After the release of Simon Mann and four of his military friends from Blackbeach, another Equatorial Guinean controversy is emerging. Investigations by the United States Justice Department have revealed that Malabo’s Forestry Minister and presidential son Teodorin Nguema Obiang has channelled at least US$73 million in corrupt funds into the USA, using shell companies and offshore bank accounts. However, the Minister faces no threat of prosecution or indeed attempts to restrict his immigration status. US Executive Proclamation 7750 is meant to bar individuals and their families who have benefited from state or other corruption from obtaining a US visa. Yet this is not the first time that Western governments have chosen, in effect, to offer legal immunity to the ruling family of Equatorial Guinea, the third biggest oil producer in Africa but a brutal and corrupt regime. Attempts in France by Transparency International and anti-corruption groups to freeze the family’s assets in Paris are blocked by the courts. The US Congress in 2004 under the leadership of Senator Carl Levin found that the Obiang family had diverted some $700 mn. of funds into its personal accounts from Western oil companies through the Washington-based Riggs Bank. Despite the detailed evidence produced by Levin’s team, the US government allowed the Obiang family to transfer the laundered funds to a Cameroonian bank and the following year welcomed President Obiang as an important ally in the war on terror.