LIBREVILLE (AFP) — The son of Africa's longest-serving ruler, Gabon President Omar Bongo Ondimba, is in Paris for a medical check-up following the veteran leader's hospitalisation in Spain, Gabonese sources told AFP Saturday.
"He is in a Paris hospital for a medical check-up," a source close to the Gabonese presidency said of Ali Ben Bongo, 50, who is currently the country's defence minister and viewed by many as a successor to his father.
"It's not serious and he will return to Gabon on Sunday or Monday," another top Gabonese source said.
The 73-year-old Bongo, who has ruled the oil-rich African country for 41 years, has been hospitalised in Spain for what Libreville describes as a routine check-up. But other sources told AFP he is seriously ill with cancer.
The news comes just weeks after a French judge announced a formal probe into the financial activities in France of Bongo.
The investigation will also look into his ally President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, whose daughter Bongo took as his second wife, and Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
A complaint filed by Transparency International France accused the leaders of having acquired millions of dollars of real estate in Paris and on the French Riviera and buying luxury cars with embezzled public money. The leaders deny any wrongdoing.
Bongo announced on May 6 that he was temporarily suspending his duties to rest and mourn the death in March of his 45-year-old wife Edith Lucie Bongo Odimba.
The presidential statement said he had "suffered a shock of great emotional intensity after the premature death of his young wife following a long illness."
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