Forbes denies authorship of African Presidents’ Rich List

Forbes magazine has rebutted wide spread reports that it authored a certain list of “Richest African Presidents 2014.” The Magazine’s African Director in a press statement denied authorship of the list which has gone viral on the internet.

“Forbes has never published a classification of African richest presidents,” the released stated, challenging all and sundry to visit their website to take note for themselves. “Indeed, a classification of this nature has recently been published by the website www.richestlifestyle.com. But this website has no link with Forbes Media Group,” the release added.

“The Director of Forbes Africa denounces what it calls the instrumentation and manipulation of public opinion; even worse, the exploitation of Forbes’ notoriety and credibility for hidden objectives,” the released said, referring to several Cameroon media which reported the famous list citing Forbes as the source.

The release was issued at a time the news had gone viral in Cameroon, given that President Paul Biya featured on the rich list with a net worth of $200 Million. This explains why the Presidency was apparently the very first website to publish the Forbes release.

“Following publication of the article titled ‘Paul Biya among the top 10 African Richest Heads of State in 2014 according to Forbes” via the website www.cameroon-info.net and relayed by local media, Michel Lobé Ewane, director of Forbes Africa informs public opinion that this magazine has never published such a classification,” the official website of the presidency screamed in bold.

Ewane, a seasoned Cameroon journalist who has worked with several international media including BBC and RFI frowned at his fellow colleagues for not doing their job properly. He wondered why local media had to attribute such information to Forbes without consulting the magazine’s website to verify. “That was the basic thing to do,” an angry Ewane told Sprectrum Television on Thursday

He went ahead to warn all media organs, especially Cameroon-Info.Net which break the news in Cameroon, and who cited Forbes as author of the said list to quickly carry out rectifications without which “they will be sued.”

However, Cameroon-Info.Net said in a release on Friday that the said article has been deleted but maintained: “The ranking of the richest African Heads of State in 2014 is the product of richestlifestyle.com, another American magazine with an established credibility which in turn, says its ranking was compiled based on information from various sources including Forbes.com.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian government has reacted firmly to the list, forcing richestlifestyle.com to remove the name of President Goodluck Jonathan from the ranking. The magazine had earlier ranked Jonathan 7th on the top 10 list with a net worth estimated to be around $100 million.