The French company, Sofrepost, a subsidiary of the French Postal Service, has just extended its technical assistance contract with Cameroon Postal Service (Campost), according to internal sources both at the postal company and at the Ministry of Postal Services and Telecommunications.

The first contract between Campost and Sofrepost was signed in 2010 for two years for 2 billion FCfa in revenue right after the departure of the Canadian firm, Tecsult International Limited, which had completed its management contract with Campost, leaving a 2.2 billion FCfa hole in its cash register.

Though it enabled the Cameroon postal company to regain some financial footing and expand into new activities, the union with Sofrepost was not without incident. Indeed, according to reliable sources, from 2011 and November 2013, a network of scammers within Campost led by Jean Jacques Zé, enabled the embezzlement of some 4 billion FCfa by way of fraudulent wires. In 2013, it was the head of Centre financier national de la Campost (the postal bank), Jules Mvogo Etoundi, who was thrown in Kondengui central prison in Yaoundé for embezzling 404 million FCfa.

These embezzlement cases became commonplace at the Cameroonian postal company which has nevertheless achieved increased sales since 2010. Hervé Béril, the French Managing Director of Campost, notes that the company’s earnings have climbed by “practically 20% compared to 2010” and “in 2012, they increased revenue by over 10%, and are still going.”

This increase in revenue at Campost is certainly due in part to its new product offerings including express mail, money transfers, postal insurance supported by Allianz and also the boosting of its financial services.

Although it has been a haven for embezzlement for Campost, and even after the some clients stepped back from the organisation following the crisis that hit the Cameroonian postal company in 2003, official figures confirm that the postal bank currently has some 850,000 savings accounts and 56,700 current accounts.