The Cameroonian weekly publication, Repères, has just revealed that a network of fraudsters successfully embezzled close to 600 million FCfa from the Road Revenue Security Programme (PSRR) in 2012. According to the paper, which cites a report by the Contrôle supérieur de l’Etat (Consupe) currently awaiting publication, the embezzlement was done by selling tickets in parallel, but especially the making of fake receipts of payment from the Treasury.

The presumed mastermind behind the network, Guillaume Mankollo Ekomba, alleged to be the close associate of former PSRR Coordinator, Serge Anaba Akoa, has been on the run since 2012 having sensed what was coming after being summoned by Contrôle supérieur de l’Etat inspectors. After dashing into the night, he was sentenced in absentia in another embezzlement case at the weighing station in Bekoko, near the entrance to Douala.

In 2012, the Tax Directorate, on the basis of receipts of payment at toll station heads, declared that it had collected a total of 5.2 trillion FCfa. But the Agence centrale comptable du Trésor (ACCT), which consolidates the amounts of the receipts paid over to the State’s coffers, declared a total of 4.7 billion FCfa. The gap between the two was a whopping 600 million FCfa between the two administrations.

It was due to these discrepancies that the pot of gold was discovered: numerous receipts of payment examined by the Tax Directorate proved false. The Contrôle supérieur de l’Etat concluded that the aim was ultimately to mask the embezzlement being perpetrated by by a network of agents and PSRR heads. The merry-go-round certainly did not begin in 2012 and has probably made the State lose over half-a-billion FCfa, revealed the weekly paper, Repères.