The Wonga Coup
Simon Mann's Plot to Seize Oil Billions in Africa
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
In March 2004 a group led by Nick Du Toit and former SAS member Simon Mann tried to overthrow the tyrannical Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea. They were working for investors, allegedly including Mark Thatcher and "J.H. Archer", who wanted to seize control of Africa's third largest oil producer. Roberts tells how the coup was set up and abandoned at the last minute, and how the plotters were seized and subsequently tortured. The new material includes an account of Mann's illegal abduction from prison in 2008; his dramatic trial, in which he accuses named individuals, including Thatcher, of being deeply involved in the plot; Thatcher's fears of "extraordinary rendition" to Equatorial Guinea; and Eli Calil's revelatory admission that he supported forced regime change in Equatorial Guinea.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The most terrifying thing about this chronicle of a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea is that it's not a Graham Greene novel but a true story. Roberts, an Economist staffer, chronicles the plot by foreign mercenaries and merchants to topple the country's brutal dictatorship solely for the "wonga" (British slang for "money, usually a lot of it"). An irresistibly lurid tale is peopled with bellicose profiteers, particularly of the neocolonialist sort from Europe and South Africa, with long histories of investment in oil, diamonds and war-for-profit. Among these self-styled gentleman adventurers are Margaret Thatcher's son, Sir Mark Thatcher, and "rag-and-bone intelligence men" who linger in hotel bars, "picking up scraps of information... selling them on to willing buyers, whether corporate or government." The audacity of the coup's planners is almost admirable, though Roberts rightly chastises them for their oil-soaked greed. As he lifts the curtain to the backrooms of power in postcolonial Africa, the reader finds that not much has changed on the continent since 1618, when the "Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa" became the first private company to colonize Africa for profit.
