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French prosecutors have requested that more than 20 individuals and corporate entities — including BNP Paribas, family members of former Gabonese President Omar Bongo, and the wife of President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso — stand trial at the Paris Criminal Court for alleged offenses including embezzlement.
France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s (PNF) office told OCCRP this week that the request was part of a complaint that was opened in 2008. That was the year a complaint by Transparency International triggered France’s “ill-gotten gains” investigation against the ruling families of Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, and Equatorial Guinea.
A PNF spokesperson told OCCRP in an email that it is seeking the indictment of five individuals for alleged complicity in laundering proceeds from embezzled public funds and corruption. Additionally, it said it had requested the indictment of BNP Paribas for alleged “aggravated laundering of proceeds from corruption and the embezzlement of public funds.”
The PNF said it had also requested the indictment of “thirteen other individuals, including family members or close associates of Omar Bongo,” in relation to alleged offenses including “receiving proceeds from embezzled public funds, corruption, and misuse of corporate assets, as well as four real estate holding companies (SCIs) owned by some of them.”
“Those under formal investigation notably include Antoinette Tchibota, the current wife of Denis Sassou Nguesso, the President of the Congo,” the PNF added.
When contacted by OCCRP, the media relations office of BNP Paribas stated: "We contest any criminal liability of BNP Paribas in this case. We will defend this case, the facts of which, we remind you, predate 2008."
Tchibota’s lawyer Jean-Marie Viala told OCCRP that she would not comment, as the matter currently involved only a formal request for referral to trial.
A total of 52 properties have been seized in connection to this part of the long-running investigation, the PNF said.
On its website, the French anti-corruption NGO Sherpa, a co-complainant in the case, alleged that “real estate belonging to certain members of the Bongo family could be the result of misappropriation of public funds committed during Omar Bongo’s regime.”
Lawyers representing Bongo family members have reportedly denounced the proceedings as politically motivated attempts to confiscate assets.
The decision to send the case to criminal court was praised by a representative from Sherpa, which joined the complaint to confront allegedly corrupt foreign officials in France and return any assets found to have been embezzled from other countries.
“After nearly 12 years of investigation, this decision to send the case to criminal court marks a very important step toward redress for the dispossessed populations,” Jean-Philippe Foegle, Litigation and Advocacy Officer at Sherpa, told OCCRP.
OCCRP has previously reported about the accumulation of assets by members of the Bongo family.
By the time of his death in 2009, Omar Bongo had ruled oil-rich Gabon for over four decades and left a legacy of widespread poverty and allegations of corruption that have attracted the scrutiny of international watchdogs and authorities from Paris to the Gabonese capital Libreville.
