Rights Group: Equatorial Guinea misused oil money

JOHANNESBURG — A human rights group said Thursday that government officials in tiny Equatorial Guinea have used tens of millions of dollars in oil profits to buy lavish homes, cars and vacations while leaving citizens in miserable poverty.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the government — already considered one of the world’s worst human rights violators — broke an international accord that compels it to provide basic amenities to its people.

The combination of wealth and impunity has led to an ever-worsening state for the people of the Central African nation, said Arvind Ganesan, director of HRW’s Business and Human Rights Program.

“Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records in the world, by far,” he said. “Oil has allowed an incredibly abusive government to enrich itself at the expense of its people.”

Government officials in Equatorial Guinea declined to comment immediately on the report’s findings.

In the 107-page report, the group paints a sharp contrast between the country’s low standard of living and an oil boom that expanded the economy by 5,000 percent since oil was discovered in the early 1990s.

The country is smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland and is home to about half a million people. But despite its small size, Equatorial Guinea ranks among the top four oil producers in Africa among heavyweights Nigeria, Angola and Sudan.

“Here is a country where people should have the per capita wealth of Spain or Italy, but instead they live in poverty worse than in Afghanistan or Chad,” Ganesan said. “This is a testament to the government’s corruption, mismanagement, and callousness toward its own people.”

President Teodoro Obiang seized power in a 1979 coup. During his tenure, child and infant mortality have worsened significantly. For children under 5, mortality rates rose from 170 per thousand in 1990 to 206 per thousand in 2007.

Meanwhile, Obiang and his family have spent lavishly on houses, cars and travel, the rights group said. His eldest son, Teodorin, spent tens of millions of dollars on houses and cars in the U.S. and South Africa, spending $43.45 million between 2004 and 2005 despite official records showing he earned only $48,000 as a government minister.

In May, a French judge opened an investigation into Obiang and two other African heads of state on accusations of money laundering and other alleged crimes linked to their wealth in France.

A 2004 U.S. Senate investigation into the government’s dealings with the now-defunct Riggs Bank detailed how Obiang drew from the country’s coffers, spending $3.8 million to buy two mansions near Washington. The investigation prompted one of the largest fines against a bank in U.S. history, followed by the bank’s takeover.