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Can Equatorial Guinea find new allies?

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Equatorial Guinea now has such a toxic reputation that it risks running out of international friends. Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue has been accused of corruption and embezzlement of state funds. It is alleged that the President’s son spent more than $500 million on luxury homes around the world, a private jet, cars and other valuables, writes James Wilson.

The French authorities are legally pursuing Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, following an allegation issued by two non-governmental organisations Sherpa and Transparency International. They have charged him with “laundering, embezzlement of public funds”, “abuse of public trust”, as well as “corruption”.

In these circumstances, the President (his father) Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo faces no alternative but to look for new allies to bail the country out of a rapidly deteriorating security problem in the region.

Russia as a strong global power would appear to be a logical candidate for the task. The Russian Federation has recently become more active in the region, and has offered security partnerships to a number of African countries. The Russians have also met with some success in this particular region in relation to security: for example, in the Central African Republic, Russian military instructors trained the national army of the CAR within the framework of a bilateral cooperation agreement between Bangui and Moscow. In December last year, the CAR's security forces repelled an attack by militants who tried to overthrow the current CAR regime.

In recent weeks social media sources publicly available on the internet reported that members of the government of Guinea paid a visit to Moscow, Russia. There has been speculation that the purpose of their visit was to establish contact with Russia, with a view to concluding a contract with a private Russian military company. It would appear that the terms of cooperation proposed by the Guineans were unacceptable to the Russian side.

The Vice-president of the country, the son of the current president of the country, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue also flew to Russia to try to establish relations. As part of his visit, it has been reported that he requested a personal meeting with the head of the private military contractor Wagner.

Whatever transpired during those negotiations, the conditions and schemes for cooperation promised by the Vice-President were rejected. It is widely known that Guinea has huge reserves of various minerals, which the regime apparently uses for personal purposes (hence the international sanctions against the vice-president of the country).

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Since the mid-1990s, when a large deposit of oil was discovered, Equatorial Guinea has become one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer. Equatorial Guinea holds 1,100,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2016, ranking 39th in the world and accounting for about 0.1% of the world's total oil reserves of 1,650,585,140,000 barrels. At current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves there would be about 580 years of oil left in the Guinean reserves. In addition to crude oil, Equatorial Guinea is also rich in natural gas.

So, for whatever reason, the Vice-President failed to offer suitable conditions and negotiations with the Russian Federation broke down. The final outcome of the meeting is unknown, as clearly no cooperation agreement was signed.

There have been periodic negotiations between Equatorial Guinea and Russia on strengthening cooperation, especially in the field of security, but so far they have met only with failure.

The authorities of Equatorial Guinea have even announced the opening of Russian Embassy in the Guinean Capital Malabo. But according to information issued by the Belgian news outlet Camer.be, the Guinean statement about the imminent opening of a Russian embassy there does not correspond to the agenda approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The Russian Foreign Ministry is in no hurry to open an embassy with a country that might potentially be considered to be an unreliable partner.

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