The Wonga Coup (32 page)

As important, the plotters little understood what political backing they had. They repeatedly told investigators they believed that South Africa, Spain and the United States backed the plan. Mann had told them so. Mann believed that Spain's prime minister, Aznar, had met Moto three times and promised 3,000 civil guards to protect the new leader, and that he would give recognition and other diplomatic support. The Americans might have turned a blind eye if their oil interests had not been threatened. The British reaction was hardly relevant. But the African response was badly misjudged. Mann believed he had – at the last minute – got some support from Congo's Joseph Kabila to supply him with weapons for a later mission, if not for this one. It is quite likely that Mann planned to refuel in Kinshasa on his way to Equatorial Guinea. In South Africa, low-level intelligence officials might have encouraged Mann,
but higher echelons, including President Mbeki, would not have approved. However, Mann believed that, a week before his arrest, the South African government contacted Moto and offered him support, even inviting him to meet Mbeki. In Zimbabwe, Mann and du Toit even deluded themselves they had an ally in Colonel Tshinga Dube of Zimbabwe Defence Industries and wrongly believed they had made friends in high places. The plotters also knew Nigeria's response mattered, but ignored rumours that hundreds of Nigerian marines were poised to invade if there was a coup. If that had happened, Mann and the rest might have been killed. Perhaps Moto also expected some political backing – or an uprising – in Equatorial Guinea itself, though it is not at all clear if he is popular there.

The plot was not kept secret. Details spread like gossip. The plotters were indiscreet and arrogant during the planning, then most spilled the beans immediately after their arrest. Smith's intelligence reports circulated widely enough that du Toit wanted the plot called off. Moto bragged to anyone who would listen that he would soon be president. Greg Wales trotted around oil firms spreading rumours of regime change. Morgan passed on information, documents and detailed warnings to South African officials, something Mann might have suspected. Mann passed some paperwork to Morgan and went on dining and drinking with his fellow Briton every few days in the months before the attempt. Information also leaked through James Kershaw, his office assistant. Du Toit also sent uncoded messages about the plot up to the last days.

Mann had developed a system of code words (using English place names to refer to parts of Africa and numbers to refer to items, people and places), but this was hardly used. In bars
and restaurants men boasted of what they planned. The lower ranks were said to get drunk and loose-tongued in Pretoria's pubs. The plot was even debated at a semi-public meeting at Chatham House in London several weeks before it took place. One hired gun later said he refused to join the plot because it had become an open secret. ‘There were also just too many people involved and it did not have the element of surprise you needed to pull off something of this proportion. This … was the main reason for the coup to fail – I think.'

Yet Mann had pushed on. Various people were brought in, including Mark Thatcher and the mysterious J. H. Archer, even though that risked drawing yet more attention to the plot. He did so because he needed money. Like so many amateur coup plotters before him, even Mann the millionaire lacked resources. Under pressure, he took risks. He tried a daring freelance attack without the resources that Executive Outcomes would have used merely to support a government. Lack of time mattered, too. A deadline forced action by early March, when Prime Minister Aznar retired in Spain. Mann told Zimbabwean investigators he was under pressure to complete the plot by February. Under stress he made quick and bad decisions.

There was rotten luck of course (the damaged Antonov that was to be used to transport mercenaries and guns in the February attempt), but ultimately the problem was poor leadership. The burden of failure rests mostly on Mann – plus the financiers who pushed him on. One complained that Mann ‘lost the plot' in the final weeks of the botched operation. Widely liked and respected as a soldier, he designed and fumbled a complicated operation. When it started to go awry, a braver or more cautious man might have dared to cancel. But he was propelled on by investors, by the need to recoup losses, by his
belief he had political backing, by his own vanity and by his love of adventure. Lafras Luitingh, one of the early leaders of Executive Outcomes, later blamed the failure of the Wonga Coup squarely on those who led it. In a snide comment to a friend he noted that Buckingham and other leaders of the old corporate army (including himself) had not been involved: ‘It's what you get when you play with the second team,' he said. Ultimately, there were too many bad decisions. ‘If it was a coup, it was horrendously badly planned,' concludes a mutual friend of Thatcher and Mann.

