Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...
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Equatorial Guinea: Vice President Loses 25 Top Luxury Cars to Auctioneers

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Equatorial Guinea: Vice President Loses 25 Top Luxury Cars to Auctioneers

Photo: Nairobi News
Some of the luxury cars belonging to the vice president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, which have been auctioned.
1 OCTOBER 2019
By Hilary Kimuyu and Agencies
A collection of 25 luxury supercars which were seized from the extravagant vice president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, were over the weekend auctioned.
The auction was part of Swiss money-laundering probe in which Obiang is accused of misappropriation of public assets.
RARE CARS
The 25 cars include Ferraris and Lamborghinis and were expected to bring in Sh1.9 billion ($18.7m) on Sunday, according to the auctioneer, Bonhams.
Obiang is vice-president to his father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea for 40 years.
Rights groups label his administration as one the world's most corrupt.
One of the most "rare and remarkable" cars, a 2014 Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, was sold for Sh860 million ($8.3m) to an anonymous buyer.
It is a new world record price for a Lamborghini sold at auction, British auctioneers Bonhams said.
SUPER CARS
The hammer price for the 354km/h (220mph) car, introduced to celebrate Lamborghini's 50th anniversary, was about 50% more than its pre-sale estimate.
An Aston Martin One-77 Coupe, described as an "absolute rocket ship" by the auction house, went for Sh155 million ($1.5m).
"Cars like this would be the jewel of any collection, but to have them all together is really quite extraordinary," Lynnie Farrant, press officer for auctioneer Bonhams, told the BBC.
A Swiss bidder told Reuters that an agent for a collector in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, had bought several super cars.
Swiss authorities seized the cars and ordered the impounding of a yacht in 2016.
CORRUPTION
The yacht was released in the arrangement announced in February, under which Equatorial Guinea agreed to pay Geneva authorities 1.3 million Swiss francs "notably to cover procedural costs," the prosecutor's office said.
Other cars sold at the Domaine de Bonmmont golf club on the edge of Geneva included a yellow 2003 Ferrari Enzo for 3.1 million francs, and a 2015 Koenigsegg One:1 that fetched 4.6 million francs.
Swiss prosecutors have been investigating Mr Obiang for money laundering and misuse of public funds, but dropped the case in February this year.
The prosecutors said they closed the inquiry into Mr Obiang as part of an arrangement to sell his cars to fund social programmes in his country.
In 2017, a French court handed him a three-year suspended jail term for corruption.

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