Hip-hop Starlet’s Dirty Money Ties

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The explosive new report by the Senate investigations subcommittee out today, which I covered here, is filled with lurid, juicy details about four previously unreported money-laundering cases in the US and the Americans who aided that laundering. For instance, Teodoro Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea’s despotic president, used US attorneys and realtors to help him create shell corporations for his money—and in return, he feted them with VIP access to exclusive parties and other perks; in one email, an attorney who helped Obiang funnel money into the US, and who later got into a Playboy Mansion Halloween party thanks to Obiang, writes, “I met many beautiful women, and I have the photos, e-mail addresses and phone numbers to prove it.”

Another eye-catching detail that appears is the appearance of Obiang’s then-girlfriend, hip-hop starlet Eve Jeffers. (The two are no longer together.) Now, the relationship between Eve and Obaing had been reported long before the subcommittee’s report came out Eve Teodoro Obiang. However, today’s report does shed light on an unreported twist in their relationship: Eve was actually named president and CFO of one of Obiang’s shell corporations, named Sweet Pink Inc., according to George Nagler, the attorney who created the corporation for Obiang. Eve was also a signatory for an account at Union Bank of California for the Sweet Pink corporation, the report found. 

This was a shady arrangement to say the least. Indeed, soon after the Union Bank account was created that listed Eve as a signatory, two wire transfers of about $30,000 from one of Obiang’s companies in Equatorial Guinea were deposited in the account. That raised red flags for Union Bank, which had listed Equatorial Guinea as a “high-risk jurisdiction,” and the bank quickly examined the accounts and later closed them, less than a month after they were opened.

The report doesn’t mention Eve outside the Obiang incident, but it goes to show that the ways in which foreign figures will launder money in the US are many, utilizing anyone from well-connected lobbyists and attorneys to even well-known music stars.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate