Corruption in Equatorial Guinea

Corruption in Equatorial Guinea is high by world standards and considered among the worst of any country on earth. It has been described as "an almost perfect kleptocracy" in which the scale of systemic corruption and the rulers' indifference towards the people's welfare place it at the bottom of every major governance indicator or ranking, below nations with similar per capita GDPs.

"Few countries symbolize oil-fuelled corruption and nepotism more than Equatorial Guinea", wrote Jan Mouawad in The New York Times in July 2009. Its corruption system, according to the Open Society Foundations (OSF), is "unparalleled in its brazenness". This government is controlled by a limited group of powerful individuals who divert most of the country's revenues into their own clandestine bank accounts in other nations. Equatorial Guinea's corruption is so entrenched, scholar Geoffrey Wood has claimed, that it can be classified as a criminal state.

This situation is especially dramatic due in large part to the massive scale of the country's revenues from oil and other natural resources. The Guardian noted that the nation is enormously wealthy due to vast oil reserves, but that that wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite minority. Despite its GDP per capita of $18,236 – which makes it richer than most African countries and places it below China – Equatorial Guinea is ranked 145th out of 189 countries in the Human Development Index measure of quality of life. While the people of Equatorial Guinea technically have a per capita GDP similar to China, the vast majority live in poverty worse than Afghanistan or Chad, according to Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch in 2009, attributing this disparity to the government's corruption, incompetence, and disregard of its own people's well-being.