Editorial: Unmasking faces of Cameroonians in Glencore corruption scandal!.

Two Cameroonian suspects have been named, some two years after officials of Glencore confessed in the United Kingdom and United States courts that between 2007 and 2018, they were bribed with approximately seven billion FCFA, to slash the price of oil sold by the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, SNH, and the National Refining Company Limited, SONARA.



For Cameroon, where corruption has been pervasive, it was business as usual, not until anti-corruption advocate, Barrister Akere Muna, stepped on the gas, campaigning for an investigation to unmask the Cameroonians implicated in the rip-off.

It was a hard nut to crack. When the whistle was blown, Claude Simo Njonou, former General Manager of SONARA, did not comment as the illicit transactions were sealed before his appointment in 2019.

His predecessor, Charles Metouck, incarcerated at the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison, said he “never signed any contract with Glencore,” when he was in office from 2007 and 2010.

Metouck, appointed in 2007, was dismissed and arrested in 2013 before being sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for embezzling 514 million FCFA.

Even though he is jailed for destruction of documents and embezzlement of public funds, he added that he "never was found wanting...for acts of corruption".

Nonetheless, the Executive General Manager of SNH, Adolphe Moudiki, in a press release dated May 30, 2022, also defended his company, saying it was "neither remotely nor closely associated with such practices, strictly prohibited by its internal regulations".

Moudiki said he was only informed about Glencore's confessions "through the press," and urged the American and English authorities to obtain "the elements which would make it possible to establish the veracity of these allegations".

According to media reports, in July last year, the Executive General Manager of SNH, Adolphe Moudiki, wrote to President Paul Biya that an investigation should be opened to unveil the suspects and let them face the law at the Special Criminal Court, SCC.

Noted for his fight against illicit enrichment, the Head of State quickly gave his endorsement.

On November 6, 2023, Moudiki filed a complaint with the Special Criminal Court, to “identify the Cameroonian accomplices in these acts of corruption”. 

He added that SNH is “confident that the outcome of the proceedings in London will enable the SCC to speed up its investigations”.

But the investigation at the national level remains a secret. The only positive action has been by the Ministry of Finance, which ordered a tax reassessment of the Douala-based subsidiary of Glencore commensurate with the damage suffered by Cameroon’s public finances.

As Akere Muna continued to pressurise the relevant national authorities to expose the suspects, reports emerged that on September 10, at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, where the case was called for a preliminary hearing, the names of those suspected would be divulged.

Yaounde waited in vain for British defendants who were former senior executives of the Anglo-Swiss oil company, to reveal the names of the Cameroonians to whom they are alleged to have paid bribes.

A statement issued by the SNH after the hearing noted that: The hearing began at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court that declared itself incompetent with respect to the seriousness of the charges. The case has been referred to Southwark Crown Court and bail granted to the six defendants, pending the next hearing on October 8, 2024”.

Cameroonians remain hopeful that the upcoming hearing will finally reveal the identities of the implicated Cameroonian officials.

“It is worth mentioning that SNH wrote to Glencore on May 30, 2022, immediately this affair broke out, and again on June 5, 2023, following Glencore’s conviction on November 3, 2022, for the names of SNH officials allegedly involved in this affair. But Glencore refused to provide the names, citing an “anonymity clause” concluded with the Serious Fraud Office, a government agency attached to the Attorney General that was conducting the investigations,” the SNH release added.   

But two Cameroonian names from the SNH have so far been flooding in the news radar. One is retired and another left the company and is the boss of a fuel marketing company.

The Guardian Post is holding their names which have been in some conventional and social media, just because all attempts to get to them for comment failed. But can there be smoke without fire?

Glencore aid it bribed both top shots of SONARA and SNH, but so far, only the former is at the nexus of the scandal. 

As it concerns SONARA, Charles Metouck and Ibrahim Talba Malla, the two successive heads of the refinery between 2007 and 2014, when the incidences of corruption are alleged to have taken place, have not been mentioned. 

Talba Malla, a power broker of the Grand North and Organising Secretary of the ruling CPDM, who held the post from 2013 to 2019, is the current Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Public Contracts. He has not made any comment so far. 

The Guardian Post is aware that investigators often carry out their assignment with discreet, but for over two years since the bribe givers confessed, the Cameroonian judiciary system should have at least interrogated the Cameroon suspects and disclose their identities so as to protect the reputation of innocent officials to whom accusing fingers are being pointed in gossip mills.

 

 

 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3269 of Thursday October 24, 2024

 

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