What the rest of the world sees as a sex tape scandal could in fact be the latest episode in the real-life drama over who will become Equatorial Guinea next president.
Over the past fortnight, dozens of videos – estimates range from 150 to more than 400 – have been leaked of a senior civil servant having sex in his office and elsewhere with different women.
They have flooded social media, shocking and titillating people in the small central African country and beyond.
Many of the women filmed were wives and relatives of people close to the centre of power.
It appears some were aware they were being filmed having sex with Baltasar Ebang Engonga, who is also known as “Bello” because of his good looks.
All this is hard to verify as Equatorial Guinea is a highly restricted society where a free press does not exist.
But one theory is that the leaks were a way to discredit the man at the centre of the storm.
Mr Engonga is a nephew of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and one of those thought to be hoping to replace him.
Obiang is the world’s longest-serving president having been in power since 1979.
The 82-year-old has overseen an economic boom that has turned to bust as a result of the now-dwindling oil reserves.
There is a small, extremely wealthy elite, but many of the 1.7 million people in the country live in poverty.
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Obiang’s administration is heavily criticised for its human rights record, including arbitrary killings and torture, according to a US government report.
It has also had its fair share of scandals – including the revelations about the lavish lifestyle of one of the president’s sons, now vice-president, who once owned a $275,000 (£210,000) crystal-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson.
Despite regular elections, there is no real opposition in Equatorial Guinea as activists have been jailed and exiled and those with designs on office are closely monitored.
Politics in the country is really about palace intrigue and this is where the scandal involving Mr Engonga fits in.
He was the head of the National Financial Investigation Agency, and worked on tackling crimes such as money laundering.
But it turned out he himself was under investigation.
He was arrested on 25 October accused of embezzling a huge sum of money from state coffers and depositing it in secret accounts in the Cayman Islands. He has not commented on the accusation.
Mr Engonga was then taken to the infamous Black Beach prison in the capital, Malabo, where it is alleged that opponents of the government are subjected to brutal treatment.
His phones and computers were seized and a few days later the intimate videos started appearing online.
The first reference the BBC has found to them on Facebook is from 28 October on the page of Diario Rombe, a news site run by a journalist in exile in Spain, which said that “social networks exploded with the leaking of explicit images and videos”.
A post on X the following day referred to a “monumental scandal shaking the regime” as “pornographic videos flood social media”.
BBC.com
