Lawyers defending the former General Manager of the National Council Support Fund for Mutual Assistance, FEICOM, Emmanuel-Gerard Ondo Ndong, stormed out of the Centre Provincial Court of Appeal on October 23, after they waited for the judges for five hours in vain.

Frustrated lawyers loiter around court premises

Ondo Ndong was recently slammed a 50-year jail term for embezzling public funds.

The court session that was billed for 7.30 am did not begin until the lawyers lost their patience and walked out of court in protest at 12.30 pm when none of the judges had shown up.

The Bar Council representative for the Centre Province, Barrister Atangana Ayissi, who was also involved in the case, led the lawyers out of court.The men and women of the wig freely cursed the not-punctual judges for treating them with contempt. They wondered why judges would bill a court session for a particular time and would not only fail to show up, but also not care to send word to explain their absence.

They shouted that enough was enough. One of the lawyers, Barrister Maurice Nkouendji, said magistrates were treating lawyers as if they were just mere street boys.As the lawyers moved away, they discovered that some of their colleagues were also waiting endlessly for the judges in the hall of the Mfoundi High Court.

They had waited for five hours for the case of embezzlement against the former General Manager of the National Housing Loans Bank, Credit Foncier, to begin in vain. The lawyers joined them in solidarity and equally walked out of court.

Speaking to The Post, one of the lawyers, Barrister Sylvestre Mbeng, said the judges have been taking them for granted for long."They have the attitude of not always respecting time at all. They think it is right for lawyers to come and wait for them in court," he fumed.

Barrister Mbeng said the fact that they walked out of court is a message to magistrates to always learn to respect time. He complained that sometimes some matters suffer undue delay just because judges do not come to court in time, saying the judges behave as if it is normal to be late every day.

After the lawyers left, the panel of judges handling the Credit Foncier case at the Mfoundi High Court only appeared after they reportedly got word that the lawyers walked out in protest.

The panel that is made up of Justice Meka, Justice Manga Foe and Justice Annie Tchembou, later adjourned the matter to October 24 at 10 am.The Credit Foncier case is hinged on the former General Manager of the of the outfit, Emmanual Edou, and its erstwhile board chairman, Hon. Andre Booto a Ngon, and some of their collaborators.

They are facing charges for allegedly embezzling close to 13 billion of State funds. Hearing began in November 2006 and as of the last hearing on Monday, October 22, the court was yet to go into the substantive matter.

The defence lawyers led by Barrister Sylvestre Mbeng took exception to the charges levied against their clients by the Legal Department.They said the poor execution of contracts and the managerial mistakes made by their clients cannot be equal to the embezzlement of public funds as the court claims. "Embezzlement is when someone deliberately decides to take public funds and put into his pocket," Barrister Mbeng told The Post.

According to investigations by the Legal Department, the former Credit Foncier authorities committed the bulk of the embezzlement when the outfit embarked on the building of a residential area on the outskirts of Yaounde known as Olembe 2.

The project is said to have been managed by Edou's collaborator, Roger Tchouafa, who is reportedly on the run. The former General Manager and some of his collaborators allegedly pocketed over FCFA 3.5 billion of the project.

Contrary to claims that Tchouafa is on the run, his lawyer argues that he lives in Maryland in the US and has a permanent address.