1995 plane crash: CAMAIR report implicates Tchiroma

By Douglas A. Achingale in Yaounde

Issa Tchiroma

A report of the defunct Cameroon Airlines (CAMAIR) published on the Africa-info website reveals Issa Tchiroma Bakary as having received huge sums of money as commission from South Africa Airways (SAA), the company that was in charge of carrying out maintenance works on CAMAIR planes, in his capacity as minister of transport at the time. According to the report, Tchiroma requested for and received the commission in order to finance the activities of his political party.

Written by members of the follow-up commission for the execution of maintenance contracts between CAMAIR and SAA, headed by Jean Foumane Akame, the said report was made public on December 7, 2000 barely 24 hours after their ten-day mission in Paris, France. Issa Tchiroma, it should be noted, was part of the delegation.

“Mr. Tchiroma,” the report states inter alia, “maintained that the contracts (of maintenance of CAMAIR planes) were satisfactorily executed thanks to the support of the Advanced Trust Limited (ATT) against the payment of a commission. He denied having received money or gifts before the signing of the contracts. However, he admitted having received and at times requested sums of money from ATT, for the financing of his political activities, after signing the contracts.”

It is this commission, worth billions of FCFA, that the jailed former minister of territorial administration and decentralization, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, accused Tchiroma of stealthily receiving, in his fourth open letter to the head of state. According to Marafa, the commission was paid whereas no serious maintenance works were carried out on the CAMAIR planes. He said it was because the Boeing 737-200 TJ-CBE had technical faults that were not looked into, that it crashed in the mangroves of Youpwé – Douala on December 1995, killing 71 people.

However, Issa Tchiroma has all along denied reception of any commission from SAA and ATT. On September 25, 2012, he organized a press conference in Yaounde to reiterate his innocence. But instead of addressing the issue in question, he spent his time spitting out vitriol against Marafa and saying other things – some of them blatant lies – which Cameroonians do not want to hear.

Tchiroma’s partner in crime

The CAMAIR report further presents Louis Philippe Marnier, a 49-year-old Frenchman, as Tchiroma’s partner in crime. This technician with no formal university education had short-term contracts with SAA that were limited to the inspection of some of the airline company’s materials. In the report, he is presented as Tchiroma’s age old friend through whom the commission was paid to the then minister of transport.

The report also reveals Marnier as the one with whom Tchiroma was nursing plans to “sell” CAMAIR to SAA. “He (Tchiroma) said that he had a close and long-time relationship with Mr. Philippe Marnier and justified his personal implication in the negotiations by the wish he had to see the relationship between the two companies evolve towards the absorption of CAMIR by SAA in the event of the privatization of CAMAIR,” the report further explains.

The intermediary role that Marnier was brought in to play was thus to the secret advantage of his friend and himself rather than to CAMAIR or the Cameroon government. As someone put it, between Marafa who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for being an accomplice in the embezzlement of state funds and Tchiroma found to be corrupt and to have wanted to sell an airline company to strangers, who is more guilty? The answer is blowing in the wind.