Former leader's daughter cleared of bribery

A French court has cleared the eldest daughter of Gabon's former leader, Omar Bongo, of accepting bribes to help secure public contracts in the country. The Paris criminal court has found Pascaline Bongo not guilty, alongside French construction firm Egis Route and five individuals, according to an RFI report. Pascaline Bongo, who was her father's chief of staff until his death in 2009, was accused of helping Egis Route secure public contracts in Gabon between 2010 and 2011, when her brother Ali Bongo had taken over as President. Prosecutors alleged that she accepted a promise of €8m in kickbacks. They wanted Bongo to be sentenced to three years in prison, with two years suspended. But the court found that Bongo's position as ‘high personal representative of the President’ did not grant her the ability to award the contract in question. ‘Nothing in the case enables us to prove an intervention in favour of Edis Route using her ties to the President,’ the presiding judge added. She also highlighted that the French law making it an offence to bribe a foreign public official did not exist at the time of the alleged infraction. Two former senior Egis Route managers and its current sales chief Christian Laugier – formerly in charge of the firm's Africa business and chief executive – were also in the dock. In 2010, the French judiciary opened a so-called ‘ill-gotten gains’ inquiry into the origin of the fortune Omar Bongo used to buy assets in France. The probe resulted in the seizure of several properties and embezzlement charges against several of Bongo's children – though not Ali Bongo, who as a sitting President benefited from immunity.