Former Gabonese Minister of Water and Forests Lee White, considered very close to deposed President Ali Bongo Ondimba, was placed under house arrest on Wednesday October 4 by the Libreville Court of First Instance as part of a complaint filed by the National Union of Water and Forestry Professionals (Synapef) against the ministry’s forestry director, Ghislain Moussavou, accused of “complicity in illegal logging” and “embezzlement of funds”. He as well as the minister’s financial advisor, Jean Guy Diouf, and the deputy secretary general of ministry services, Ghislain Aimé Boupo, are subject to the same sanction pending the first hearing of the trial, whose date n has not been fixed.
If the director of forests is the direct target of the request – because he is a signatory of the documents submitted to the courts – it is indeed the emblematic figure of green diplomacy put forward by Gabon for fifteen years who is targeted. The scientist of British origin, promoted to director of the National Agency for National Parks (ANPN) with the accession of Ali Bongo to power in 2009, then minister with a broad portfolio of water and forests, the sea, The environment, responsible for the climate plan and the land allocation plan in 2019, is in fact considered by the union as the authorizer of an illicit financing circuit.
“We filed our complaint with the gendarmerie research department last May without receiving a response. But the context has changed and we have relaunched our action because the justice system now has more room to maneuver to do its work,” relates the union spokesperson, Maurice Steed Mve Angue. The organization wishes to uncover the use of an account opened by the ministry with the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations to collect fines imposed on certain forestry operators and revenues from the sale of abandoned wood.
The sums which should normally have been paid into the ministry’s account with the Public Treasury are estimated at several hundred million CFA francs since 2021 (or several hundred thousand euros). They would have been used in particular to finance “missions by the minister, associations, studies by foreign consulting firms and communication actions” and would thus have found themselves subtracted from the budget of the ministry, on which the remuneration and bonuses of agents depend. In addition, affirms Maurice Steed Mve Angue, “there is no traceability or justification for part of the expenses incurred”.
The allocation, without call for tenders and beyond the regulatory areas, of two forestry permits to the Special Economic Zone of Gabon (GSEZ), the joint company between the Gabonese State and the Singaporean group Olam, regularly incriminated for its collusion with the fallen regime, constitutes another part of the complaint. Noureddin Bongo Valentin, the son of Ali Bongo, imprisoned and indicted the day after the August 30 coup for massive embezzlement of public funds, was its deputy director general until he joined the presidency in 2019.
Inventory request
Whatever the legal outcome, the case reflects the tensions and distrust that quickly set in after the arrival of Lee White at the head of the ministry in 2019. To the point of plunging his administration into an almost uninterrupted strike until to his dismissal and today justify a request for an inventory.
His successor designated by the transitional government, Colonel Maurice Ntossui Allogo, has so far refrained from revealing his intentions. Coming from the army general staff, the soldier does not hide his lack of mastery of the multiple subjects he will have to deal with. “He receives, listens and takes notes,” says a ministry official. No advisor has been sacked and one of the key men, Tanguy Gahouma, in charge of environmental issues within the presidency, is still in his post.
The new minister has also been tasked with tackling the thorny issue of human-wildlife conflicts. A major subject for farmers bordering national parks and which the government had only recently taken action on by creating a compensation fund and launching a program of electric fences to keep elephants away from villages and fields.
The message, in any case, is clever and shows that the recurring criticisms against a nature protection policy deemed indifferent to populations have been heard. “We have long been led to believe that Gabon’s elephants were in danger, but in reality there are far too many, and people complain about it every day. Their fields are devastated. “Ecology has been used to legitimize on the international scene a regime which was not legitimate”, accuses Franck Ndjimbi, former director of the ANPN and critic of the compromises in which, according to him, the famous naturalist with the Bongo system.
Lee White was a member of the presidential party, the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG), and was seeking a seat in the Lopé department, which is home to the national park, in the local vote held concurrently with the presidential election on August 26 eponymous, where the researcher began his research at the end of the 1980s.
Silence prudent
Having lived in Gabon for more than thirty years, from which he acquired nationality, Lee White, aged 58, has always refused to exploit the ecological issue for political purposes. “I accepted my position [as minister] without any reservation. It is a privilege that gives me the power to take concrete action to protect nature. We only have a decade left to avoid the worst,” he declared to Le Monde in October 2021. Previously, he had led the ANPN for ten years and helped formalize the “Green Gabon” project, intended to transform the country. oil company, almost 90% covered by forests, as a pioneer of ecological development in Africa.
With certain success with foreign donors: in 2019, Gabon was the first country to be promised the payment over ten years of 150 million dollars for its efforts to fight against deforestation by the Initiative for Central African Forest (CAFI). In spring 2023 in Libreville, Ali Bongo co-chaired with Emmanuel Macron the One Forest Summit, an event presented by the Elysée as “a key moment for climate action and biodiversity” in a member country – like France – of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC). A few months before the presidential election, the event was considered unwelcome by the opposition.
These foreign partners have walled themselves in cautious silence since the fall of Ali Bongo. Only the United States announced a partial suspension of their aid, without giving further details. But privately, most say they hope to continue working with Gabon, which until August 30 they considered their strongest point of support for advancing the agenda to protect the basin’s forests of the Congo.
These international agreements could, however, be subject to review. This is the request of certain civil society organizations. “We want to know where the conservation money went,” claims Nicaise Moulombi, president of the NGO Croissance santé environment (CSE) and former vice-president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), citing the example of funds obtained via CAFI. There is also talk of the debt conversion operation concluded with France in 2008 for an amount of 50 million euros, regarding which embezzlement was reported by civil society without being pursued, according to Nicaise Moulombi.
The external debt refinancing agreement signed in mid-August thanks to the guarantee of the United States and intended to support the extension of marine protected areas to achieve the international objective of 30%, is not spared from criticism . Beyond the allocation of the funds released ($163 million), it is the attribution of this project to the American NGO The Nature Conservancy which is being discussed. As the latest example of a nature protection policy too exclusively designed and implemented by foreign conservationists.
