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Article: Gabon facing an uncertain future as ailing leader's grip seems to be slipping.(News)
- Article from:
- Cape Times (South Africa)
- Article date:
- June 1, 2009
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Omar Bongo of Gabon makes Robert Mugabe looks like a miserly novice. The diminutive 73-year-old is now the longest-ruling leader in the world - since November, 1967, 13 more years than Mugabe.
In those 41-plus years, he has become one of the world's wealthiest people. A 1997 US Senate assessment put his family's annual spending at about R700 million.
Their total wealth has not been reliably calculated, but is reputed to include dozens of houses in France and the US, a host of luxury cars and untold amounts of money siphoned off from the country's oil revenues.
As a sample, in 1999, the US Senate investigated Bongo for transferring US$180 ...