The story behind the Baltasar Ebang Engonga leak

What the world sees as a sex tape violation may be the latest episode in a real drama about who will be the next president of Equatorial Guinea.

In the past two days, dozens of videos – estimates range from 150 to more than 400 – have leaked of a senior civil servant having sex in his office and elsewhere with different women.

They are full of social media, shocking and terrifying people in the small country in the middle of Africa and beyond.

Most of the women who were recorded were wives and relatives of people close to the state establishment.

It seems that others knew that they were recorded having sex with Baltasar Ebang Engonga, who is also known as “Bello” because of his beauty.

All this is difficult to confirm as Equatorial Guinea is a very restrictive society where there is no free press.

But another view is that the leak was a way to discredit the man at the center of the storm.

Mr. Engonga is the nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and is one of those who are thought to be hoping to succeed him.

Obiang is the longest-serving president in the world since 1979.

The 82-year-old is responsible for the recovery of the economy that has turned into a disaster due to the depletion of oil resources.

There is a minority, who are extremely rich, but most of the 1.7 million people in the country are poor.

Obiang’s administration has been widely criticized for its human rights record, including arbitrary killings and torture, according to a US government report.

It has also had its fair share of scandals – including revelations about the lavish lifestyle of one of the president’s sons, now vice president, who once owned a $275,000 (£210,000) crystal glove worn by Michael Jackson.

Despite the general election, there is no real opposition in Equatorial Guinea as activists have been arrested and exiled and those with designs on office are closely monitored.

Politics in this country is about robbing the palace and this is where the scandal involving Mr Engonga came into play.

He was the head of the National Financial Investigation Agency, and worked in the fight against crimes such as money laundering.

But it turned out that he was also being investigated.

He was arrested on October 25th on suspicion of embezzling a sum of money from the government fund and depositing it into secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. He has not commented on the allegations.

Mr Engonga was then taken to the notorious prison in Black Beach, in the capital, Malabo, where there are allegations that dissidents are being brutally treated.

His phones and computers were confiscated and a few days later sex videos started appearing on the internet.

The first reference the BBC has received from them on Facebook is from 28 October Diario Rombe’s pagea news site run by a journalist who had been exiled from Spain, which said “social media exploded with the leaking of indecent images and videos”.

Posted on X the next day referred to a “huge scandal shaking the state” such as “pornographic videos flooding social media”.

But it is believed that they appeared alone a few days ago on Telegram, one of the platforms known for publishing pornographic images.

They were then downloaded onto people’s phones and forwarded to WhatsApp groups in Equatorial Guinea, where they caused a storm.

Mr. Engonga was immediately identified along with other women in the videos, including the president’s relatives and the wives of ministers and senior military officers.

The government could not ignore what was happening and on the 30th of October Vice President Teodoro Obiang Mangue (once the owner of Michael Jackson’s glove) gave the telephone companies 24 hours to come up with ways to stop the spread of these clips.

“We cannot continue to watch families being separated without taking any action,” wrote to X.

“Currently, the origin of these letters is being investigated in order to find the author or authors and answer for their actions.”

Since the computer equipment was in the hands of the security forces, the suspicion fell on someone, who might have wanted to discredit Mr. Engonga before the trial.

The police have asked the women to come forward to file charges against Mr Engonga for non-consensual pornography. Another has announced that he is suing him.

What is not clear is why Mr Engonga recorded these.

But activists have put forward other possible motives behind the explosive leak.

As well as being related to the president, Mr Engonga is the son of Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, the head of the regional economic and financial union, Cemac, and a major influence in the country.

“What we are seeing is the end of an era, the end of the current president, and then there will be a succession [question] and this is the internal fighting we are seeing,” said Equatoguine activist Nsang Christia Esimi Cruz, who now lives in London.

Speaking to the BBC Focus on Africa podcast, he alleged that Vice President Obiang was trying to politically eliminate “anyone who could challenge his position”.

The vice president, as well as his mother, are suspected of sidelining anyone who threatens his presidential position, including Gabriel Obiang Lima (President Obiang’s other son from a different wife), who served as oil minister for 10 years after that. moved to a secondary role in government.

Those at the top are thought to know things about each other that they would prefer not to be revealed, and videos have been used in the past to humiliate and discredit a political opponent.

There are also allegations that they want to overthrow the government, which further escalates the conflict.

But Mr. Cruz also suspected that the authorities want to use this scandal as an excuse to raid social media, which is the way most information about what is happening in the country comes out.

In July, the authorities temporarily suspended the internet after protests broke out on the island of Annobón.

For him, the fact that a senior official has sex outside of marriage is not surprising because it was part of the decadent life of the country’s elite.

The vice president who was also convicted of corruption in France was taken with luxury goods in different countries, he wants to be seen by this man who destroys graft and doing wrong at home.

Last year, for example, he ordered the arrest of his half-brother for allegedly selling the plane of the government airline.

But this time, despite the vice president’s efforts to stop the spread of these clips, they continue to be viewed.

This week, he tried to appear strong in calling for CCTV cameras to be installed in government offices “to combat dirty and illegal activities”. the official news agency reported.

Saying that this scandal has “destroyed the reputation of the country” he ordered that any officials who are found to be committing sexual acts at work will be suspended as this is “a clear violation of the code of conduct”.

He was not wrong that this story attracted many foreigners.

According to Google data, search queries involving the country’s name have increased since the beginning of this week.

On Monday, at X, “Equatorial Guinea” was one of the top trending words in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – surpassing interest in US elections at times.

This left the activists who were trying to tell the whole world what is really happening in the country.

“Equatorial Guinea has much bigger problems than this sex scandal,” said Mr Cruz, who works for the rights group GE Nuestra.

“For us, this sexual harassment is just a symptom of illness, it is not a disease itself. It just shows how corrupt this system is.”

Additional reporting by Peter Mwai of BBC Verify.