What role did Dominique Ouattara play in the case of ill-gotten gains?

Cited several times in the case of ill-gotten gains, the international real estate marketing agency of Dominique Ouattara, the First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire, would have played an important role.

Who says ill-gotten gains generally says Equatorial Guinea or Gabon… While four children of the former Gabonese president were indicted in Paris, within the framework of the case of ill-gotten gains, another name emerges from the file. The First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire, Dominique Ouattara, could indeed have participated in fraudulent operations, or even have been one of the cornerstones. The name of Alassane Ouattara's wife, in any case, "scatters the hearing minutes", indicates Africa Intelligence. In question, an agency long chaired by the First Lady, AICI International.

Before becoming First Lady, Dominique Ouattara was a real businesswoman. In 1979, she bought a real estate agency which included two people to make it a group which today employs 200 people. A company established on the continent, but also in France, in Paris and Cannes.

Millions of euros in commissions

This is not the first time that the name of Dominique Ouattara has been made public in the case of ill-gotten gains. In December 2019, Le Monde told how AICI, a real estate agency belonging to Dominique Ouattara, was a "screen" and would have allowed Omar Bongo, between 1998 and 2008, to acquire ten properties in Paris for a total sum of nearly of 13 million euros.

At the end of 2019, the director of the AICI agency in France and its subsidiary in Gabon, Elisabeth Gandon, had been indicted, accused of "concealment of embezzlement of public funds, concealment of corruption, complicity in laundering of embezzlement of public funds and laundering of corruption" after the complaint by the NGO Transparency International. The agency of the First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire seems to have played the role of "facilitator" in the file of ill-gotten gains and would have made it possible to take money from the Gabonese Treasury, while collecting huge commissions in the process .

Dominique Ouattara, not yet worried?

The magazine L'Express, a little earlier in the year, assured that Dominique Ouattara was going to be questioned about the ill-gotten gains of Omar Bongo in France. But the wife of Alassane Ouattara does not seem to be worried by French justice. However, specified the French weekly, the company of the First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire, bought in 1979, had made it possible to "hide" the origin of more than 60 million euros invested in ten years.

If Dominique Ouattara was no longer a director of AICI after 2011 - she highlights Elisabeth Gandon, her thirty-year-old friend, also general coordinator of Children of Africa, the foundation she created and placed her daughter in the vice-presidency of the group — the First Lady is one of the shareholders of the real estate agency. Thanks to bank checks, AICI made it possible to buy, leaving a minimum of traces, goods for African presidents. Questioned in November 2018 by the French police, Gandon had assured that he had never imagined playing a role of front company.

Still, the "rain of new indictments", as Africa Intelligence defines the progress in the case of ill-gotten gains, could well give rise to requests for an explanation from Dominique Ouattara. For the moment, the First Lady is quiet, because she no longer appears as the leader of the real estate company. But if French justice dates back to the years preceding 2011, there is no doubt that the wife of “ADO” will have to give some answers…