Inside The Albatross: Anatomy of a corruption scandal

• Why Inoni, Marafa, Mebara, Late Mendouga, Yves-Michel Fotso and others were sent to Kondengui

• All the Biya Men: How they bleed Cameroonians


• What did the President know and when did he know it


• Inside the rot: who did what, when and how; only in the AGBAW-EBAI DEBATE


Disbelief and gloom enveloped the nation following the death of Ambassador Jerome Mendouga. He was arrested alongside former Prime Minister Head of Government and hitherto Minister, Assistant Secretary General at the Presidency Chief Inoni and Marafa Hamidou Yaya, former Minister of State in charge of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, who previously served as Secretary General at the Presidency.


They were accused of corruption and embezzlement and sent to jail by a Special Criminal Court in Yaounde. Mendouga’s death brings the number to five of highly placed Cameroon government officials who have lost their lives ever since the Special Criminal Court sent them to prison. Ambassador Mendouga’s death was a political bombshell that sent shock waves across the world; dividing public opinion and heating up the national polity.

Inoni, Marafa and Mendo Ze are all high profile public officials arrested and charged. But unlike Mendo Ze, Inoni and Marafa are in connection with what has come to be known as the “Albatross Affair” – the botched attempt to procure a presidential jet – in which the two are amongst other top government officials accused of embezzling $31million.


Other larger-than-life figures detained in this sordid affair include Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara; former Secretary General at the Presidency; late Jerome Mendouga, former Cameroon Ambassador to the United States; HubertPatrick Otélé Essomba, former Assistant General Manager of Aircraft Portfolio Management (APM Cameroon) and Yves-Michel Fotso; former Managing Director of the defunct Cameroon Airlines, CAMAIR.


So what exactly was the role of the key actors in this unfolding saga? Who did what, where, when and how? Cameroon Concord goes beyond the headlines with in-depth analysis of the Albatross affair; a tangled tale; a complex, multifaceted, and convoluted case characterized by sensational accusations and counter-accusations, and widespread public perception that politics, rather than justice, has been the driving force behind it all. We begin the AGBAW-EBAI DEBATE on the Albatross with these two facsimile of documents vindicating Chief Inoni Ephraim.


Are Chief Inoni, Marafa, Mebara et Al imprisoned because they didn´t pay the Albatross and Camair bills as instructed from the presidency? Is this a political settling of scores or a political witch hunt? Who benefits from this? The political big-guns or the cameroonian public? This is what the Agbaw-Ebai Debate is all about. Join the conversation so that together with Cameroon Concord we all can make our nation better.