Malibu has long been known as home to celebrities and surfers; however, it also marks the presence of Teodoro Obiang, the son of one of the longest-standing dictators, the president of Equatorial Guinea, as the owner of a $30 million estate above Malibu Pier.
Associate Professor of Political Science Robert Williams took interest in this Malibu property owner as part of his article published in August about Equatorial Guinea, whose government Williams described as “one of the worst in the world.”
“This isn’t just an issue a long way away in Africa,” Williams said. “This is an issue where from most places on campus, you can actually see the property that is the product of corruption and human rights abuse in Equatorial Guinea,” a country that Williams described as having one of the lowest levels of development in the world and extraordinarily low living standards, all because the oil wealth is being siphoned off by the ruling elite.
After being told by a Graphic reporter in 2006 about Obiang owning a $30 million property in Malibu, Williams began some academic research.
“I did a little bit of quick research and realized that it connected very closely with some of the things I was interested in and teaching about at the time,” Williams said.
In the fall, Williams used it as a case study in his upper division political science courses, as the students analyzed human rights, international law and the role of American courts in enforcing international law. But merely studying the case wasn’t satisfactory to Williams.
“I wanted to get some attorneys interested in this to see if there was any legal action that could be pursued,” Williams said. He recruited a couple of Pepperdine law students to put together folders of information to help interested attorneys build a lawsuit to seize the property.
Along with the $30 million Malibu property, the Obiang family supposedly owns homes in Paris, Cape Town and Washington, D.C. Williams said that allowing these properties to be purchased with wealth that has been siphoned from the Equatorial Guinean state treasury is violating U.S. federal laws, a crime that could indict many individuals involved with the family here in Southern California.
“I’m hopeful that having the article published will get some people interested, and perhaps get new attorneys interested in the case,” Williams said. “I think, too, that in many human rights cases, the best thing one can do is to shine a light on problems. Hopefully it will have some impact in that way.”
Since the article’s publication in August, Williams has already received contact from several news sources and individuals interested in his research, including a producer from ABC and a refugee from Equatorial Guinea currently studying at Stanford University.
Williams sees the press on the issue as a positive way to challenge governmental corruption in Equatorial Guinea.
“Most of their oil is produced by American companies and comes to the United States. Our government, proven true in both Republican and Democratic administrations, takes very little concern for the problems there, in part because to do so would be to risk a source of oil,” William said.
Despite the possibility of current U.S. justice system prosecutions of the young Obiang Malibu resident, Williams stressed that the “ignorance defense” needs to be dropped to fully expose members of such corrupt governmental practices.
Williams insists the existence of corruption and human rights abuse pervades all political lines.
“We live in a world where there really is no such thing as ‘foreign policy,’” Williams said. “It’s all part of the same politics.”