#REVEALED Africa’s ultimate heist

Here is an exposé on the looting of africa’s infamous kleptocrats who stashed billions of public coffers money in their foreign accounts.International asset recovery is a complex process and that explains why most of the money has yet to be repatriated. The ‘multi-jurisdictional’ or ‘cross-border’ aspects of a corruption investigation, international asset recovery includes numerous processes such as the tracing, freezing, confiscation, and repatriation of proceeds stored in foreign jurisdictions, thus “making it one of the most complex projects in the field of law”.

Muammar Gaddafi-Libya

Gaddafi looks about 4x as rich as Buffet sporting all gold everything and Louis Vuitton shades

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi can easily pass as the richest person of all time. New evidence has come to light recently that shows Muammar Gaddafi may have had a personal net worth north of $200 billion. This net worth would have made Gaddafi the richest human in the world by a long shot and perhaps the richest person to have ever lived in history. $200 billion is more than three times the net worth of the current richest person in the world Mexican tele-com tycoon Carlos Slim. It would be four times as much as Warren Buffet. So how did Muammar Gaddafi create such a massive personal fortune? Pretty sure it wasn’t from hard work and penny pinching…

Muammar Gaddafi was able to build his massive personal wealth thanks to a violent and domineering control over Libya’s natural resources. Specifically their rich supply of oil. Libya has the largest supply of oil in Africa and the tenth largest in the world. Gaddafi used Libya’s oil to print money for 40 years! During that time he spread his money around the globe through family members, Swiss bank accounts, real estate and investments. Estimated at $200 billion, he had enough to give $30,000 to each of Libya’s 6.6 million citizens.

At the beginning of the Lybian conflict, authorities discovered and seized roughly $67 billion of Gaddafi’s wealth hidden in bank accounts around the globe. England, France, Italy and Germany seized another $30 billion and the Obama administration found a staggering $37 billion in the United States. Investigators suspect that Gaddafi hid an additional $30 billion around the world.

In addition to bank accounts, Muammar owned a stake in the Italian soccer club Juventus and the car company Fiat. He also was a minority of London’s Financial Times. Gaddafi had luxury homes around the world. It’s also believed that Gaddafi had billions of dollars worth of gold hidden in Libya, which has yet to be discovered.

Mobutu Sese seko Kuku wa Zabanga-DRC

Over the years, journalists have compiled a list of Mr. Mobutu’s overseas real estate holdings: a 16th-century castle in Spain, a 32-room palace in Switzerland, and residences in Paris and on the French Riviera and in Belgium, Italy, the Ivory Coast and Portugal.

Once in an interview on American television the President was asked about the size of his personal fortune. Could he personally pay off his country’s multi-billion dollar debt? President Mobutu answered that theoretically that was possible – but how could he be sure he would ever get his money back? Laughable, isn’t it?

Sese Seko amassed a personal fortune estimated by various sources (including Transparency International) at somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion. Experts believe virtually all of it was illicitly acquired from the nation’s coffers and stashed away in Swiss banks. While his reign lasted, Sese Seko earned an international notoriety as a poster boy for the excesses of typical African despots. He owned a string of exotic Mercedes cars and divided his time between plush palatial residences in Paris and Lausanne, Switzerland. He also developed a special taste for pink Champagne and flew in fresh cakes from Paris for his consumption.

Daniel T arap Moi-Kenya

During his 28-year rule, which lasted from 1978 to 2002, Moi famously channeled nearly a billion dollars from his country’s coffers to family-owned bank accounts and private estates across the world using a web of shell companies, secret trusts and front men, according to Kroll Associates, a UK corporate investigation and risk consultancy company. Kroll and Associates, forensically investigated and traced money allegedly looted from public coffers, but nothing has been recovered to date.The report was soon surpressed and it took wikileaks to make the report public.According to the report, Moi’s assets, some of which are held in his children’s name, include substantial cash reserves to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and assests worth over US$2 billion, a 10,000-hectare farm in Australia and controlling stakes in oil companies, banks and shipping companies, among other concerns. But don’t expect the aged former president to be prosecuted any time soon; he has since settled into retirement and has now taken upon the rather fashionable role of elder statesman.

