30 March 2009

Conakry - Guinea's ruling military junta has arrested a fourth former mines minister on embezzlement charges, a week after it detained three ex-ministers on the same grounds, a senior source at the ministry said late on Monday.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who vowed to fight corruption when he seized power in the world's biggest bauxite producer last December, has launched several attacks on people connected with the government of late President Lansana Conte, whose death ushered in the army takeover.

Camara has singled out the mining industry, a cornerstone of Guinea's economy, for particular scrutiny.

"Ahmed Kante has been arrested and placed in detention," a senior official at the mines ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another civil servant confirmed Kante had been arrested.

Last August, Kante was fired as mines minister in the West African country which is deeply impoverished despite its reserves of bauxite, used to make aluminium, gold and iron ore.

His replacement Louceny Nabe and two of his predecessors, Ahmed Tidiane Souare and Ousmane Sylla, were arrested last week after being accused on television of syphoning off state funds earmarked for the promotion of Guinea's mining industry.

Earlier this month the junta's audit committee used a television broadcast to accuse the former ministers of embezzling around $5,3-million in total.

At the time, Souare said he had taken money from a designated mining development fund, but used it only to pay for the day-to-day running of the ministry.

Those accusations came less than a month after security forces detained the former president's son, whose confession of involvement in drug smuggling was also televised.

Since taking power, Camara and his National Council for Development and Democracy (CNDD) has won popular support for his anti-corruption stance, but analysts say his inexperienced administration is showing increasingly authoritarian tendencies.

The CNDD says it is just trying to root out widespread corruption. The junta said at the weekend it would hold presidential elections this December.

Last week, Camara threatened to invalidate Guinea's contract with minerals firm Global Alumina, and earlier this month told AngloGold Ashanti to shut down operations, a decision he later reversed. - Reuters