Man arrested for diverting FCFA 500 million in Kumbo

He was recently charged with false pretence, changing the name of his employer’s NGO and collecting funding money.

A man named Balla Etata Armand has been nabbed and detained in the Kumbo Principal Prison in Bui Division of the North West Region for alleged false pretence and misappropriation of FCFA 500 million belonging to his former employer, Yuwun Elizabeth.

The woman, said to be the owner of an organization known as Cooperative Organization for Rural Development and Sustainability Cameroon, an NGO based in Kumbo, met Balla Etata Armand in Yaounde.

According to information gathered from sources close to the State Counsel’s Chambers, Kumbo, Balla Etata Armand is said to have met the complainant in the African Business Bank Information Office, Yaounde, where the suspect told her he was a worker.

He told her that he was an expert in writing projects. The suspect was subsequently invited to Kumbo to assist Yuwun in writing projects to obtain foreign funding. He was lodged by the complainant and paid a salary of FCFA 100,000 a month. While writing the projects, Balla Etata Armand collected over FCFA 2 million from Yuwun Elizabeth, purportedly to facilitate the work.

He is said to have exploited Yuwun’s lack of knowledge of Information and Communication Technology, ICTs by changing her email password such that she could not have access to her mail any more.

With this manipulation, the suspect tactfully converted the email address into his own. Thereafter he moved out from the woman’s premises and changed the name of the NGO to SIDAPAC.

Balla Etata allegedly converted the Cooperative Organization for Rural Development and Sustainability Cameroon website into his own and started soliciting for projects.

Subsequently, an SMS text message came to Yuwun’s phone that a certain foreign funding body had transferred FCFA 500 million into her account, but she was unable to get into her mail for the details.

The presumption is that Balla Etata Armand diverted the amount to his newly created NGO. He was recently charged with false pretence while investigations are still on to establish facts concerning the alleged misappropriation of the FCFA 500 million. The matter is pending adjudication in court in Kumbo.