Sudan: the double-edged hunt for millions of the old regime
Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, here on April 5, 2019 in Khartoum.
© REUTERS / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The Sudanese central bank has decided to freeze the bank accounts of 161 people suspected of participating in operations destabilizing the economy.
The list would include a number of supporters for ousted President Omar al-Bashir, as well as members of his family.
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With our correspondent in Khartoum,
Eliott Brachet
This decision follows an investigation by the Sudanese Committee for the Dismantling of the "June 30 Regime", when in 1989, Omar al-Bashir seized power in Khartoum.
Since its fall in April 2019, this committee has been responsible for shedding light on the wrongdoing of the National Congress Party.
The suspicious transactions were carried out on bank accounts opened from December 2018, the date of the start of the demonstrations against Omar al-Bashir.
Sums reaching several million dollars were transferred and then withdrawn in a few weeks, in local currency, before being converted on the black market into dollars or euros and leaving the country.
Lack of transparency
For Wajdi Saleh, representative of the Committee, this crackdown was a success: “
We were able to put an end to the schemes of the supporters of the old regime who are trying to destabilize the transitional authorities and deviate us from the path of democracy.
One of the weapons used by these vestiges of the old regime is to sabotage the national economy.
"
However, for some experts, this committee tasked with tracking down the supporters of the old regime and regaining control of the goods and wealth embezzled by the National Congress Party, is not completely transparent.
“
It is not clear where the money that has been seized so far has ended up.
We do not have the exact figures on the sums recovered by the Bank of Sudan, by the Ministry of the Economy, nor to which services they were reallocated,
”points out Kholood Khair of Insight Strategy Partners.
For this analyst, it is possible that this money has fallen into the pockets of the military still in power, while a large part of the 2021 budget has been allocated to the security sector.
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