US millionaire plans presidential run from Cuba

HAVANA: After making a fortune with his early antivirus software, then being caught up in murder and drugs cases in Belize, US millionaire John McAfee has now added a new chapter to his tumultuous life story: from a yacht in Havana harbour, he says he is running for the US presidency. This will not, he deadpans, be "an ordinary campaign."

"I am wanted as a criminal by the government for which I am running for president," McAfee tells AFP as he sits surrounded on his white yacht by an entourage of seven campaign aides and two enormous dogs.

He wears shorts, a tropical-themed shirt and wraparound sunglasses, and sports a graying goatee.

McAfee´s immediate goal is to win the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, which advocates for free trade and a sharply reduced federal government.

He tried but failed in 2016, edged out for that party´s nomination by Gary Johnson, who went on to win just over three percent of the vote in the general election. But McAfee has an unusual confession for a presidential candidate: "I don´t want to be president, I really don´t, nor could I be," he says, puffing on a cigar.

"Really, look at me," says McAfee, whose deep tan and relaxed attitude hardly give him the look of a candidate. "I can´t be president."

He goes on, "However, I do have a large following, and I will influence this next election."

Since making a fortune with his eponymous antivirus software in the 1980s, McAfee has become a self-styled cryptocurrency guru, claiming to make $2,000 a day. He has nearly one million followers on Twitter.

His yacht, docked at the Marina Hemingway in Havana, is named "The Great Mystery" -- appropriately for this enigmatic man of 73.

McAfee began his career as a NASA engineer before working for several software companies, where he learned of the existence of a computer virus -- and began figuring out how to destroy it.

Thus McAfee Associates was born in 1987, quickly becoming a giant in the antivirus industry. He sold the company to Intel in 2010 and is now worth an estimated $100 million.

But his American-dream success story -- worthy of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates -- took an unexpected turn: Moving to Belize in Central America and living a sometimes chaotic life, he suddenly became tabloid grist when his neighbor was mysteriously murdered in 2012, a crime that remains unsolved.

When the police found him living with a 17-year-old girl and discovered a large arsenal of weapons in his home, McAfee disappeared on a month-long flight that drew breathless media coverage.