According to a government statement, Equatorial Guinea’s Vice-President Teodorin Obiang ordered the arrest of his half-brother after an investigation revealed that he illegally sold a state-owned jet to a Spanish company and pocketed the money.
According to the statement, the vice-president “expressed indignation” when he learned that Ruslan Obiang Nsue, the assistant director of state-owned Ceiba International airline, had sold the jet.
He has requested that his father, the president, suspend his half-brother from “all his functions in the state company,” according to the statement.
President Teodoro Obiang has ruled the tiny oil-rich state since 1979, and members of his family have held senior government positions.
In 2021, French courts sentenced Teodorin, the vice president, to a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 30 million euros ($32.6 million; £26.2 million) for money laundering. He was accused of using the proceeds of the theft of Equatorial Guinea’s resources to purchase luxury apartments and other property in France.
