(Business in Cameroon) - Will Pascal Rebillard, Managing Director at Banque internationale du Cameroun pour l’épargne et le crédit (BICEC) between 2008 and 2012, and Pierre Mahé, who headed this subsidiary of the French banking group BPCE, from 2012 to 2015, be present during the trial for misappropriation which starts on 20 July 2017 in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon?

This is the major question of this trial following the investigative phase which led, we learned from sources close to the case, to the indictment of these two former managing directors for “being accessories in breach of trust and aggravated fraud, complicity in the falsification and use of false private or business documents”. This, especially as, summoned a first time in November 2016 for a hearing at the Wouri High Court in Douala, these two former managers at BICEC, who currently live outside Cameroon, did not come before the investigating magistrate.

In any event, the trial which starts on 20 July 2017 should help to have more information about the role played by these former MDs of BICEC, in the case for the misappropriation of close to FCfa 50 billion within this banking institution. Revealed in 2015 by the current MD of this bank, what should be called the “BICEC embezzlements case” has already led to the imprisonment of about ten former Cameroonian employees and managers from this bank.  

Among them are the former deputy Managing Director of 20 years at BICEC, Innocent Ondoa Nkou, and Samuel Ngando Mbongue, former Accounts and Treasury Director at this bank; both presented as the leaders in the network which managed, over a period of 12 years, to embezzle FCfa 50 billion from BICEC. These embezzlements, highlights a report from COBAC, watchdog in the banking sector in the CEMAC zone, were carried out through over-invoicing and false invoicing, regularly remitted to service providers “via an off-the-record system”.

Brice R. Mbodiam