U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has met with the heavily prosecuted vice president of Equatorial Guinea in Washington after the Trump administration approved a waiver of corruption sanctions that allowed the leader of the West African country to travel to New York for last week’s high-level U.N. meeting and other U.S. cities.
The State Department said Tuesday that Landau met with Teodoro “Teddy” Nguema Obiang a day earlier and “reaffirmed joint commitments to deepen commercial and economic ties, combat illegal immigration, and advance security cooperation.”
“Both leaders agreed to take concrete steps to expand the bilateral relationship moving forward,” the department said in a statement.
Obiang is accused of pilfering his impoverished country’s resources to feed a lifestyle of luxury cars, mansions and superyachts, but earlier this month he was given a temporary pass on U.S. corruption sanctions that blocked him from traveling to the United States.
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