CAMEROON'S FINANCIAL WATCHDOG SAYS CABINET

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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.

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Threatened for Seeking Transparency
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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.

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Pursuing Corrupt Officials
or Political Opponents?
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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.

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With Ministers like These...
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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

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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

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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.

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Some Dossiers Too Hot
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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.

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Comment: Engaging ANIF;
Supporting Champions of Transparency
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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