CAMEROON'S FINANCIAL WATCHDOG SAYS CABINET

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 YAOUNDE 000119 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE ALSO FOR AF/C AND INL/C STATE ALSO FOR EEB/ESC/TFS - JAY JALLORINA LONDON AND PARIS FOR AFRICA ACTION OFFICERS TREASURY FOR FINCEN TREASURY FOR JEFFREY ROSS, WILLIAM BAITTY, CHRIS ROJAHN, HEATHER MOYE AND ANNE WALLWORK E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/01/2018 TAGS: KCOR EFIN PREL KTFN CM SUBJECT: CAMEROON'S FINANCIAL WATCHDOG SAYS CABINET THOROUGHLY CORRUPT REF: 07 YAOUNDE 1236 Classified By: Political Officer Tad Brown for Reasons 1.4 b and d. ¶1. (S) Summary. In a recent meeting with Poloff, the head of Cameroon's financial crimes watchdog, Hubert Nde Sambone, said that all but a few members of Cameroon's 57-person cabinet have accumulated ill-gotten gains, naming Essimi Menye (Finance),Muna (Culture),Fuh Gentry (Mines),and Ephriam Inoni (the Prime Minister) among the apparently clean. When the National Agency for Financial Investigations (known by its French acronym, ANIF) tried to strengthen oversight and transparency in Cameroon's financial sector, public officials responded with threats, including anonymous death threats, forcing ANIF to back down. Fearing for his life, Sambone has refrained from advancing incriminating evidence that implicates some of Cameroon's most powerful individuals, including a number of Generals. Sambone said ANIF had forwarded about 60 files to Cameroon's Ministry of Justice (MOJ) without response. Sambone claimed ANIF had been left out of the MOJ's effort to coordinate with the USG and other governments on the identification and recovery of stolen assets stashed overseas. End summary. -------------- Threatened for Seeking Transparency -------------- ¶2. (S) Poloff met January 29 with Hubert Nde Sambone, the Director of Cameroon's Financial Intelligence Unit, the National Agency for Financial Investigations, known by its French acronym ANIF. Sambone recounted how, in an effort to identify senior public officials with substantial financial holdings, ANIF had recently sent a request to Cameroonian banking institutions asking them to identify government officials who possessed numbered accounts with values over 100,000,000 CFA (or about $220,000). Sambone said he quickly received many anonymous threats, including death threats, and received a call from the head of the regional banking regulator (known by its French acronym, COBAC) reporting that COBAC was also receiving threats from (unnamed) ministers. Although the threats were anonymous, Sambone said he is aware ;that two cabinet officials were particularly displeased: Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo'o, the Head of National Police (General Delegate for National Security, or DGSN) and Jean Baptiste Bokam, the Secretary of State for Defense. The DGSN sent an emissary to ANIF,s offices asking if ANIF intended to throw him in jail. Fearing that ANIF could not withstand the pressure, Sambone withdrew the request for information. -------------- Pursuing Corrupt Officials or Political Opponents? -------------- ¶3. (S) Turning to recent news stories revealing that Cameroon's Minister for Justice and Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali had approached the USG and other Western Governments for coordination to investigate a list of prominent Cameroonians (reftel),Sambone said ANIF had not been in any way involved and said he knew no more than what he had read in the press. A number of officials on the list had called Sambone to complain, assuming--since ANIF is the statutorily appropriate body--that ANIF was driving the investigation. Sambone told Poloff said ANIF had sent more than 60 dossiers to prosecuting authorities with copies to Ali, but that the list Ali is pursuing is substantially different from the list of individuals included in ANIF's dossiers. Sambone said he could see no legitimate law enforcement justification for the composition of Ali,s list, but said he wasn,t politically astute enough to understand if those left off belonged to one political network or another. -------------- With Ministers like These... -------------- ¶4. (S) Poloff expressed dismay that ANIF's well-intentioned efforts to smoke out hidden wealth would flounder because the Cabinet and senior levels of government were so thoroughly corrupt. Sambone agreed with poloff that there were only YAOUNDE 00000119 002 OF 002 three ministers who appear untainted by corruption: Minister for Finance Essimi Menye, Secretary of State for Mining Fuh Calistus Gentry, and Minister for Culture Ama Muna. When Poloff asked if he could add any other Ministers to the "reasonable clean" list, Sambone pulled out a list of the Cabinet, perused it, and said he could not name another official on whom he did not have reasonable information of corrupt activity. (Sambone explicitly included Secretary General at the Presidency Laurent Esso and Assistant Secretary General at the Presidency Philemon Yang because he SIPDIS read their names first, out loud.) After a reflecting on the implications of this, Sambone said that he did not have much on Prime Minister Inoni either, but that ANIF has troves of negative information on Inoni's entourage, especially the head of his cabinet. "Whether Inoni is aware or not, is impossible to say," Sambone mused. -------------- Some Dossiers Too Hot -------------- ¶5. (S) Sambone said ANIF had compiled dossiers that he would never share even with Cameroonian Ministry of Justice officials because he was sure in so doing he would "sign my death warrant." Sambone said many of these dossiers concerned generals in the military, who could "hire some guy from the slums" to come kill him in a moment. Sambone said he has a bodyguard and a well-protected house, but is painfully aware that he and his family could be attacked by those whom he pursues. In response to Poloff's question as to how the USG could help strengthen ANIF's hand in such a threatening environment, Sambone said that, among Cabinet officials, only the Minister of Finance would be able to help. Whereas the previous Finance Minister Polycarpe Abah Abah had tried to co-opt ANIF's activities, current minister Essimi Menye has so far left ANIF alone. But it would be good if ANIF could access more resources, including more staff, to handle seemingly endless leads. Sambone worried that it could be counter-productive to contact anyone else in the Cabinet, but that it could be useful to mention ANIF to President Biya, simply to let Biya know that ANIF is doing good work and is under threat. -------------- Comment: Engaging ANIF; Supporting Champions of Transparency -------------- ¶6. (S) In the context of Cameroon, where corruption and hidden political networks are pervassive, we nonetheless place guarded confidence in Sambone's credibility, largely because we have been unable to detect a whiff of ulterior motives and because his recent candor has emerged only after we have cultivated a relationship over more than one year. We were disheartened (but not surprised) that Sambone would vouch for no more than four ministers out of almost sixty in the cabinet. More disheartening is that ANIF seems to be waging a lonely battle against pervasive high-level corruption and faces opposition from those officials who are supposed to be advancing accountability and the rule of law. Troubling for our own coordination with the Government of Cameroon is the revelation that the list of individuals Justice Minister Ali identified in his request for USDOJ assistance is different from the list ANIF sent to him and that Ali himself is not on Sambone's "good" list. This lends weight to the real possibility that Ali's efforts are driven by politics, not a genuine desire for justice (also supporting this view is the fact that Ali's new anti-money laundering cell has been unresponsive to repeated Embassy efforts over the past month to engage with it). The good news is that ANIF has somehow managed to continue its important work and compile substantive dossiers on a range of high-level individuals, including a very damning file we have seen on current Minister of Health Mama Fouda. In Ambassador's recent meeting with President Biya, the President renewed his commitment to fight corruption, seemed aware of ANIF's activities, and agreed with Ambassador that ANIF needed to be protected. We will continue our engagement with ANIF and re-double efforts to identify areas for collaboration between ANIF and the appropriate USG agencies. End comment. GARVEY