Court orders seizure of late former SNEC GM’s property

By Mbom Sixtus in Yaounde  

 

The property of the deceased former general manager of the Cameroon National Water Corporation, SNEC, Obouh Fegue has been seized by government following a decision by the special criminal court on July 16, declaring the dead man guilty of embezzlement of state funds. The court ruled that Fegue and a co-accused should pay a sum of 888, 801MFCFA to the state.

Obouh Fegue: Late former SNEC GM

While his property is being evaluated to determine whether it will be able to cover the total sum which he is supposed to pay to the state, his lawyer, Abah Fouda is of the opinion that the decision to seize his client’s property is illegal. He argued that the successors of the deceased general manager will not be able to contest the decision of the court to protect their property because they were never called up to defend the possessions at the special criminal court and that the dead man could not also tell his own side of the story. He insisted that the court was supposed to summon the Fegue’s heirs to appear in court before passing the verdict.

The seizure of Fegue’s property is coming at a time when his children are said to be fighting over succession rights in suits and counter suits in different courts in the nation’s capital, Yaounde.

The case was brought to the Special Criminal Court, SCC following a suit by the ministry of finance accusing the former general manager   of the defunct water corporation of misappropriating about 854.801MFCFA. Two of the co-accused, Cameroonian artists, Telesphore Ekegue who is currently on the run and Jacques Enyengue Nkolo were equally judged alongside the late Fegue.

Yap Aboua, the president of the court sentenced the run-away defendant to life imprisonment while the third accused was declared not guilty of the charges against him. The judges reclassified the case of the liberated Nkolo, who was brought to court for complicity in embezzlement of funds, to attempted embezzlement of state funds before discharging him on grounds that the charges were unfounded. He was however absent in court when the verdict was declared; the judge jokingly told his lawyer, Aba Fouda that his client has escaped and asked him to send an SMS to him informing him that he has been acquitted.

Of the 888,801MFCFA the deceased general manager of SNEC was ordered to pay, 34MFCFA was to be paid as charges for the cost of investigations carried out locally and abroad and for payment of the employees of the judicial system who worked on the case. About 44.972million of the total sum was an additional amount which the court charged for the cost of operations carried out in relation to the proceedings, the amount is intended to cover cost incurred by government from preliminary investigations to the final judgement. The properties of the Fegue and the run-away artist Ekegue will be confiscated and sold to recover the said money.

As revealed in court by the legal department, Fegue died leaving behind storey buildings in Yaounde, Mbalmayo and an 80-hectare plantation. The artist for his part owns a storey building in Yaounde.

It was in the year 2000, when Clement Obouh Fegue, the then managing director of SNEC claimed that the structure owed money to three companies including two supposed French companies for services purportedly rendered to SNEC to the tune of over one billion FCFA. The musician, Ekegue was an employee of SNEC at the time and was in charge of facilitating the payment of debts. An unsuspecting ministry of finance, with regard to the debt of nearly 19 billion FCFA due to SNEC, transferred 1,050 billion FCFA in the BICEC accounts of one of the companies, the Société Électronique Camerounaise (Elcadis).

Fegue, according to the facts of the case, was the sole signatory on the account. He withdrew 850MFCFA of the sum to put in a personal account. When the managing director of Elcadis, Enyegue Nkolo (who was acquitted) sent a letter to the finance ministry in December 2009, demanding the remaining 195 MFCFA, the then finance minister Edouard Akame Mfoumou did not give a favourable response given that foreign companies had denounced the fact that a Cameroonian company was being paid while they (two French companies) went home with no payment.

Noticing that the documents accompanying the letter were dubious, the then finance minister blocked the remaining funds and filed a complaint that eventually put the individuals involved in the shady deal at the mercy of Operation Sparrow Hawk. Nkolo’s lawyer told the SCC that his client was not the author of the letter and that his signature was falsified by the dead former SNEC boss.