An investigation into overseas properties accumulated by the elites who rule what is considered one of the most kleptocratic states in Africa has found 11 upmarket homes in France and the US linked to a trusted adviser of the country’s president.

Maxime Gandzion, (above left), is the head of one of the most powerful and politically connected families in Congo Brazzaville where he has been a close associate of President Denis Sassou Nguessou, who has ruled the country almost continuously since 1979.

Gandzion, 71, has long been alleged to have profited from his relationship with the president by playing a prominent role in the so-called “Gunvor scandal”, which involved the national petroleum company and a Swiss trading company.

New research by Finance Uncovered (FU) and Opening Central Africa (OCA) has traced the ownership of 11 homes in Paris, Strasbourg and Miami to four members of the Gandzion family.

Four of the properties are linked to Marie-No Gandzion, the newly appointed deputy mayor of Strasbourg, France in a revelation that raises questions over the extent to which children of politically connected parents may benefit from highly controversial deals they were not involved in.

The findings are part of a wider project by FU and OCA, a coalition of anti-corruption organisations from five kleptocratic states in Africa, that aims to identify properties owned by politically exposed persons (PEPs) and their immediate family members using publicly available records.

Maxime, Yoann and Marie-No Gandzion all declined to respond to requests for comment. Olivia Gandzion emphatically denied that any of the property acquisitions this investigation linked her to were funded by the Gunvor scandal.

Contrasting fortunes

The wealth of these elites is in stark contrast to the lives of ordinary citizens in Congo Brazzaville. The smaller neighbour of the Democratic Republic of Congo and officially known as the Republic of Congo, the country has a population of 6.3 million.

But despite having large oil and gas deposits, more than half its people live below the poverty measure of income – less than $3 per day.

International organisations have long raised concerns about repression and corruption under its authoritarian president Denis Sassou Nguesso, a lack of transparency and the concentration of power among his inner circle.

The 82-year-old was re-elected for another five-year term after receiving 94.82% of the vote in March. The government put turnout at 84.65%, despite many polling stations across the country being empty throughout the day, according to reports.

Apart from a five year gap in the 1990s, Sassou Nguesso has ruled almost uninterrupted since 1979, making him one of the world’s longest-running leaders.

“As anticipated, Sassou Nguesso extended his rule for another five years,” says Brett Logan Carter, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California.

“During this time, Congo has emerged as one of Africa’s leading oil producers. Yet Congolese citizens remain among the world’s poorest. Living standards are barely higher now than when Congo secured independence from France in 1960,” says Logan Carter.

Inner circle

To preserve his power, Sassou Nguesso relies on a small circle of loyal family members and political allies to control the government and broader economy.

The Gandzions are part of this group of powerful and politically connected elites in the country, who have amassed properties across the world.

We were unable to pinpoint the source of wealth for the properties acquired by the Gandzions: whether it was inherited, self made or generated through political connections.

Its patriarch is Leopold Maxime Gandzion (broadly referred to as Maxime Gandzion), a “special advisor” known to have the ear of President Sassou Nguesso.

Yoann Gandzion, thought to be Maxime Gandzion’s oldest known child, married Antonella Goma in December 2018.

Goma is the granddaughter of first lady Antoinette Sassou Nguesso, and her union with Gandzion pulled the families even closer together.

Originally from Gabon and now in his 70s, Maxime Gandzion previously acted as an advisor to former Gabonese President Omar Bongo, and is also a former Total executive.

Most prominently, he was a central figure in facilitating oil contracts between the Republic of Congo’s state-owned oil company SNPC, and Swiss commodity giant Gunvor over the period 2010-2012 as described in a report entitled “Gunvor in Congo” by Swiss investigative unit Public Eye.

According to the report, Gunvor allegedly made payments worth millions of dollars to Maxime Gandzion to gain access to President Denis Sassou Nguesso and broker the oil deals. Some of these payments were allegedly funnelled through entities controlled by his son Yoann.

An investigation in 2018 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) alleged that some of these payments were forwarded on to the president, his wife, Antoinette, and son, Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso.

In 2019, the Swiss Attorney General found Gunvor had failed to take steps to prevent its employees from bribing public officials in order to gain access to the petroleum markets in the Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast. The company was ordered to pay a fine and compensation of almost 94 million Swiss Francs.

Maxime and Yoann Gandzion were not named as defendants in the Swiss court case against Gunvor. Maxime was mentioned by name in the proceedings while Yoann was referred to as “a son” of Maxime according to limited transcripts of the trial we obtained.

Neither Maxime or Yoann responded to requests for comment from Finance Uncovered. The Public Eye and OCCRP reports did not include any response from Maxime or Yoann Gandzion, either.

According to Public Eye, the Congolese president’s son Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, who occupied a senior role at SNPC, signed the contracts with Gunvor. In response to the report, he said Congo was “a sovereign state that has the legal standing to choose who it does business with, as all countries do, all of which is done in a thoroughly transparent and legal manner.”

Property portfolio

According to our investigation, Maxime Gandzion and his family have built a significant property portfolio that has included 10 apartments and a house in prime areas of Paris, Miami, and Strasbourg.

The purchases began as far back as 2008, when Yoann, and Marie-No Gandzion, thought to be his sister and now a deputy mayor of Strasbourg, incorporated a real estate company in France called SCI Daruneva.

While Yoann and Marie-No each held 20% of the shares, a Belgian businessman, Albert Karaziwan, a business associate of Maxime Gandzion, held the remaining 60%.

Shortly after being incorporated, the company bought four apartments on the same road in Paris for €1.9 million.

It is not possible to tell from the records how the properties were paid for.

