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| Yves Michel Fotso |
A court in Cameroon has jailed
for life the former head of the defunct national carrier Camair, Yves Michel
Fotso, on conviction of embezzling almost US$56 million, legal sources said
yesterday.
Fotso, already sentenced to 25
years behind bars in a separate graft case, “took the rap for life”, said a
source close to the Special Criminal Tribunal, set up in the Central African
country to try major corruption cases.The judges “found Mr Fotso guilty
of embezzling 32.4 billion CFA francs” (US$55.7 million) when he was chief
executive of the airline – full name then was Cameroon Airlines – from 2000 to
2003, said another source close to the case.
Fotso created three front
companies to rent aircraft to the airline when the planes had already been
purchased outright with public funds, the source explained.
The judges also found Fotso
guilty of making fraudulent withdrawals of funds from a Camair account at the
Commercial Bank of Cameroon. The tycoon consistently protested
his innocence. In February, his lawyers decided to boycott hearings at the
special tribunal, denouncing procedural irregularities.
President Paul Biya, who has
ruled since 1982 over a state rated highly corrupt by Transparency
International, had called on Fotso to save the floundering airline in 2000.
Instead, the businessman used his
position to increase his already considerable wealth and became embroiled in
several scandals concerning his management of Camair.
Imprisoned since December 2010,
Fotso was given a 25-year jail sentence in September 2012, together with a
former top aide to Biya, Marafa Hamidou Yaya. The pair were found guilty of
embezzling US$29 million that Cameroon paid in 2001 for a presidential plane in
a deal that fell through.
Fotso became a target of the
“Sparrowhawk” anti-corruption campaign launched in 2006 under strong pressure
from Cameroon’s foreign donor partners. A large number of people, including
other heads of state-owned firms and former government ministers, have been
arrested. The Cameroonian Government put
Camair into liquidation in 2005, before launching Camair-Co, which is also
confronted with serious and great financial difficulties.