French Justice has simply accused BNP Paribas of “laundering corruption and laundering the embezzlement of public funds”. The investigation by the monetary heart on the court docket in Paris issues the legacy of the previous Gabonese president, now deceased, Omar Bongo. In equity, “GDP failed to satisfy its vigilance obligations” by failing to report the massive sums that handed by means of it and had been used to accumulate actual property. She would subsequently have “performed a number one position” in the cash laundering system arrange by the Bongo household.
Investigators from the monetary heart investigated the operation of an organization known as “Atelier 74” of the Bongo clan. Between 1997 and 2009, 52 million euros – or about 34 billion CFA francs – handed by means of Atelier 74’s accounts in Gabon and France.
No report
The corporate was liable for shopping for and renovating properties, particularly in Paris and Good. In keeping with a 2017 report, the systematic use of controls to pay for these acquisitions must have warned GDP of a doable “cash laundering system”. And the financial institution must have made a “assertion of suspicion” about Ateliers 74. But it surely by no means reported the slightest truth, neither to the authorities nor to its inside management our bodies.
A “historic” first
If GDP doesn’t touch upon the circumstances in query, an inside supply confirms that it “denies any prison legal responsibility for these information earlier than 2009”. The prosecution from the French financial institution is in any case a primary “historic”, the lawyer from Transparency Worldwide was happy. It was this NGO that launched the so-called abuses eleven years in the past, and for which 13 folks have already been charged, together with 5 members of the Sassou-Nguesso household, from Congo-Brazzaville, however no member of the Bongo household.
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