A court in Malabo (the capital of Equatorial Guinea, a small oil-rich former Spanish colony in Central Africa) has quietly dropped charges against Francisca Obiang Giménez, daughter of longtime president Teodoro Obiang Nguema, despite prosecutors accusing her of receiving roughly €647,000 in kickbacks from a Spanish firm contracted to install digital television infrastructure. Several former ministers and the president's brother-in-law were similarly removed from the case, even as allegations of bribery and fraud against them had been detailed in prosecutorial reports. Meanwhile, two low-level Spanish employees of the contracting company — Javier Marañón and David Rodríguez Ballesta — remain imprisoned in the notorious Black Beach jail in Malabo after 18 months in pre-trial detention, with their families insisting no documentary or testimonial evidence has been presented against them.