But if the coup went badly, the prosecutions of those involved were hardly more professional. Henry Page's various efforts to prosecute the alleged financiers of the coup plot, namely Mann and his two companies, plus Wales and Calil, came to nothing. The case in Lebanon was thrown out. The courts in Britain dismissed his civil case. The ruling by the Guernsey court, in April 2005, proved uncomfortable for Page. It ordered that no more information from Mann's accounts should be passed to the lawyer representing Equatorial Guinea. The long judgment did not assess the details of the coup plot, but found the idea that Obiang suffered ‘severe emotional stress' laughable, given his own background. It ruled that the request for damages ‘cannot be regarded for the present purposes as a serious claim', not least because Obiang is a ‘despot'.

Page's behaviour was criticised; the court spoke of exhibits that cast ‘serious doubt on the factual allegations in Mr Page's affidavits.' His use of Mann's confession to obtain the bank details was frowned on: ‘[accepting] Mr Page's evidence at face value … can now be seen to have been incorrect', it concluded. The court had a ‘strong suspicion' that evidence sought for the civil case might instead be used for a criminal case. And it issued an implicit rebuke of Page's firm Penningtons and
their client, the Equatorial Guinea government, for apparently using evidence obtained in a legal process to ‘conduct litigious warfare in the media'. The court seemed unhappy that sensitive information Page obtained from Mann's bank accounts rapidly appeared in newspapers.

Other lawyers were unimpressed with Page. Anthony Kerman, fond of pinstriped suits and pacing the room, opposed him and offered none of the usual grudging respect for a fellow professional: ‘I find it odd that an intelligent and educated man, as one must assume Page to be, would choose to act for somebody whose regime has become a byword for brutality and corruption, who has been so widely criticised by the US Senate … If this was a criminal trial and Obiang was the defendant, you could say he is, like Milosevic, like Saddam, entitled to the best defence he can get. But this isn't a criminal trial with Obiang as a defendant, but a civil matter with Obiang as the claimant and in a sense Page is choosing to prosecute his aims.' Many criticised Page, who also published a private statement from Johann Smith, who admitted that he had warned officials in the Pentagon and British security of the coup plot before it took place. ‘I never thought it would come out. I was naive, I trusted him,' laments Smith. Once in Equatorial Guinea, he was also placed under enormous pressure to write a statement that implicated Morgan.

Interviewed for this book, Page says he recognises there were problems with the treatment of the men held in Equatorial Guinea. He had suggested that du Toit and the others should get defence lawyers from the start, but was assured the Spanish ‘inquisitorial system' let defendants be held without them. Though he thought du Toit looked fit and healthy when they met, du Toit explicitly told him of being ‘knocked about by guards'. And though Page is confident that du Toit confessed
of his own free will and told the truth, there is no way a man in fear of torture and facing every chance of a violent death would be considered someone giving free testimony.

But others were hardly blameless. Morgan is left in a moral quandary: though he helped to foil the coup plot, and thus helped South Africa's government score an impressive intelligence victory, he effectively betrayed friends who believed they could trust him. Thatcher certainly grew embittered towards Morgan, but he is hardly on high moral ground either. Thatcher struck a deal with the South Africans that included his giving close co-operation to the prosecution and evidence on others involved, presumably on Mann in particular. Most plotters, including Steyl, Witherspoon and others, seemed willing to strike a deal that landed others deeper in legal trouble. To his credit, Mann seems the exception to this rule.

