Following the revelation by the Court of Auditors of embezzlement in public services amounting to 63 billion CFA francs (or 95.7 million euros), several associations filed a complaint with the Niamey prosecutor’s office.
“We are talking about nearly 63 billion FCA in shortfall (for the State). It is essential to go and make this denunciation at the level of the prosecutor so that this file cannot be buried”, declared Ali Idrissa, head of the Niger Network for Transparency and Budget Analysis (Rotab), one NGOs at the origin of the complaint.
On April 19, the Court of Auditors submitted its 2021 report to President Mohamed Bazoum. The report “screened the management of services, public enterprises, local authorities and projects financed by foreign donors”.
The investigation “reveals over-invoicing, expenditure without legal basis, the absence of supporting documents for the purchase of equipment or the construction of infrastructure, false calls for competition in public contracts or the granting of undue advantages to officials”.
When he took office in April 2021, President Bazoum made the fight against corruption one of his main priorities and urged various actors in society, “including NGOs, to help him in this area”. .
Recently Mohamed Bazoum indicated that “about thirty senior State officials, guilty of embezzlement or embezzlement, are currently languishing in prison and will remain there for a long time”. Mahamadou Zada, the Minister of Communication is detained in prison for “his alleged involvement in a case of embezzlement of three billion FCFA (more than 4.5 million euros) when he ran a public company between 2013 and 2021” .
A case of over-invoicing of purchases and deliveries not made of military equipment, estimated at 39.4 billion FCFA (59.4 million euros), had raised a general outcry in 2020 in Niger.