The announcement comes three weeks after the coup that overthrew Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba. One of his sons, and people close to the cabinet of the deposed head of state, were indicted and imprisoned for “high treason” and “active corruption”.
Libreville prosecutor André-Patrick Roponat announced Wednesday that Noureddin Bongo Valentin, Ali Bongo’s eldest son, Jessye Ella Ekogha, the former presidential spokesperson, as well as four other people were “indicted on Tuesday and placed in pre-trial detention.
Less than a month after the putsch
“All the charges at the time of their arrests were retained for indictment,” said André-Patrick Roponat, namely “high treason against state institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds, international financial embezzlement in organized gang, forgery and use of forgery, falsification of the signature of the President of the Republic, active corruption, drug trafficking.”
On August 30, less than an hour after the announcement in the middle of the night of the re-election of Ali Bongo, in power since 2009 and accused of massive fraud, the military, led by General Brice Oligui Nguema, overthrew him, notably accusing his regime of “massive embezzlement” of public funds.
Arrests and house arrest
The same day of the coup, the military arrested one of the sons of the deposed head of state, as well as five other young senior officials in the cabinet of the ex-president and his wife Sylvia Bongo Valentin. The searches at their homes, broadcast extensively by state television, showed them at the feet of trunks, suitcases and bags overflowing with wads of bank notes.
Sylvia Bongo Valentin is under house arrest in Libreville “for her protection” according to the presidency. “We have no news of Sylvia Bongo Valentin who is being held incommunicado outside of any legal framework. This situation is unjustifiable and incompatible with the rule of law. We have filed a complaint against those responsible for what appears to be a hostage-taking,” one of his lawyers in Paris, Me François Zimeray, declared on Wednesday. Ali Bongo, first placed under house arrest in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, for a few days following the putsch, is “free to move” and can “go abroad”, announced General Oligui on September 6.
An illegal and important heritage in France
Following an NGO complaint in 2007, Parisian anti-corruption judges looked into suspicions of embezzlement of public funds which had notably enabled the Bongo family to acquire considerable assets in France. Several members of the Bongo family, from Omar the late father to Ali the son, including other relatives, notably his daughter Pascaline, are suspected of having benefited from significant real estate assets “fraudulently” acquired and valued by justice “at 85 million euros”.
Nine children of Omar Bongo are indicted in France, in particular for concealment of embezzlement of public funds as part of the investigation into “ill-gotten gains”. Gabon, ruled by the Bongo family since 1967, where Ali Bongo succeeded his father Omar upon his death in 2009, is often denounced for the extent of the corruption practiced there. The country is ranked 136th out of 180 for perception of corruption by Transparency International (2022).