The government of Equatorial Guinea denied on Sunday that its president had an account with a scandal-ridden United States bank which he used for fraudulent purposes.
The 165-year-old Riggs bank, which has held accounts for US presidents, has faced allegations that it illegally laundered money for foreign officials.
Last week a US congressional report detailed a series of transactions between the Washington-based bank and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. It concluded that regulators ignored or acted too slowly in taking action against Riggs National.
It was also fined $25-million in May by US bank regulators for lacking an effective programme to halt money laundering and for failing to report suspicious transactions.
Investigators at the Office of Currency Control reported ”a number of problems with the bank’s account relationships with foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea”.
”The treasury of Equatorial Guinea, as an official state institution, does have an account at the Riggs bank to facilitate operations with different oil companies working in the country,” said government spokesperson Alfonso Nsue Mokuy.
But the account did not belong to President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and his family, he said.
”The investigations into Riggs bank being conducted by the American Senate have nothing to do with our government or with our senior officials,” he said.
”As a result there is no problem between the state of Equatorial Guinea, the Senate and the Congress of the United States of America”.
The denial of wrongdoing from the tiny west African state followed testimony from a former bank employee that he had taken three million dollars in cash in a suitcase from a bank branch to the country’s Washington embassy.
On Friday Spanish television broadcast a report, relayed by satellite to Equatorial Guinea, quoting the Senate report and alleging that the account with Riggs was used by Obiang to siphon off oil revenues.
The government spokesperson claimed that the Spanish media ”always went out of their way to broadcast information that confused opinion at home and abroad with the single aim of destabilising the democratic political regime of Equatorial Guinea for hidden and undeclared interests.” – Sapa-AFP