Why does Sassou Nguesso need so much money? Is it greed? Or is it about power and patronage?
Sassou Nguesso’s family assets have been under investigation by French authorities since 2010. The corruption investigation claims Sassou has properties in France worth 60 million Euros. Sassou’s daughter, Claudia, is reported to have taken $20 million of Congo’s state funds and to have used $7 million to acquire an apartment in Trump International Hotel & Tower in Manhattan. The apartment, 32G, with views of Central Park, was bought by Sassou’s fixer, José Veiga in 2014. As if this is not enough, Sassou’s son, Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso is alleged to have set up a company, Gabox, which received $44.5 million from the state treasury. He also spent $35,000 from sales of state oil on designer shopping sprees in Paris, Marbella and Dubai.
Why appropriate more of the state’s resources when already under investigation? The Sassou-Nguesso presidential family maintains a total grip on power with no real democracy and sham elections. Political rivals need to be kept at bay and this is done by buying or paying them off. The income from Congo’s oil and forests is used to maintain the presidential family’s grip on power. Political patronage keeps the factions within the ruling party sweet. The same goes for the armed militia groups who still control parts of the country despite various cease fire agreements. They need to be paid to maintain stability, and allowed occasionally to launch doomed attacks on the capital, to remind the populace how important it is to have a strongman in power.
The government doesn’t spend money on services like education and health care, which deliver no political benefits. Money is used strategically to manage potential rivals. Appropriation of the state’s resources brings them directly under presidential control. The wealth of the nation is siphoned off through shell companies and off shore accounts. It becomes a personal fund to distribute to loyal cronies in forms of temporary and conditional largesse. Or it can be withheld. Enemies of the family can be excluded from Congo’s wealth through a system of control which extends from the oil rigs off the coast of Pointe Noire or the forests of the nrth, all the way to Trump International in Manhattan.
William Reno explains the next steps in the pattern of African presidential appropriation of national wealth. When rivals start to enrich themselves in defiance of their patrons, “many presidents build extensive violent networks of their own in this commercial world, further freeing them from having to rely upon a shrinking state treasury to run their political network.” The Cobra militia, Sassou’s personal military force, is Sassou’s alternative to patronage and control of markets. Congo’s natural wealth, extracted from oil and timber, is funnelled into personal bank accounts and distributed to loyal allies in payments of patronage. For the people who challenge the system, there is the threat of violence.
Read more about the French investigation into ill-gotten gains by the Sassou family here
Read more about Claudia Sassou-Nguesso’s money laundering and purchase of property in Trump International here
Read more about Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso here
William Reno “The Politics of Violent Opposition in Collapsing States” 15 March 2005
