Baba Ahmadou Danpullo of Cameroon and Aliko Dangote of Nigeria are both wealthy African businessmen. The similarities end there!

In early 2020 financial regulators in South Africa seized and liquidated all of Danpullo’s properties valued at 277 million US dollars.

The chartered member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and powerful acolyte of the 89-year-old President Paul Biya has reportedly been operating in South Africa for over 35 years, creating employment from many of his investments and sponsoring the killings of thousands of people in Anglophone Cameroon with the proceeds.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands Baba Danpullo’s criminal business empire is managed by Bestinver Company South Africa Ltd, Joburg Skyscraper Pty Ltd, and Bestinver Prop 01 Proprietary Ltd, which are all subsidiaries of Bestinver, the group he founded with political support from the regime in Yaoundé.

Things are falling apart for the Francophone Cameroon criminal and like he evicted the Aghem people from their ancestral lands in Menchum Division in the North West region with the support of President Biya in order to settle his cows, so too is he being evicted from the properties that he built in South Africa with fraudulent loans and blood money from Cameroon.

Baba Danpullo says the happenings in the Republic of South Africa is racist and xenophobic and borders on exclusionism aimed at retarding African progress by targeting black African businesspeople. This is simply not true!!

Over the years, Baba Danpullo has represented ill-gotten wealth from senior Cameroon government officials including the Biya family which he used in building a vast property portfolio in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth). Franck Biya, President Biya’s eldest son spent years in South Africa monitoring his father’s own share of the Baba Danpullo criminal enterprise.

Danpullo’s lawyers have been telling the courts in South Africa that the so-called Cameroonian business tycoon’s properties generate approximately R20m a month, creating employment across the real estate sector and supporting jobs along the value chain. But coming from a country in Sub Saharan Africa that has nothing to show the world! Danpullo’s crime syndicate has inflicted a lot of pain on Cameroonians and his demise in South Africa is a welcome relief to the Cameroonian people.

Cameroon’s economy remains an equation that might not be solved by the South Africa seizure alone. Cameroon is in the abyss of a financial crisis and corrupt businessmen like Danpullo are helping slowly but surely to make the country spiral into chaos.

Danpullo and the Biya family are investing in far away South Africa while Cameroon’s economy is on life support. Years of mismanagement and incompetence have eroded the country’s financial base.

Not being able to influence the judicial system in South Africa, the conman in early September had the accounts of subsidiaries of South African groups seized in Yaoundé, in order to obtain payment of more than €370m ($371m).

Like what all CPDM criminals do, on September 5 Baba Ahmadou Danpullo obtained from Quentin Djapité Ndoumbe, the president of the Court of First Instance in Bonanjo in Douala an order to seize the accounts of the operator MTN Cameroon and chocolate maker Chococam (a subsidiary of the South African food group Tiger Brands) at local banks. Danpullo is demanding payment of 243bn CFA franc (more than $371m).

By some strange happenstance, the liquidation of Danpullo’s company in South Africa and intervention by President Paul Biya is making matters more intractable.

According to Baba Danpullo’s spokesperson, the Covid-19 crisis and the arrival of a new manager at the First National Bank (FNB) are at the root of his setbacks in South Africa.

However, commenting on the matter, Jeune Afrique observed that a certain vagueness remains as the South African liquidators of Baba Danpullo’s company Bestinver reported difficulties beginning as early as late 2019, a few months before the start of the pandemic. It was indeed exactly when he reportedly made millions of US dollars available to the Cameroonian military to continue the war in Anglophone Cameroon.

Jeune Afrique also noted that the confinements imposed by Pretoria in 2020 did not help. Bestinver’s shopping centres, Princess Crossing in the suburbs of Johannesburg, Moffet on Main and Kings Court in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), have seen frequentation plummet.

Cameroon Intelligence Report is keeping a watchful eye on the Danpullo Affair and we will keep our readers posted as we get more details.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai