Education Minister Bapes Bape spends first night in jail

Charges are still awaited but the Minister of Secondary Education has spent his first night at the Kondengui prison to await trial for embezzlement of public funds after his arrest on Monday

BY EUGENE N NFORNGWA

YAOUNDE–The long-serving Minister of Secondary Education, Louis Bapes Bapes, has spent his first night in lockup, after being arrested Monday morning for suspected embezzlement of public funds. He is the first minister to be arrested for corruption while still in office.

Bapes will be awaiting trial at the Kondengui Central Prison, where other former ministers and public officials are either doing jail time or in pre-trial detention for similar but unrelated offenses, decided a judge at the Special Criminal Court (SCC).

SCC did not release details about the charges brought against the minister. The court only hears cases of corruption involving more than 50 million francs. Bapes controlled one of the country’s largest budgets as Minister of Secondary Education.

The prosecution most be convinced that they have a tight case to cause the arrest of a sitting minister, said our legal analyst. The arrest of such a high profile official could also have required the clearance of the presidency, he said.

Speculations about Bapes’ possible arrest had been running for months but it was still a surprise, coming ahead of a long-awaited appointment of a new government. His position has not been filled.

Bapes was spared in a massive anti-corruption raid at his ministry in 2010, during which his secretary-general Catherine Abena was taken down. She died recently after falling sick in prison.

An official at the Ministry of Secondary Education said Bapes was invited to the SCC and notified that he was being remanded at the Kondengui prison. A report said the minister failed to honour a court summons a week earlier.

Before his arrest, he had been routinely invited to the court in an ongoing investigation into disappearance of funds at the ministry.

The arrest came after a two-year lull in the anti-corruption campaign launched in 2006. It’s been nearly two years since the arrest of the former Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni and the former Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization Marafa Hamidou Yaya.

Bapes was a king-pin of the Biya administration and a powerful elite from the Littoral region. He became minister of National Education in 2004 and only changed titles when the ministry was split in two.