently in existence who is not a monarch is Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in charge for more than 43 years and just won reelection to a sixth seven-year term.
Equatorial Guinea came in only 172nd out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corruption barometer, despite having the third highest GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa in 2021.