Mounchipou: transparency trial or smokescreen?
The police: a body riddled with corruption?
Since the appearance of Cameroon at the bottom of TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 1999, the courts have increasingly taken centre-stage in the fight against corruption in Cameroon. But a series of so-called ‘transparency trials’ has raised questions as to whether the courts are demonstrating a real determination to combat corruption and the embezzlement of public funds or whether they are merely creating a smokescreen to improve public and international perceptions. The most sensational of the trials is known as ‘the Mounchipou case’ after the former minister for post and telecommunications, Mounchipou Seidou. The singularity of the trial lies in both the prominence of the main defendant, Mounchipou Seidou, and in the large number of defendants and the nature of the offences with which they were charged. More than 20 defendants, including Seidou, numerous senior officials from the ministry of post and telecommunications and five company directors, were charged with embezzling public funds, forgery and using forged documents, fraud, and deriving a personal interest from a public act. The charges related to the award of contracts for building works and the purchase of equipment for the ministry. Although the proceedings were opened in 1999, the defendants were only tried in 2003 because of delays in the judicial system. After a trial lasting more than seven months, the verdict was handed down in November 2003. The court sentenced seven of the accused to 20 years’ imprisonment combined with the confiscation of their assets, acquitting other defendants.2 However, despite the heavy penalties, the significance of the case remains unclear. Many observers point to the fact that, since the trial began in 1999, there have been no other prosecutions, in spite of numerous allegations of corruption in other government departments.
In TI’s 2003 Global Corruption Barometer survey,3 in response to the question ‘If you … could eliminate corruption from one of the following institutions what would your first choice be?’, 14 per cent of Cameroonian respondents chose the police, second only to the courts at 31 per cent. There are serious public concerns about police conduct, and even Pierre Minlo Medjo, the director of national security, admitted in December 2003 that ‘From time to time we are informed of cases involving the illegal subcontracting of public service, of brazen swindling, of deliberate violence against individuals, of foreigners being cheated almost systematically, of abuses of all kinds, particularly of large scale corruption on the part of corrupt officials who see their office as an unlimited opportunity for personal enrichment.’4 These observations reflect the daily reality. To take one example, taxi drivers are routinely forced to bribe police officers FCFA 1,000 (US $2) or more for imaginary offences such as ‘refusal to carry passengers’, ‘blocking the public highway’, or having a ‘double windscreen’ in the case of taxi drivers who wear glasses. This situation became so extreme that taxi drivers went on strike in March 2004, denouncing police harassment and demanding, among other things, that the rate set for fines should be respected. At the end of negotiations between the government and the taxi drivers’ unions, the authorities published a list of official documents and other ancillary items to be produced when police checks are carried out, and a classification of fines. The taxi drivers resumed work, but corruption in the police is only likely to be stamped out by exemplary penalties for corrupt officers and the imposition of effective discipline. Talla Jean-Bosco (TI Cameroon)
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Country reports
GC2005 02 chap06 124
13/1/05 4:34:03 pm