- Public Health Minister quoted to had allegedly told investigators that it was the PM that instructed him to give a bulk of the contracts to newly created MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA
- Director of Civil Cabinet at the PM’s Office grilled by investigators from Special Criminal Court
- Passports of dozens of personalities indicted in COVIDGATE, reportedly seized.
The Prime Minister and ‘Head of Government’, Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute, is reported to have been indicted. In the mismanagement of the FCFA 180 billion that the Government allocated last year to a total of 24 ministries, for the fight against the deadly COVID-19 also known as Coronavirus.
Worthnoting recalling first of all
that the report of the audit that was conducted by the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court on the management of the FCFA 180 billion COVID-19 funds as ordered by the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, on the insistence of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, from which the State of Cameroon borrowed the money to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, shows that there was a wide scale embezzlement of the funds in different ways. The scandal has been dubbed, COVIDGATE.
Recent Development In The Scandal
Worth recalling as well that in a summary of the audit report on the management of the COVID - 19 funds, that the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court recently prepared with the collaboration of a reputed audit firm, it was revealed that though the three ministries, that is tfe Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation, and the Ministry of Finance were officially allocated a total sum of FCFA 99,59 billion out of the FCFA 180 billion package that was supposed to go to 24 ministries, the three ministries alone ended up engaging expenditures to a total of FCFA 157.9 billion. The audit report thus asserted that at the end of the day, the total amount of money that was actually disbursed to other ministries was much less significant.
In fact some members of Government like the Minister of Higher Education, Prof Jacques Fame Ndongo, told investigators from the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde that is conducting an ongoing judicial Investigation based on the audit report, that his ministry has till date not received the FCFA 6 billion that was officially supposed to be disbursed to the ministerial department from the FCFA 180 billion package. Fame Ndongo told the Investigators that he is still waiting for the FCFA 6 billion that was supposed to be sent to his ministry. This is another new development in the COVIDGATE.
It would be recalled that President Biya in June 2020, signed a decree in which FCFA 180 billion was allocated by the State to the Government’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The next month, precisely on July 22, the Prime Minister and’Head of Government’, Dion Ngute, signed Decree No, 2020/ 3221/ PM in which the partitioning of the FCFA 180 billion to the 24 ministries were clearly stated.
The question now is, who took the decision for the three ministries mentioned above, to engage expenditures far more than what was allocated to them in the Prime Ministerial decree? Or better still, who took the decision to divert the funds that were officially allocated to some other ministries, to the three ministries mentioned above?
Incrimination Of PM Dion Ngute!
Meanwhile in a recent editorial in his programne, ‘Tribune d’Afrique’, over Radio France Internationale, RFI, in Paris, where he has been working for some 20 years or more, the celebrated Cameroonian born journalist, Alain Foka, who is reputed to have several contacts at high level in governments in Francophone African countries, made some startling revelations about his findings as regard the shameful COVIDGATE in the land of his birth, Cameroon.
Quoting an undisclosed source in Cameroon, Alain Foka disclosed that the Minister of Public Health, Dr Manaouda Malachie, that many have been accusing of being at the centre of the COVIDGATE, was recently interrogated within the framework of the ongoing judicial the Investigation by the Special Criminal Court one n Yaounde, on the management of COVID-19 funds. He disclosed that when the Minister Manaouda Malachie was grilled on why his ministry awarded a large majority of contracts to one enterprise, MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, the minister allegedly told the investigators that he acted on the instruction of the Prime Minister.
Worthnoting slso that a number of Francophone journalists have been posting reports in social media forums in the last few of weeks, quoting unnamed senior officials in the Ministry of Public Health, as saying that it was Prime Minister Dion Ngute that directed their boss, Minister Manaouda Malachie, to give most of the contracts to MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA. It should be noted that this information remains a allegation. However for a renowned journalist like Alain Foka to quote the Minister of Public Health to had made such a declaration to investigators, is something to take serious, and it should definitely be troubling news to supporters and sympathisers of Prime Minister Dion Ngute.
