By RICHARD KAY – As Princes Charles and William prepare to join world leaders in London next month for a symposium about international poaching, their attention may well turn to the credentials of one individual who is sharing the platform with them.

For the figure joining the royals — plus David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague — at the two-day conference against illegal hunting is a man who finds himself somewhat hunted thanks to a corruption investigation in France.

He is President Ali Bongo Ondimba, head of the tiny, oil-rich African country of Gabon where, although many of his subjects live below the poverty line, he himself has millions to spend.

Indeed, I can reveal that four years ago Bongo spent £25 million buying the Mayfair home of failed Irish property magnate Derek Quinlan.
The eight-bedroom house is now reckoned to be worth nearer to £40 million. Alas, the Bongo family has long been dogged by accusations of nepotism and money laundering.

Gabon is a former French colony, and campaigners in Paris are calling for Britain to scrutinise the president’s activities.
Last year, they identified 30 properties in France owned by his family, including a house in Paris bought in 2011 for £85 million.
Intriguingly, if there is a legal case for him to answer, one person Bongo could turn to in London is Cherie Blair.

She has been a guest of the Bongos in Gabon’s capital, Libreville, and is close to the president’s Parisian-born second wife, Sylvia, through charity work.

As well as the London conference, Bongo will also join Charles at the World Ocean Summit in San Francisco later in February, where both men will speak.

His presence in London is seen as an attempt to ‘rebrand’ his clan as conservationists rather than kleptocrats. The president took charge of Gabon five years ago on the death of his father, Omar Bongo, whose 42-year ‘reign’ was a byword for embezzlement and nepotism.

Says a spokesman for the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International: ‘It is clear this man has as many assets in cities like London as in Paris. The British need to do more.’

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