Totalitarian Ave.

Illustration by Yvonne Romano Paris’s Avenue Foch, in the 16th arrondissement, is lined with luxurious and gaudy residences owned by some of the worst African and Middle Eastern despots. Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, Paul Biya of Cameroon, former Gabon president Omar Bongo, and many other potentates have second homes here, handy places to crash after a shopping spree on the Champs-Élysées. One might think that the French wouldn’t permit such unsavory characters to commandeer the neighborhood, but if you’ve got the cash, you can sign the deed—even though the money was obtained by plundering your starving and disease-ridden citizenry. Change, however, is tentatively afoot. Thanks to a formal complaint from Transparency International and two other NGOs, authorities are investigating the funds used by Bongo, Nguesso, and Equatorial Guinea’s president Teodoro Obiang to purchase their fancy flats. According to Transparency International, Bongo, Nguesso, and Obiang have, combined, at least 180 personal bank accounts, 60 upscale European properties, and 18 cars worth a total of more than $8 million. Obiang’s son, Teodorin, is more of a New World kind of playboy. As Equatorial Guinea’s minister of forestry and agriculture, he owns more than $70 million worth of property in the United States alone, including a $30 million mansion in Malibu. Oh, and let’s not forget the Gulfstream Jet and $2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia (someone needs to listen to “Man in the Mirror” a few more times). Equatorial Guinea is a tiny, oil-rich country where one in five children die before the age of five and 70 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. The United States Department of Justice recently moved to seize his American properties. Even in France, where the government has been more hesitant to investigate the ill-gotten funds of domiciled dictators and their cronies, prosecutors have begun sniffing around the bank accounts of government officials from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. So, if you happen to find yourself in Paris anytime soon, take a little stroll along the banks of the Seine and enjoy the verdant greenery of Avenue Foch, inhaling the historical stench of a few tyrannical shitstains who, with any luck, will soon be wiped away for good.