Member of the Cameroonian government until 2018, Basile Kouna Atangana was accused of corruption as part of Operation Épervier. The judicial drama is coming to an end, here’s why.
In prison for almost three years, the former Cameroonian minister of water and energy Basile Kouna Atangana should be freed in the coming days. Accused of corruption within the framework of Operation Sparrowhawk launched in 2006, Kouna Atangana benefited from the leniency of President Paul Biya.
In this document, the Secretary General of the Presidency Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh on December 2 asked the Minister of Justice Laurent Esso to suspend all prosecutions on the Cameroon Water Utilities (Camwater) case, after a decision by the head of the State.
Director general between 2002 and 2012 of the state water company Camwater, Atangana was accused by the Special Criminal Court (TCS) of embezzlement of public funds in the order of 2.7 billion FCFA (4.1 million ‘euros) in the context of his former functions. The TCS led since August 2020 by judge Annie Noëlle Batende Bahounoui had not yet tried this case.
However, despite the December letter signed by Ngoh Ngoh, Atangana has not yet been released, having been sentenced on February 7, 2020 to twelve months in prison for having fled to Nigeria in March 2018 while under arrest. TCS investigation.
President Muhammadu Buhari immediately asked the police to arrest the former minister in a hotel in Bauchi state and send him back to Yaoundé where he had been placed in preventive care as part of Épervier. The fugitive could thus be released in February when his current sentence, for having violated his judicial review in 2018, will have been served.
Why this gesture of Biya?
However, Biya did not absolve Basile Kouna Atangana for all that. In his letter of December 2, Ngoh Ngoh requests that the amount of sums wrongly collected be taken from the accused’s bank account by the Treasury. However, he does stop all prosecutions, which is an extremely rare decision in the context of Sparrowhawk. Only the former Minister of Education Haman Adama had already been able to benefit from this leniency.
According to sources close to the case, Biya did so, now convinced that Atangana was not a member of the G11, named after these senior regime officials who hoped to replace him during the 2011 presidential election, now all behind bars. This is the case of the former Minister of Economy and Finance Polycarpe Abah Abah, of the former Secretary General of the Presidency Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara or of the Minister of Defense Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o.
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