By Dibussi Tande
The Mfoundi High Court this evening, May 3, 2012, found Mr. Atangana Mebara, former Secretary-General at the Presidency, not guilty of three of the five charges against him in the "Albatross Affair", the botched attempt to purchase a presidential aircraft for president Biya.
Frontpage of tomorrow's Le Jour newspaper
The High Court found Mr. Mebara not guilty of the attempt to jointly embezzle $31 million with Kevin Walls, CEO of the London-based Airport Portfolio Management (APM), and Essomba Otele, head of APM’s Cameroon subsidiary, Asset Portfolio Management (APM).
This accusation stemmed from a letter that Kevin Walls sent to Mr. Mebara on June 5, 2003 advising him that GIA, a US-based firm which had received $31 million from the Government of Cameroon to purchase a presidential aircraft, could claim the money as arrears for aircraft it had leased CAMAIR.
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Wonder why the judgment should come in little drops....why not do it all in one go? Nevertheless, some good lesson to learn from this. Jerome Mendouga and other ambassadors now know that it is better to spend working time attending to Cameroonians waiting infinitely outside or dossiers languishing in the files or applications for visas taking unnecessarily long than to go shopping for presidential flying coffins (a. k. a. Albatross). Another interesting lesson is that embezzlement cannot be justified by claiming the money was used for another noble cause (improving Embassy or paying undocumented bills). Mr. Ambassador must spend some time between now and his unavoidable appeal to ruminate over what he should have done differently if he were to turn back the clock. Finally, it may be premature, but can Cameroonians consider this the early stages of the appearance of that elusive light at the end of the extremely long tunnel? Won't it be nice if it were?
Posted by: J. S. Dinga | Friday, 04 May 2012 at 08:04 AM