Director Of Cabinet Interrogated
Meanwhile RFI’s Alain Foka, also reported that the Director of Cabinet at the Prime Minister’s Office, Confiance Ebone, was interrogated early last month (June) by investigators from the Special Criminal Court, in connection to indictment of his boss (Prime Minister Dion Ngute), in COVIDGATE. The RFI journalist argued that for a Prime Minister’s Director of Cabinet to be grilled by investigators in connection to his alleged involvement in the embezzlement of public funds, is one of the worst humiliation that a sitting Prime Minister can get.
Alain Foka also noted that the international French language magazine, Jeune Afrique, with headquarters in France, in one of its recent editions also focussed on COVIDGATE in Cameroon, with a humiliating picture of Prime Minister Dion Ngute, on the front page.
Passports Of 162 Persons Seized!
Meanwhile Alain Foka in his editorial that focussed on the COVIDGATE, also disclosed that his sources in the Cameroon, Government have told him that the passports of as many as some 162 persons in Cameroon, have been seized in connection to the ongoing judicial investigation into COVIDGATE. These are senior Government officials and heads of enterprises or contractors, that have been indicted in the COVIDGATE, based on the audit report.
However it should be noted that in principle, the seizure of passports at this level of the investigation is more as a preventive measure, to block some of those indicted persons that feel guilty, from fleeing the country. At the end of the judicial investigation, a final report will be made on those who are supposed to face court action for their alleged involvement in embezzlement of the COVID-19 funds. Those persons that the judicial investigation will conclude that they do not have a case to answer, in court, will be given back their passports.
The MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA Affair
What is being termed as the MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon Affair, has been making waves in both Francophone social media groups as well in several Francophone traditional media organs , since the first part of the audit report by the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court on the COVIDGATE, leaked to the public last May.
But even before then, the SDF MP, Hon Jean Michel Nintcheu, had in a report made public late last year on the scandalous award of contracts by the Ministry of Public Health, from the funds the Government allocated for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, raised questions about MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, that was allocated a bulk of the contracts. The MP who termed the award of contracts as a mafia, also cried fowl in an allegation that the prices of the items that MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, a South Korean enterprise, supplied to Caneroon’s Ministry of Public Health as contained in documents he obtained, were heavily inflated. It is an allegation that the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court corroborated in their audit report, though it stated clearly that it was not only in the purchase orders given to MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA that prices or costs were inflated.
Worthnoting however that the MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA Affair, is what has really been dominating discussions and debates on the social media as well as in the traditional media.
MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon Reacts
Meanwhile in a press release signed on June 1, 2021 in Seoul, South Korea, by the Chairnan of the Board of Directors of MEDILINE MEDICAL Sangki - Yi, the Group said that: “For the past few weeks, our MEDILINE MEDICAL CAMEROON Company has been the subject of a campaign of misinformation that has greatly damaged its image”. The press release went on to explain that the “defamatory Information is related to what public opinion now terns as Covidgate”.
As expected, the company in the press release insisted that there was nothing wrong in any of contracts it was given by the Cameroon Government in relation to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The company named the contracts that it had so far been given by the Cameroon Government, stating details of the items supplied so far, the money it had so far received from the Government, what was being owed, and the contracts that are still to be delivered.
The company for example said it had by then supplied 1.9 million Standard Q COVID-19 AG type tests to the Government, and had received a payment of FCFA 24.5 billion, “On the deliveries duly carried out, 8.557, 500,000 FCFA is still pending payment from the Public Treasury”, it added.
The company stated that it was still to deliver on the contract of 1,100,000 Standard Q COVID-19 AG type tests for s total of FCFA 19.25 billion, ordered by the Cameroon Government. The company was also still to deliver on another Government contract for the purchase or supply of 17 type C ambulances, and 11 type B ambulances for a total of FCFA 1.452, 300, 000.
Why All These Contracts To One Enterprise
But besides the allegations of inflated bills, many Cameroonians have been questioning why the Ministry of Public Health had to award a bulk of the contracts to one enterprise, MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA. It is not clear as to the exact amount of money that the Ministry of Public Health alone finally engaged as expenditures, in the FCFA 180 billion package that the Government allocated for the fight against COVID-19 pandemic to 24: ministries. But what is certain is that the Ministry of Public Health engaged the largest amount among all the ministries, considering that COVID-19 is a public health issue.
