The Legal Department made its submissions on Thursday, April 9, 2015 at the Special Criminal Court.
Representing the Legal Department in the case between the People of Cameroon represented by the Ministry of Finance against Myris Marguerite Ngamang and Nzalie William Nzalie, Advocate General, Jean Claude Taghim, yesterday, April 9, 2015 at the Special Criminal Court (SCC) in Yaounde made submissions to the court in which he prayed the court to hold that the two accused in the Bertoua Treasury embezzlement case should be found guilty and convicted according to the law.
While reading his submission, Advocate General Jean Claude Taghim told the court that the 1st accused, Myris Marguerite Ngamang, who was a senior cashier at the Bertoua Treasury in the East Region, from the evidence adduced in the course of the trial she committed the offence of embezzling over FCFA 189 million belonging to the Bertoua treasury. The report of the internal and external control commissions that audited the Bertoua Treasury revealed that the accounts of the senior cashier had a deficit.
The Advocate General noted that Myris Marguerite Ngamang was part of the internal control commission at the treasury and a signatory to the commission’s report which indicated that she did not only have financial deficit of over FCFA 200 million, but had 18 pages of the account book pulled off with the account balance on those pages nowhere to be found. The Treasury Paymaster handed an query letter to Marguerite Ngamang. She responded in writing that the issue was a mystery. The Legal Department noted that although the second control commission to the Bertoua Treasury made a report in which the deficit witnessed in the account of Marguerite Ngamang, dropped to over FCFA 140 million, she refused to sign that commission report on grounds that she was not guilty.
Besides the other deficits noted within money collected for the sales of treasury stamps and other car documents, Jean Claude Taghim told the court that the accused during the court hearing claimed she signed the first control commission report because the Paymaster of the Treasury urged her to do so whereas when the second control commission made a report which revealed a drop in the money she is accused of misappropriating, she refused to sign that report.
The Legal Department also revealed that from the testimonies of witnesses before the court, Nzalie Williams Nzalie, principal treasury accountant at the Bertoua Treasury is an accomplice in the embezzlement case because the first accused could not have done what she did without the consent of her immediate boss, Nzalie Williams. The civil claimant stressed that Nzalie Williams could not blame the disappearance of FCFA 24 million on a colleague to whom he has given his password to access his computer even in his absence.
According to the civil claimant, a password is a private code that belongs to an individual and Nzalie Williams did not have to give his password to somebody to do a job he is not trained to do. According to the Legal Department and civil claimant, the court should find him guilty being an accomplice in the misappropriation of public funds.
The Head of the panel of Judges hearing the case, Mr Justice Mathias Nyoh, adjourned the session to April 29, for the defence counsel to present their submission.
