Abidjan (AFP)

Former Irish President Mary Robinson will chair the panel of experts charged with the independent investigation into the charges of prevarication against the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Nigerian Akinwumi Adesina, the only candidate for re-election, according to a press release issued Wednesday evening.

"The Bureau (of the AfDB Board of Governors) retained Ms. Mary Robinson, Mr. Hassan B. Jallow and Mr. Leonard F. McCarthy to form a panel of high-level independent experts to conduct the investigation" , according to the text signed in particular by Kaba Nialé, president of the Bureau and former Ivorian minister.

Mr. Adesina, 60, elected in 2015 as head of the AfDB, has been the subject of a series of embarrassing accusations since the beginning of the year, disclosed in the press in April.

The AfDB Bureau, One of the Top Five Multilateral Development Banks in the World, Expressed "Full Confidence" in the Panel to be "Chaired by Ms. Robinson" and Composed of "People with Undisputed Experience and Professional Integrity , as well as a proven international reputation. "

The office will have to deliver its report "within a period of two to four weeks maximum", according to the text.

President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, Mrs. Robinson, a lawyer by profession, was then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.

Justice Hassan B. Jallow has been Attorney General, Minister of Justice and President of the Supreme Court in The Gambia. He was also a judge at the Court of Appeal of the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone and a prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), according to the ADB press release.

Vice President for Integrity at the World Bank for nine years, Leonard F. McCarthy has been Director of Public Prosecutions, Director of the Office of Economic Crimes and Head of the South Africa Special Operations Directorate, the statement said. .

- Charges of favoritism -

In a report, whistleblowers accused Mr. Adesina of favoritism in many appointments of senior officials, in particular of Nigerian compatriots, for having appointed or promoted persons suspected or convicted of fraud or corruption, or again for having granted them comfortable severance packages without sanctioning them.

Charges refuted by Mr. Adesina, the first Nigerian to head the AfDB since its creation in 1964, who claims his "innocence", and who was quickly exonerated by the Bank on the basis of a report by its internal ethics committee .

But the United States, the AfDB's second shareholder after Nigeria, demanded at the end of May the launch of an independent investigation, calling into question the work of the ethics committee and causing a serious crisis in the Pan-African institution.

While his re-election seemed assured six months ago, with the support of the African Union and after a giant capital increase of 115 billion dollars successful in October 2019, the position of Mr. Adesina, former Nigerian minister of the Agriculture, now appears increasingly fragile.

© 2020 AFP