Why was a French investigation into Omar Bongo's assets shut down?

The death last week of Omar Bongo, president of the oil-rich west African state of Gabon, has focused attention on why a French police investigation into the assets of the late dictator was shut down last year.

Bongo's French real estate holdings were so numerous and valuable that he was rumoured to be the country's biggest property owner. The investigation, launched in 2007, was intended to examine how Bongo and his family could possibly amass such a portfolio without embezzling state funds.

A list of the assets, made by French police before the investigation was abruptly halted by Paris's public prosecutor, has been seen by The First Post. It details 39 of the Bongo family's French properties - mostly in Paris's chic 16th arrondissement, including the apartment on Rue Laurent Pichat photographed above, plus several homes on the Cote d'Azur.

Among the choicest properties are an €18.8m apartment at 4 Rue de la Baume in Paris's 8th arrondissement and a package of properties on Boulevard Frederic Sterling in Nice, consisting of two apartments, three houses and a pool.

Bongo has been France’s most important ally in Africa since the De Gaulle eraThe police documents also list 70 separate accounts held by Bongo and members of his family at Barclays, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Societe Generale among other banks. One of the banks listed is Citibank on the Champs Elysee, which holds an account for the late president's cousin, Felix. Citibank was censured by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1999 for transferring more than $120m into one of Bongo's accounts without checking its provenance.

Also listed by the police are six luxury cars, available for family use in Paris and the Cote d'Azur, worth €1.29m. Documents show that one of the luxury cars in the Bongo garage, a €390,795 Mercedes-Maybach, was paid for directly from the bank account of the Gabonese national treasury. Ali Ben Bongo, Gabon's Defence Minister, who as The First Post reported last week is the presumed successor to the presidency, keeps a Ferrari 456 GTA, a Mercedes S-600 limousine and a Porsche 911 in France.

All of this detail might have been destined for oblivion but for the intervention of France's most senior investigating judge, Francoise Desset, who last month ordered that the police investigation be re-started.

Desset has agreed to reopen the case under pressure from William Bourdon, a campaigning Parisian lawyer acting on behalf of the anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Transparency International. TI is representing a Gabonese taxpayer and activist Gregory Mintsa, who accuses Bongo of embezzling public funds. If the case succeeds, it could establish a potentially explosive precedent in international law - allowing sitting presidents to be tried on corruption charges in third countries.

Daniel Lebegue, head of TI France, said: "This is the first time, anywhere in the world, that a judge has recognised the right of a non-governmental organisation to bring a lawsuit in the names of victims of corruption."

Judge Desset is not just investigating the Bongo family: he has also sanctioned a parallel investigation into the accumulation of French assets by Omar Bongo's father-in-law, Dennis Sassou-Nguesso, president of Congo-Brazzaville, another oil producing