Former presidential candidate Akere Muna has raised an alarm about corruption within Cameroon’s gold sector.
In a Facebook post, the renowned barrister and anti-corruption champion revealed significant discrepancies showing how money is being stolen through false declarations of mined materials.
Under the title “Impossible Arithmetic: The Systemic Plunder of Cameroon’s Resources from Gold to Oil,” he wrote that the staggering discrepancies in the gold trade between African nations and Dubai are not mere accounting errors, but the defining signature of a sophisticated system of state capture and institutionalized corruption.
Most of Cameroon’s gold is traded through Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Akere’s figures show that the value declared in Cameroon is far less than the value declared in Dubai for imports originating from Cameroon.
“The core discrepancy is both simple and damning: the value of gold imports declared by Dubai from Cameroon is hundreds of times higher than the value of exports declared by Cameroonian authorities,” he stated.
The statistics
A 2019-2020 analysis reveals stark, undeniable evidence: Cameroon’s declared exports to the UAE: a paltry $0.8 million USD (≈480 million XAF); and the UAE’s (Dubai’s) declared imports from Cameroon: a massive $340 million USD (≈204 billion XAF).
To Akere, this represents a discrepancy factor of over 400—a figure so large it can only be explained by systematic, large-scale smuggling, under-invoicing, and the deliberate falsification of origin documents.
“This is not a leakage; it is a haemorrhage of national wealth, orchestrated by transnational criminal networks often operating with the complicity of corrupt officials,” he stated.
According to Akere, this alleged corruption mirrors that in the oil sector, where Glencore was indicted for bribing Cameroonian officials and buying the country’s oil at below-market prices.
“This ‘impossible arithmetic’ in the gold sector is a mirror image of the long-entrenched corruption within Cameroon’s oil industry, managed by the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (SNH) and refined at the beleaguered National Refining Company (Sonara),” he stated.
Cameroon’s Suspension from Extractive Industries Initiative
In 2021, Cameroon was suspended from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) due to a lack of transparency in its mining sector. While the government has taken steps to be re-admitted, these allegations suggest some sectors are still struggling to meet transparency standards.
If Akere’s allegations are proven true, the Central African nation may be far from being readmitted.
“The parallel between the plunder of gold and the corruption in the oil sector is undeniable and ongoing,” Akere Muna said. “Whether it is Glencore and Vitol in the oil fields, unnamed traffickers in the gold mines, or the opaque SNH-CSTAR tandem in Kribi, the result is the same: a coordinated system that funnels Cameroon’s resource wealth away from its people.”