On average Kenya is believed to have assets and cash worth over Sh700 billion hidden abroad a figure that would by a large extent settle the country’s external debts.

Hosni Mubarak-Egypt
Some news sources pegged Mubarak’s fortune at $70 billion, a figure that could extremely exaggerated and largely unproven from the leader who ruled Egypt for 30 years. Concrete figures are still pretty hard to come by, but being very familiar with the avaricious tendencies of the vast majority of African dictators as it were, it is almost certain that Mubarak diverted an enormous amount of his country’s funds into his personal piggy bank.

Teodorin Obiang-Togo
You’re probably familiar with Equatorial Guinea’s President who has ruled the poverty-stricken, albeit oil-rich country for 32 years. Obiang is the only African dictator whose wealth has been estimated by FORBES. But Obiang is stupendously wealthy by any standards. In 2006, FORBES estimated his fortune at $600 million, and even though his government frowned on the list and was quick to accuse FORBES of counting state property as his personal assets, it has been well established that Obiang has a virtual grip on the country’s bank accounts and treats it as his personal piggy bank. Obiang’s eldest son has gained an international infamy for his outlandish lifestyle and expensive toys, which include a $10 million car collection, a $30 million Malibu mansion, a $38.5 million Gulfstream jet and $2 million of Michael Jackson memorabilia.

Sani Abacha-Nigeria
Theoretically, Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s former military ruler, was a not just a naira billionaire, but dollars billionaire. Upon his death in 1998, the Nigerian government uncovered over $3 billion ‘lootocracy’ linked to the sadistic despot held in personal and proxy bank accounts in tax havens as diverse as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Jersey and Liechtenstein. Following a series of negotiations between the Nigerian government and the Abacha family, Abacha’s first son, Mohammed eventually returned $1.2 billion to the Nigerian government in 2002.

Robert Mugabe-Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s wealth has been estimated to be over a Billion United States dollars in value. However, the actual value is unknown because of the secrecy surrounding his investments. According to cables released by whistle blowing syndicate WikiLeaks Mugabe’s riches were discussed by the United States. “….Unknown, but are rumoured to exceed US$1 billion in value, the majority of which are likely invested outside Zimbabwe.

Mugabe also has his hands on world’s most controversial commodity: blood diamonds.In 1980 news spread that the treasure had been found in a remote tract of southern Africa, naturally ­fortified by mountains.Professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and plumbers as well as other workers all descended on the fields, hoping to find enough stones in the earth to survive as the country’s currency collapsed, with worthless notes blowing through the streets.Yet all their hopes were crushed when Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the and his ruling military junta, also came to hear of the rumours of such wealth.

So vast are the riches that diamond experts believe the gems from Marange — in a country of less than ten million people — could account for more than a quarter of all ­diamonds mined around the globe, and could even trigger a massive slump in diamond prices if the stones come on the market and cause a glut.Its believed this find is the ­biggest in the history of the world and is worth an estimated £800 billion.

Today, the fields are a military zone — and anyone caught there faces being beaten to death by the slim, pale-skinned figures members of the Chinese military.Also curved out of the African bush, is a runway big enough for huge cargo planes. There is also sophisticated radar equipment, a fully-operational control tower and comfortable ­barracks for the Chinese officials overseeing the entire operation.Once a week an Antonov An-12 cargo plane can be heard droning towards the airstrip.The departing flights leave with rough, uncut diamonds worth millions.

King Mswati III-Swaziland

According to the Forbes list of the World’s 15 Richest Royals, King Mswati is worth a reported $200 Million USD.He is often criticized for lavish spending; several of his 13 wives reportedly went on a $6 million shopping spree abroad. In January 2004 the Times of Swaziland reported that the king requested his government to spend about $15-million to redecorate three main palaces and build others for each of his 11 wives.

While its not known whether he has stashed his money abroad, its quite obvious his lifestyle befits that of a lootocratic dictator who is willing to finance his lavish lifestyle at the expense of Swazilands ailing economy.