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A lawyer for the son of Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said Wednesday that an arrest warrant for his client issued by French judges was without foundation.
A judicial source told AFP Tuesday that French magistrates probing alleged graft by African leaders had requested an arrest warrant for the son, Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, following searches at his upmarket Paris residence.
His lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny said in a statement he was "surprised" the magistrates were seeking the warrant "as nothing suggests he committed any offence in France or abroad."
French judges have since 2010 been probing the source of money spent in France by Obiang, Congo-Brazzaville's President Denis Sassou Nguesso, and Omar Bongo, the late president of Gabon.
"There is no foundation whatsoever for this arrest warrant," Marsigny said.
He said Obiang's acquisitions in France "have always been made in complete transparency vis-a-vis French banking and tax authorities."
The charges were brought by Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption campaign group which alleges the leaders and their relatives spent state funds from their countries on lavish purchases in France.
The ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) on Wednesday said the country's first son -- also the party's vice president -- could not be judged by a French court.
"French courts are not able to judge a vice president of the PDGE and minister of state for agriculture, nor can they arrest him on grounds invented by a French non-governmental organisation," party official Lucas Nguema Esono Mbang told national radio.
"We don't need to look for problems where none exists. Equatorial Guinea is a country where peace reigns and many of its enemies don't like it," he added. TI alleges Obiang owned more than four million euros worth of vehicles in France, while altogether the three leaders had accumulated French assets worth 160 million euros ($210 million).
Police in February searched an Obiang residence in an upmarket Paris district, removing vanloads of possessions.
Obiang's son is agriculture minister and deputy head of mission to UN cultural agency UNESCO, which is based in Paris. As part of that role he has diplomatic immunity.
In September last year, 11 of the family's luxury cars were seized in Paris as part of the probe.
Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron grip since seizing power in a 1979 coup d'etat, making him the continent's longest-serving head of state.
His country is sub-Saharan Africa's third biggest oil exporter but its people live in grinding poverty.
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