Denis Sassou Nguesso - Allegations of Extravagance and Corruption

Allegations of Extravagance and Corruption

When Sassou Nguesso attended the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September 2006, almost £14,000 of room service at the Waldorf Astoria was added to his bill during another five-night stay. His entourage, including several members of his family, occupied 44 rooms which together ran up a bill of £130,000. The bills on September 19 included two bottles of Cristal champagne charged at £400. This was pointed out by the British newspaper The Sunday Times to be "comfortably more than the £106,000 that Britain gave the Republic of Congo in humanitarian aid in 2006."

As of June 2007, Sassou Nguesso, along with President Omar Bongo of Gabon, is being investigated by the French police due to claims that he has used millions of pounds of embezzled public funds to acquire lavish properties in France. He has been cited in recent years during French criminal inquiries into hundreds of millions of euros of illicit payments by Elf, the former French state-owned oil group.

In July 2007, British NGO Global Witness published documents on its website that appear to show that the President's son, Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, may have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that may derive from the country's oil sales on shopping sprees in Paris and Dubai. The documents show that in August 2006 alone, Denis Christel, who is the head of Cotrade - the marketing branch of Congo's state oil firm SNPC - spent $35,000 on purchases from designers such as Louis Vuitton and Roberto Cavalli. Attempts were made by Schillings Solicitors to suppress this information but the application failed (see law report at http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/inpractice/lawreports/view=details.law?GAZETTEINPRACTICEID=357873).