A Senegalese court on Monday indicted a fifth minister from the country’s former government on corruption charges as President Bassirou Diomaye Faye steps up an anti-graft campaign, defence lawyers said.
Amadou Mansour Faye, an ex-minister of community development has been accused of embezzling more than $4.6 million in public funds in Senegal, according to a parliamentary report.
Mansour Faye is the current mayor of the city of Saint-Louis. He categorically rejects the charges against him, as well as his lawyers, who say they believe that the charges against him are the result of political harassment.
“If, today, [Amadou Mansour Fall] is being held for this offense, there is absolutely no doubt that it is a political commission, because he is in no way involved [in this case] and he has demonstrated it,” states, one of his lawyer, Amadou Sall, told reporters in Dakar.
His defense added that the former government minister cannot be held responsible for any possible overcharging of rice prices, as he was not part of the commission that chose the company from which the rice in question was purchased.
The High Court of Justice’s investigating commission on Monday rejected Mansour Faye’s bail, proposed by his lawyers. It must now complete its investigation to decide whether or not he will be prosecuted.
Mansour Faye is the fifth member of former president Macky Sall’s government to be indicted by the High Court of Justice, a special court, which refused bail.
Faye is the third of the five to be detained following their indictment by the court, which is empowered to try former government members for crimes committed in the exercise of their duties.
Faye’s colleague, former minister for industrial development Moustapha Diop, was detained on 22 May for alleged embezzlement of some four million dollars in funds from the West African nation’s fund for combating the Covid-19 pandemic.
Former mines minister Aissatou Sophie Gladima, was also remanded in custody last week by the same court, charged with embezzlement of $330,000 from a fund for miners affected by Covid-19.
The High Court’s investigating commission charged and detained Faye, also brother-in-law of the former president, Sall, told reporters.
A sixth former minister is in the justice system’s crosshairs for another case.
Relations between the ruling Pastef party and the former president’s APR party are at their worst this year, after years of political confrontation and repression during the Macky Sall era.
Macky Sall’s close circle accuses the government of persecuting their political enemies, while President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko insist it is a matter assuring the independence of the justice system.
The Senegalese political scientist Mamadou Lamine Sarr told RFI that this Covid fund scandal has already become “one of the biggest in Senegal’s political history.”
“Terrible things happened in Senegal during the Covid crisis,” he said, while hospitals were lacking all the basic necessities to treat people, and now people discover that their politicians misused public funds, then and over two decades.
“We have to wait for the conclusions of the investigation, but I would not be surprised if other people were investigated soon,” he added.