2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt five calls to Sir Mark Thatcher in the days after the failed coup. On 13 January 2005, Mark Thatcher, in a South African court, pleaded guilty to helping finance a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. South African police were able to prove that Mr Thatcher had transferred about US$285,000 to the mercenaries that were to execute the operation and had met and talked frequently to them prior to the coup attempt. After pleading guilty, he was given a four-year suspended sentence and a fine of about US$560,000. Simon Mann paid $500,000 (£281,000) towards the plot, according to a list of
Christianity in Equatorial Guinea Christianity in Equatorial Guinea Christianity in Equatorial Guinea dates back to pre-independence, when Equatorial Guinea was a colony of Portugal and Spain. Today almost 90% of the population are Christian. The majority are Roman Catholics, though there are also a few thousand Methodists and Presbyterians. Roman Catholicism reached Equatorial Guinea with the Portuguese in the late 15th century. The colony was ceded to Spain in 1778. From the mid-nineteenth-century there were various Protestant missions, such as Baptist missions from the West Indies (in 1841), Primitive Methodists from England, and Presbyterians (in 1850) from the United States. An 1853 concordat between