Dakar - Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, spent more than $300 million during a decade of high living financed by bribes and embezzlement, according to a new filing by U.S. prosecutors.
The filing this week came after a judge told prosecutors in April they must provide more evidence of wrongdoing to be able to seize assets including a $30 million Malibu estate, private jet and Michael Jackson memorabilia collection.
The new account, obtained by Reuters, nearly triples past estimates of spending since 2000 by the man widely known as "Teodorin", alleging that he used his post as forestry minister of the oil-rich state to demand kickbacks.
"Nguema (Teodorin) refused to sign timber export licenses unless applicants first paid him these personal fees," prosecutors said, adding that Teodorin also requested 15,000 CFA francs for every log exported.
Prosecutors alleged that Teodorin also operated schemes to embezzle millions of dollars of funds by securing government contracts through his own companies and then receiving payments well in excess of the official size of the contracts.
"For every year between 2000 and 2011, (Teodorin's) enormous personal expenditures vastly outpaced and were inconsistent with both his official salary of less than $100,000 per year, and the fraudulent income he purportedly generated from his companies," prosecutors said.