CONAC refuses to name,shame corrupt officials

The National Anti-Corruption Commission, commonly known by its French language acronym, CONAC, has released its 2014 Anti-Corruption Status Report without naming thieving officials indicted as was the case for its 2013 report.

Presenting the report in Yaounde, Monday June 27, the chairman of the anti-graft commission, Rev. Dieudonne Massi Gams, said the delay in publishing the report is justified by the fact that they had to make the report very comprehensive by getting information from other state structures.

He noted that the 2015 report will be published before this year runs out, while its annual reports will henceforth be published one year after the year under review.

Massi Gams had last year maintained that concealing the names of indicted officials was an ‘innovation’ which falls in line with the principle that indicted personalities remain innocent until proven guilty.

The Cameroon Journal observed that the report only cites positions and name initials.

Going by Massi Gams, 3064 denunciations were lodged with CONAC in 2014. The report indicates that investigations which were carried out based on denunciations lodged with CONAC revealed embezzlement of fabulous sums of money in some development services and projects.

Some of the embezzlements, the report notes, consisted of unexecuted public contracts, unjustified payment of mission allowances, irregular payment of bonuses, double payment practices, unjustifiable expenditures unrelated to projects, value added tax paid on project funds as well as fake cheques to disaster victims.

The amount embezzled in the management of the compensation funds for the Nsam disaster victims stood at a whooping FCFA 14,743,183,736, the report stated.

In addition, CONAC disclosed in its 2014 report that the state, through overvaluation of project and crops of residents, lost FCFA 1,792,399,619, representing 64% of compensation within the framework of the Memve’ele hydroelectricity dam construction project.

“Another significant improvement was the discovery of a vast corruption network in vehicle auction sale procedures at the Douala Port.

Indeed, some agents and officials of the customs administration and the Douala Port often organized auction sales which do not comply with the regulations in force. They buy the car at very low prices, at the expense of the treasury,” CONAC chairman disclosed.

We observed that most of the complaints entertained by CONAC focused on the subjects of: land dispute, public contracts, management of resources allocated to organizations, embezzlement, treatment of career files (recruitment, salary payment, pension), abuse of authority, bribery at judiciary, amongst others.

Cameroon’s anti-corruption status report by CONAC assesses the actions carried out in the country by different stakeholders to fight the corruption scourge.

It also highlights actions and efforts made by CONAC, public administrative units, other state institutions as well as the private sector and civil society to prevent and punish cases of embezzlement.