La fortune des dictateurs et les complaisances occidentales (English: Ill-Gotten Goods... Too Often Do Benefit: Western Complacency and the Wealth of Dictators) enumerated known instances of kleptocracy in African dictatorships.
[1][2] For example, Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Zaïre from 1965 until his death in 1997, became notorious for using his position as military dictator to openly embezzle massive sums of state money to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
The term was later popularized for all litigation filed against any corrupt politicians of poor countries in any foreign judicial system, normally in Western Europe, where the assets stolen by the defendant are believed to be held.
This section is a list of known assets successfully seized through biens mal acquis rulings and is incomplete: Gabonese president Ali Bongo Ondimba is estimated to have paid €98 million to the Pozzo di Borgo [fr] family for the Soyecourt, a historic hôtel particulier on the rue de l'Université in the 7th arrondissement in central Paris.
In May 2009, the Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor requested a money-laundering investigation of the accounts and investments in Spain of the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, following a complaint filed in December 2008 by the Asociacion pro derechos humanos de España (APDHE).
[17] It is unacceptable that while the nation became impoverished some enriched themselves at her expense Laws put into effect after the liberation of France in the Second World War targeted illegitimate profits accrued during German occupation, in the black market or through simple theft.
[19] The French newspaper Le Monde obtained transcripts for the hearing into whether to pursue the investigation and in January 2008 published a list of dozens of real estate properties owned by family members of Sassou Nguesso and Omar Bongo in Paris and in the south of France, some of them worth millions of euros.
Maître William Bourdon of Survie, the plaintiffs' legal representation, denounced the decision to close the case as "astounding" (ahurissant)[20] The family of Omar Bongo Ondimba, according to the Le Monde hearing transcripts, owned 33 apartments or houses including a hôtel particulier in Paris worth more than €18 million.
[22] On December 2, 2008, Transparency International France, the Sherpa Association, and a Gabonese citizen named Grégory Ngbwa Mintsa filed new charges against Omar Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso and Teodoro Obiang as well as their entourages, of concealing the embezzlement of public funds.
[23] On December 5 Congolese government spokesman Alain Akouala Atipault announced that the Congo had filed a complaint in the Tribunal de grande instance of Paris against Transparency International France and Sherpa.
[29][30] According to Reporters without Borders, who said it was "probable" that the fire was a deliberate attack,[29] Ossḗbi had three days earlier published an article on the online news site Mwinga alleging that the national petroleum corporation, managed by the president's son, had approached a French bank about a $100 million loan secured by its oil production, in contravention of Congo's pledges to the International Monetary Fund.
On October 6, 2011, Transparency International France and Sherpa Association announced a new complaint in civil court to circumvent the block by the prosecutor's office, which had been refusing an indictment needed for the examining magistrates to deal with new facts discovered in the course of their investigation.
In January 2024, a preliminary investigation was opened by the national financial prosecutor's office in France, for embezzlement of public funds and concealment “concerning the clothing expenses of Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno in Paris.