Paris
Gabon, a country in Central Africa, is rich in resources but has many poor people.
The country has a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of 7,960 euros ($8,600) and a population of 2.4 million.
It has rich reserves of oil, manganese and timber.
However, more than a third of the population lives below the poverty threshold (5.1 euros per day).
Ousted President Ali Bongo and the ruling elite have assets worth hundreds of millions of euros in France and other countries.
900,000 people live in poverty
According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), Gabon's GDP growth rate in 2022 was 3%. However, 39.2% of the population, or 900,000 people, live below the poverty threshold. The unemployment rate in this country is 30%.
Many young people are looking for better opportunities abroad, and those who wanted to return to Gabon after studying abroad are under pressure from the government, which has announced a suspension of civil service recruitment until August 2021, with the exception of the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health. disappointed in the decision.
According to the AfDB, approximately half of Gabon's population will not have access to clean water in 2022. 90% of people living in cities had access to electricity, but 70% of people living in rural areas did not.
Medical services are also inadequate due to a lack of medical staff and equipment in hospitals. Schools lack teachers and infrastructure is weak.
The opposition party New Power, led by Privat Ngomo, has criticized the impact of “Francafé” (an expression referring to France's influence and relations in former African colonies) and France's plundering policies targeting the region's wealth since the 1960s. denounced.
If Gabon were to enjoy its resources and free itself from the CFA franc currency, it would become a “mini-Switzerland of the tropics,” he said.
Bongo family property
A group of military officers led by General Bryce Origi Nguema seized power in the Central African country on August 30, annulling the election results and placing President Ali Bongo under house arrest.
Nguema, who is also Bongo's cousin, was appointed the same day as transition director.
The coup occurred after the Gabon Electoral Center announced official results showing that Bongo won a third term with 64.27% of the vote.
Ali Bongo has been in power for almost a decade. His father, Omar Bongo, became president in 1967, but his presidency ended when he died in Spain in 2009.
The coup appeared to be the end of the Bongo dynasty, which ruled the country for 55 years, but the wealth it had amassed during that time attracted increasing attention.
French judicial authorities estimated the Bongo family's assets at 85 million euros, but Fabrice Alfie, a journalist with the online daily Mediapart, accessed family documents after Omar Bongo's death in 2009 and found that the actual value was around 85 million euros. It was claimed to be 460 million euros.
Bongo owns at least 40 properties and luxury cars in France's most exclusive locations in Paris and the southern city of Nice.
The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Investigations said in 1999 that Omar Bongo had $130 million in a Citibank account.
In an investigation launched in 2007, nine members of the Bongo family were investigated, particularly regarding ill-gotten gains and real estate. They are also accused of misuse of public funds and active and passive corruption starting in 2022.
The Paris Court of Appeal estimated that this was corrupt money from the oil company Elf Aquitaine, which later became Total Energy.
French bank BNP Paribas was also investigated in 2021 for “corruption laundering and misuse of public funds.”
The bank was accused of failing to alert authorities between 2002 and 2009 when it expressed suspicions about “unusual functioning” in the account of a French interior design firm. According to the French daily Le Monde, the company was responsible for the multi-million euro refurbishment of the Bongo family's furniture.
*Written by Nur Asena Erturk from Ankara
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