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France on Tuesday returned to Senegal 27 million euros ($29 million) worth of assets confiscated from Karim Wade, the son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, who is serving a six-year sentence for graft, lawyers said.
“Two Senegalese companies specialised in airport services were confiscated, as well as six luxury apartments belonging to Karim Wade,” said Antoine Diome, a lawyer for Senegal’s government.
Ownership of these properties was transferred to the west African state.
Meanwhile 24 bank accounts in the tiny principality of Monaco containing 11 million euros were frozen, and other real estate assets were also in the process of being confiscated, Diome said.
“It was a nearly perfect robbery,” said William Bourdon, a French lawyer also representing Senegal, highlighting the “capacity of Karim Wade and his agents to use the most complex financial instruments”.
“We are hopeful we will get our hands on most of the booty,” he added.
A former “super minister” with several portfolios in his father’s government, the 47-year-old Karim Wade was convicted in March last year for amassing an ill-gotten fortune.
He was also fined more than 210 million euros and the conviction — which sparked opposition protests in Dakar — has stunted his own presidential ambitions.
Karim Wade, whose nickname was “minister of heaven and earth”, was charged in 2013 with corruption after his father’s stunning election defeat to Macky Sall the previous year, prompting the former ruling Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and his father to accuse the government of conducting a witch hunt.
Several other leaders in the former government, including ministers, have been prosecuted for ill-gotten gains.
Karim Wade was initially accused of amassing about one billion euros but this amount was later whittled down to 178 million euros.
Shortly before his conviction he was chosen by the opposition PDS as its candidate for the country’s next presidential election, expected sometime between 2017 and 2019 depending on a pending term limits reform.
In detention since his 2013 arrest, Wade is set to leave jail in 2019, making a successful presidential campaign highly unlikely even though the justice ministry has said he can legally remain a candidate.