Equatorial Guinea's rulers did profit from the saga of the Wonga Coup. Obiang found warmer relations with other powers. As late as November 2004, senior State Department officials described American ties in Equatorial Guinea as driven by ‘oil men' and confirmed that ‘our ties are not good' with the country. By 2005 that had changed. US officials gushed about the need for a stable relationship. In June 2005, Paul Wolfowitz, an ally of George Bush and the newly appointed head of the World Bank, said of Obiang: ‘I was very impressed at his leadership and his government's leadership.' He said he hoped Obiang would manage oil revenues ‘according to the standard of transparency and accountability that will ensure that wealth goes to the benefit of the people'. Serving members of the US administration also
met the despot as part of a carefully designed effort to recraft Equatorial Guinea's image. Several American lobbyists and public relations companies were given contracts to that end. One firm, Cassidy and Associates, is said to have earned $1.4 million a year polishing the country's reputation – a rate which some industry observers thought ‘eye-popping'. Another firm, Barbour Griffith and Rogers, was paid $37,500 a month to do a similar job. In April 2006 Obiang visited Washington DC and was granted an audience with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who stated ‘You are a good friend and we welcome you'. In contrast Severo Moto's lobbying efforts have fallen quiet.

It was also reported that Obiang's illness – cancer – was becoming more acute by 2006. He was rumoured to weigh just 50 kilos (110 pounds) and he reportedly contacted Angola's government asking for peacekeeping troops to keep order in Equatorial Guinea, for the moment when he expected to hand power over to his elder son, Teodorin.

Spain was suddenly friendly. In March 2005, a year after the failed coup, Spain's new foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, visited Equatorial Guinea and vowed to help prevent any more troublesome plots. Relations cooled towards Moto. The exiled opposition leader said Spain had sold out so its oil company, Repsol, could get concessions in Equatorial Guinea. Spain's rulers retorted that the exile would lose his refugee status if he caused any more mischief. Then, in April 2005, Moto disappeared. Some said he had been assassinated, perhaps by an agent working for Obiang. His wife feared he was dead. Others thought he was plotting a new scheme, or sulking in an effort to get more attention. One rumour held he had gone on a religious retreat in Italy. Johann Smith produced a speculative report saying Moto met Wales
and Ely Calil in London, moved on to Croatia where he saw a team of military men, then scuttled to west Africa to collect a $2-million shipment of weapons. These he planned to use to invade Equatorial Guinea, perhaps in league with a mysterious group called the Southern Cameroonian Liberation Front.

Several weeks later, Moto resurfaced in Croatia with a tale that was equally bizarre. He told a Croatian newspaper that the Spanish secret service had planned to kill him in order to placate Obiang: ‘As opposition leader … I have become an obstacle to the deals with Obiang and that is why they want to eliminate me.' He held a press conference back in Madrid and spun another yarn. He was seeking asylum in Croatia when villains forced him aboard a luxury yacht in the Adriatic Sea. There he was to be drowned. But a supposed $10-million payment from Obiang did not appear and the kidnappers – who were good Catholics – decided not to murder him. When they learned Moto was a priest, they repented and let him go. He scoffed at suggestions he was in Croatia to recruit more mercenaries or to buy guns for a new coup attempt.

The exile grew more isolated. Other opposition men, notably those who dared stay in Equatorial Guinea, were recognised by many observers as more serious leaders. To Obiang's pleasure, Spanish relations with Moto soured further. When Moto supporters protested outside Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Madrid they were criticised by Spain. In 2006 Moto lost his refugee status in Spain and seemed to be on the verge of being expelled by the Spanish government.

The failed plotters of the Wonga Coup might possibly have done the people of Equatorial Guinea a small favour. As
international relations warmed, Obiang's new friends – notably Spain and South Africa – argued that coup attempts and instability would be discouraged if the nature of government changed. Obiang made some efforts to show that oil money would benefit a wider circle of people, though the standard of living of ordinary Equatorial Guineans continued to slide as the oil income rose. He also spoke of Equatorial Guinea as a ‘fledgling democracy'. But to hatch into one, Obiang and the ruling clan need to be persuaded that their privileged life depends on the well-being of ordinary Equatorial Guineans. That means spending a serious portion of their oil wealth on schools, hospitals and other basic necessities for their people. Equatorial Guinea must establish the basics of a decent state: create a set of laws to forbid torture; allow freedom of speech and other democratic norms. Interested outsiders should be allowed to visit the country and talk openly to Equatorial Guineans. If efforts are made there, the chance of any future plotters getting outside support will decline.