Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko

For the Miami Central High marching band, the money that appeared for new uniforms, instruments and airline tickets to New York so that they could strut their stuff in last year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was nothing short of magic. "We were blessed," said band director Shelby Chipman after West African millionaire Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko wrote out a check for $300,000 minutes after running into fund-raising band members playing dance tunes at a bar mitzvah in a downtown hotel.

For the Miami Central High marching band, the money that appeared for new uniforms, instruments and airline tickets to New York so that they could strut their stuff in last year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was nothing short of magic. "We were blessed," said band director Shelby Chipman after West African millionaire Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko wrote out a check for $300,000 minutes after running into fund-raising band members playing dance tunes at a bar mitzvah in a downtown hotel.

As vast offshore oil fields generate hundreds of millions of dollars for tiny Equatorial Guinea, there are few signs of the petroleum boom in the impoverished West African nation. Most of the population lives on about a dollar a day, and a U.S. State Department report found "little evidence that the country's oil wealth is being devoted to the public good." So where has the money gone? That has been declared a "state secret" by Equatorial Guinea's ruler, Brig. Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.