Akamba Akumbo Case: accused claims ignorance

Hearing in the case took place at the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde on Monday May 25, 2015.

Akamba Akumbo Clovis, 25, has claimed ignorance in the embezzlement charges against him in the case pitting the State of Cameroon and the Ministry of finance against him and Fon Vegan Bezeng. He was testifying during a hearing at the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde on Monday May 25, 2015. Akamba Akumbo Clovis and Fon Vegan Bezeng are accused of embezzling FCFA 164 million belonging to the State on January 27 and 28, 2014.

The audience before a panel of judges led by Mr. Justice Wanki Richard Tseni Kontsa and assisted by Mrs. Justice Djessi Ndine and Mr. Justice Awoung centered on the examination-in-chief and cross examination of the accused.

In his examination in chief, Defence Lawyer, Barrister Tarh asked Akamba Akumbo Clovis to tell the court what happened on the 27 and 28th of January 2014. Akamba Akumbo, a gardener who lives in Ekie, Yaounde said on January 27, 2014 at 6:00 a.m. he was going to water his garden in Ekie. When he arrived in the garden he found a brief case opened and placed upside down. He said there were some documents scattered on the ground around the brief case.

He collected the brief case and in it were six passports, birth certificate USB keys and one BICEC card.

He took the brief case to his house and placed it beside his bed. He said he then took the BICEC card and went to meet his friend Fon Vegan Bezeng who spent the night with another friend because he went there to watch a series on My TV Africa at night.

Not knowing what the card was and since he had earlier had an argument on bank cards with Fon Vegan Bezeng he decided to go and show the card to him to find out if that was the kind of card he was talking about.

He met Fon Vegan on his way to work in Nkolbisson where he is also a gardener.

When he showed the card to Fon Vegan he told him that there are machines in town in which such cards can be used to withdraw money but he did not know the exact one. He explained they asked from somebody who directed them to Ecobank Mvog-Mbi.

Both took a bike to Ekounou and another bike to Ecobank Mvog-Mbi. When they got there Fon Vegan inserted the card into the machine but the machine immediately rejected the card. The reaction of the machine caught the attention of the watchman. Due to the harshness and threats from the guard, the police man on guard Fon Vegan said it was his father’s card.

The guard then discovered that the card was a BICEC card instead of Ecobank card and immediately drew the attention of the policeman on duty. The police immediately called the owner of the BICEC card who came to the scene with a group led by two gendarmes. The team carried out a search in Akamba Akumbo’s house and after searching the brief case the owners said he could not find fiscal stamps which were the most important documents. Also the sum of FCFA 800, 000 was declared missing in the brief case. The two were locked up in gendarmerie brigade at Ekounou while the search continued.

On January 29, 2014 the owner showed up and told the gendarmes that the fiscal stamps were found. The value was then calculated in the office of the brigade commander and the amount was FCFA 164, 40,000 and they admitted that it was correct. The team collected the brief case and the money and left and since then they have been moving from one brigade to the other before finally being taken to Kondengui Central Prison. At press time the cross-examination was still going on.