Senegalese deputies adopted, on the evening of Thursday, July 20, a law abolishing a special anti-corruption court which, according to the government, did not “help stem economic and financial crime” and was decried by opponents as a jurisdiction created to “subdue” them. The Court for the Suppression of Illicit Enrichment (CREI) will be replaced by a Financial Judicial Pool (PJF) comprising in particular a “specially competent” prosecutor’s office on financial crime and made up of specialized magistrates. The bill was approved by more than 120 of the 165 deputies in the National Assembly. The new law must be promulgated by the Head of State.
The Minister of Justice, Ismaïla Madior Fall, welcomed “jurisdictional progress” with the PJF, a new system which “modernizes” the fight against financial crime, which “has become more complex”, hence, according to him, the “difficulties” encountered by the CREI due to a lack “of human resources, means and specialized magistrates”. Almost all of the deputies who spoke were delighted with the abolition of the CREI. Those in the opposition have criticized a court that dispensed “political justice” and was used to “subdue opponents”, which authorities deny.
Parliamentarians returned at length to the cases of two opposition figures, Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall, prevented from participating in the 2019 presidential election because of CREI convictions.
Sentenced and pardoned
Karim Wade, son of former President Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012), was sentenced in 2015 to six years in prison for illicit enrichment. A former minister of state under his father’s regime, he was pardoned in 2016 by President Macky Sall and has since been exiled to Qatar.
Khalifa Sall, mayor of Dakar from 2009, was found guilty of embezzling around 2.5 million euros from municipal coffers and sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison. Imprisoned in 2017 and then revoked, he regained his freedom in 2019, also thanks to a presidential pardon.
President Macky Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, declared at the beginning of July that he was not a candidate for the presidency of 2024. He also announced an upcoming seizure of the National Assembly for electoral reforms to allow Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall to be able to stand for the presidential election of 2024.
The CREI was established by former President Abdou Diouf (1981-2000) in 1981. It remained dormant for many years, before being reactivated by Macky Sall when he came to power in 2012. The court has been criticized by human rights defenders, who blamed it in particular for the impossibility of appealing its decisions.