THE Swiss government will auction off an estimated $13 million of exotic supercars late this September, all of which were seized from the collection of the Vice-President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is up against international corruption and money laundering charges. Bonhams is handling sale, which is slated for September 29 in Geneva.
Obiang Mangue, the son of the country’s sitting president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power following a 1979 coup, was also convicted of embezzlement by a French court in 2017. Mangue was storing his cars in Switzerland when the Swiss government seized the 25-car collection.
The government of Equatorial Guinea subsequently claimed that some of the cars were not Obiang Mangue’s personal property, but instead were state assets sent to Switzerland for repairs, Fox News says. The price of settling the case with the Swiss, according to a Geneva court ruling, was the surrender of the entire garage for sale, with proceeds going toward charities benefiting the people of Equatorial Guinea.
The cars are all top-shelf exotics, including a LaFerrari, a McLaren P1, a Bugatti Veyron, an Aston Martin One:77, a Koenigsegg One:1, and one of only nine $4.5 million Lamborghini Veneno Roadsters built. Mangue’s collection also included replicas of the Batmobile Tumbler and Tron eBike.
This isn’t Obiang Mangue’s first go-round with European authorities and his exotic cars. Mangue apparently put the current collection together after an earlier group of superstar cars—two Veyrons, a Porsche Carrera GT, and a Ferrari Enzo—were seized by the French government in 2011 and sold at auction in 2013 for $4 million.
‘Hopefully Mangue’s learned his lesson after years of legal repercussions involving national governments seizing and selling his supercars. At this point, though, it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Vice President right back in this position down the road,’ one observer said.