As is seen in the press release that MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA issued itself, the contracts that the Ministry of Public Health, or what the company prefers to refer to as the Government of Cameroon, gave to the company alone, amounted to over FCFA 50 billion. This means that:the contracts for over 1/4 of the FCFA 180 billion that the Government allocated for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, were engaged in contracts to the South Korean company, MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, alone.
In fact Alain Foka of RFI in his aforementioned editorial, said the contracts that were awarded to MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA alone by the Ministry of Public Health, constituted at least 70 % of the expenditures that the ministry engaged from the FCFA 180 billion that was meant for 24 ministries. This is something that was bound to raise questions or suspicions.
87 Enterprises Were Shortlisted
A legal adviser of the SDF, Barrister Ngouana K. Moustapha, said in a political debate programme, ‘Droit Des Respinses’, over Equinoxe TV in Douala on Sunday, July 4, 2021, that the Government retained a total of 87 enterprises in a shortlist of 303 enterprises that wanted to be awarded contracts in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic. He questioned what happened that almost all the contracts were awarded to just a few enterprises, some of which were created just last year.
Why The Questions And Suspicions
The case of MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, a pharmaceutical company, raises a lot of questions for a number of reasons. There are many old pharmaceutical companies in Cameroon, both local and multinational, that have been doing business with the Government for years.
As for MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, it is a new company in the country. In fact MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA was officially inaugurated by the Minister of Public Health, Dr Manaouda Malachie, in Yaounde, on July 4, 2020. Worth recalling that the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Cameroon back on March 6, 2020. So the enterprise was inaugurated at a time that Cameroon was deep in the COVID - 19 pandemic.
Meanwhile the following month after the inauguration of MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, the Prime Minister as aforementioned signed a decree in which the FCFA 180 billion that the State borrowed from IMF for the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, was partitioned to 24 ministries..
Then curiously enough, the Ministry of Public Health so much trusted the new and thus untested company, MEDILINE MEDICA Cameroon Sa, with which the Government had never done any business before, to the point that the ministry went on to award a bulk of the contracts in terms of finances, to this new and untested company in the country. Moreso, at such a critical time.
It is very possible as some observers suspect, that some old pharmaceutical companies in the country that were in the list of 87 enterprises that the Government shortlisted, and that failed to get the contracts that were given to the new pharmaceutical company, MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, are behind some strong criticisns being made in the social and traditional media against the company.
Mohamadou Dabo
But whatever the case, what happened as regard the handing of a bulk of the contracts by the Ministry of Public Health to the South Korean company alone, as aforementioned, was bound to raise many questions and even eyebrows in the country. It is not for nothing that the Special Criminal Court is interested in this issue. If the finding of the investigators confirmed that Prime Minister Dion Ngute, was the one that behind the scene in instructed the Minister of Public Health to give all those contracts to MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, then the PM will likely end up like one of his predecessors, Chief Ephraim Inoni ended. God forbid!
Meanwhile as the SDF official said last Sunday, there are even people who think that some big men were secretly behind the creation of MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon SA, with their target being to grab Government contracts in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. In the social and traditional media in Cameroon, a certain, Mohamadou Dabo, a Cameroonian said to be a former South Korean Consul to Cameroon, is alleged to be the real face behind the creation of a branch of MEDILINE MEDICAL in Cameroon, in collaboration with some big men in Government. This at least for now, remains an allegation.
What looks however certain, is that the MEDILINE MEDICAL Cameroon Affair will end up in court as part of the COVIDGATE. RFI journalist, Alain Foka, says from the information he is getting, the COVIDGATE will see the highest number of arrests in Cameroon, since President Biya launched his operation the war against embezzlement of public funds dubbed Sparrow Hawk, or Operation Epervier in French, some 16 years ago.
Source : Forum Libre (N° 136, July 7, 2021)
