Home/News/Senegal Ex-President’s Son Held as Graft Probe Deadline Passes

Senegal Ex-President’s Son Held as Graft Probe Deadline Passes

By Rose Skelton

Karim Wade, the son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, is being detained by police as charges against him relating to a probe into illegal enrichment are being considered, the Justice Ministry said.

A state prosecutor presiding over a court probing graft cases gave Karim Wade a 30-day deadline, which expired yesterday, to prove his assets were legally obtained. Wade simultaneously held the portfolios of energy, infrastructure, international cooperation and urban planning under his father’s administration, which ended with his defeat at a 2012 election.

“He is being held at the police station, but he is not yet in prison,” Justice Ministry spokesman Macoumba Mbodj said today by phone from the capital, Dakar. Wade will be held for 48 hours and then charged or released, he said.

President Macky Sall, who defeated the elder Wade, has pledged to cut government spending and cut the presidential term to five years from seven. Senegal’s $14 billion economy, which relies on peanut and fish exports as well as tourism, is expected to grow 4.3 percent this year from 3.7 percent a year ago, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Wade met the deadline by delivering a 3,000-page document explaining his financial status, Wade lawyer El Hadji Amadou Sall said by e-mail yesterday.

“I have been able to provide conclusive proof and over- abundantly establish that the wealth that you have mistakenly attributed to me does not belong to me,” Karim Wade is quoted as saying in the document, a copy of which was e-mailed to reporters.“We have no well-padded bank accounts, nor company shares nor securities.”

According to the Justice Ministry, Karim Wade owns companies including a local unit of Virgin Islands-based Dubai Port World Senegal Ltd., which runs Dakar’s container terminal, and the Banque Marocaine du Commerce Exterieur.

He’s also accused of owning a bank that made deals with international partners to restructure the country’s ailing energy utility, Societe National d’Electricite du Senegal.

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