the Paris Court of Appeal rejects the appeals of three Bongo youngsters | EUROtoday

Published on : 01/17/2024 – 10:16

2 minutes

The Paris Court of Appeal rejected on Tuesday January 16 the appeals of three of the kids of the late President Omar Bongo Ondimba, who contest their indictment within the judicial investigation on the Gabonese facet of African “ill-gotten gains” in France, we discovered from a judicial supply.

For Pascaline Bongo, eldest daughter and former chief of employees on the presidency of Gabon, the investigating chamber merely canceled a procedural act – her interrogation in open listening to – and deleted paperwork from the file referring to it, in response to the identical supply.

The magistrates additionally rejected the requests for nullity of Jeff Bongo Ondimba, son of Omar Bongo, and of Philomène Kouna, his adopted daughter.

According to Pascaline Bongo’s lawyer, Me Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, the cancellation of her shopper’s free listening to “tends to demonstrate that the accusation was constructed in clear violation of the applicable rules”.

“I can only deplore that the Court of Appeal did not follow through with its approach by canceling the indictment of Pascaline Bongo, unfounded both in law and in fact,” she added.

Read additionallyThe Bongo system, its hundreds of thousands and the affair of ill-gotten beneficial properties

Around ten properties seized in August and December

In complete, ten descendants of the rich patriarch, president of Gabon from 1967 till his dying in 2009, have been indicted since March 2022. Former Miss France Sonia Rolland and the BNP are additionally indicted.

“The defense pulled out all the stops but the investigating chamber logically rejected most of the arguments. The procedure is continuing and we hope that it will now come to an end quickly,” reacted Messrs William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth , legal professionals from the anti-corruption affiliation Transparency International, on the origin of this process through a criticism in May 2007.

In August and once more in December, round ten properties had been seized in upscale corners of Paris, in Provence or on the Côte d’Azur, for an estimated worth of round eight million euros.

The properties are suspected of getting been acquired utilizing cash from “Françafrique”, a robust system of corruption, political co-optation and business preserves between Paris and its former colonies on the continent, which notably gave rise to the “Elf affair” in France.

In complete, round 70 million euros of property has been seized up to now, a judicial supply indicated in September.

With AFP