Four of the apartments are in the same building, while the fifth - which is likely a garage or cellar - is down the road.

The street is located in Paris’ prestigious 8th arrondissement, a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees.

In 2011, Karaziwan sold his shares in the company to Maxime Gandzion for €1 per share, the same amount he paid for them when the company was incorporated. But Maxime Gandzion also undertook to repay €2.18 million that Daruneva owed Karaziwan’s company, Semlex.

It appears that the Gandzions through Daruneva still own the properties and their shareholdings in the company remain unchanged.

Miami purchase

According to public records, 2011 was also the year in which a company called Ombima LLC, a company incorporated in Florida, bought a property in Miami.

Both Yoann Gandzion, who was 28 at the time, and Marie-No Gandzion (then 24) were listed as managers of the company.

The house, located in a swanky neighbourhood of North Miami, cost $1.69 million and included six bedrooms and five bathrooms. Surrounded by palm trees, the property boasts access to a berth for a boat at an inlet on the Biscayne Bay, located just across the road.

According to Marie-No’s LinkedIn account, she was the founder and manager of the Ombima Family Office for five years between August 2010 and September 2015. Her responsibilities included “operational and administrative management of the real estate portfolio (Miami, Marrakech, Paris, Libreville, Brazzaville).”

We also identified an Instagram account called “villasombima” which included pictures of several luxury properties including the house in Miami and a speedboat called Ombima.

Her period of employment started a month before the controversial Gunvor oil shipments began, and extended long after the scandal became public.

Marie-No did not respond to questions regarding who were the shareholders of Ombima LLC and who provided the money for the Family Office’s acquisition of the properties.

Political twist

In March, Marie-No was appointed a deputy mayor of Strasbourg in charge of equality, the fight against discrimination and women’s rights. The role of deputy mayor is not an elected position. Marie-No was appointed by the newly elected Mayor of Strasbourg, Catherine Trautmann. Trautmann was a former Minister of Culture under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, and represents the Socialist Party.

We asked Marie-No whether she was concerned that money from the controversial oil deals might have flowed into properties she was managing on behalf of Ombima and Daruneva.

We also asked Marie-No whether she thought she may have knowingly or unknowingly benefitted as an employee and as a family member from the properties that may have been acquired with funds from the controversial oil deals. She declined to provide any response to our questions.

Mayor Trautmann told us she was not aware of the Gandzion family’s involvement with the Gunvor scandal.

“I had no knowledge whatsoever of the matters you allege, either during the municipal election campaign or when appointing my deputy mayors. It is through your questions that I have become aware of these allegations,” Trautmann stated in response to our questions.

She explained that deputy mayors are appointed in accordance with strict municipal codes, adding: “My decision to entrust them with responsibilities is based primarily on their commitment to civic life, community organisations and the public interest. It is also based on their skills, their knowledge of public policy and their ability to carry out the responsibilities entrusted to them.

“It was on the basis of these principles that I appointed Ms Marie-No Gandzion as deputy mayor, particularly in recognition of her commitment to early childhood issues, the fight against discrimination and the advancement of women in Strasbourg's local economy.”

She said: “To date, I am not aware of any evidence establishing that Ms Marie-No Gandzion personally participated in the allegations you put forward or failed to fulfil the obligations incumbent upon her as deputy mayor.

“In a state governed by the rule of law, everyone is accountable for their own actions. It would not be consistent with our principles to call into question the position of an elected official on the basis of allegations concerning members of her family, in the absence of evidence establishing her personal responsibility.

“Should new, substantiated and legally founded evidence emerge that warrants a different assessment, it would naturally be examined with all the necessary rigour. At present, I have no such evidence.”

Yoann Gandzion would later transfer the Miami house into his personal name before selling it in March 2019 for $2.15 million, a gain of $460,000.

Yoann re-entered the Miami property market when he purchased an apartment in downtown Miami in January 2020 for $569,000. It appears to have been a good investment - he sold it for $800,000 in August last year.

In 2021, he purchased another apartment in downtown Miami for $460,000. Following our questions to him regarding his properties in February, the apartment appears to have been put on the market and was sold at the end of March this year.

The "O.G."

It seems Maxime Gandzion was not about to let his third child miss out. In June 2011, the patriarch together with Olivia Gandzion, believed to be his second eldest known daughter, incorporated a real estate company in France and ostensibly named it using her initials “O.G”.

Of the 1,000 shares created in the company, Maxime Gandzion owned just one while the other 999 shares were issued to Olivia.

O.G. owns four units in a building in the centre of Strasbourg close to the city’s famous Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg. The apartment building is located on the edge of a town square with a bistro on the ground floor.

Further searches using the company name identified another property, believed to be a parking space located just a four minute walk from the apartments.

Olivia Gandzion disputed the number of apartments owned by O.G, saying the company’s property ownership amounted to only two ex-student flats and 1 parking space, but did not provide any documentary evidence.

She also denied that any of the acquisitions were funded by any payments related to the Gunvor scandal, saying she had “nothing to do with all of this.”

“To answer your question, there is no possible link between the acquisition of the flats and the matter you refer to,” she stated via email.

Privacy laws in this French region (which borders Germany to the east) prevents journalists from accessing property deeds, so we could not confirm the date and purchase price of each apartment. But company filings show that O.G’s registered address is also Olivia Gandzion’s personal residence.

In July 2024, Maxime Gandzion donated his single share to Olivia, leaving her the sole shareholder.

Main image: Maxime Gandzion in Moscow with President Putin
Editors: Nick Mathiason and Ted Jeory
Fact check: Caroline Henshaw