A court in Equatorial Guinea has convicted Ruslan Obiang Nsue, one of the sons of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, for illegally selling an aircraft belonging to the country’s national airline.
According to Hilario Mitogo, press director of the Supreme Court, the judge ruled on Tuesday that Obiang Nsue must serve six years in prison unless he repays the state the full value of the missing aircraft.
Obiang Nsue, 50, a former director of state-owned carrier Ceiba Intercontinental, was found guilty of selling the ATR 72-500 plane to a Spanish company and pocketing the proceeds.
The court, however, acquitted him on separate charges of embezzlement and abuse of office.
Mitogo said the court offered Obiang Nsue a way to avoid prison by paying the airline approximately $255,000, in addition to damages and a fine to the state.
The disgraced former official was first placed under house arrest in 2023 on the orders of his half-brother, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, Equatorial Guinea’s vice-president and also a son of the president.
Obiang Nsue has previously served as Secretary of State for Sports and Youth in the oil-rich Central African country, which has been under his father’s rule for nearly five decades.
The ruling adds to a growing list of corruption scandals within the president’s family. In a separate case, Obiang Nsue’s half-brother, Vice-President Nguema Obiang Mangue, was handed a suspended jail sentence and fined $35 million by a French court in July 2021 after being convicted of embezzling public funds.
