During the election campaign, he produced a document presented as his declaration of assets. It later became clear that this was more of a manoeuvre aimed at encouraging his rival Amadou Ba, who was presented as a “billionaire civil servant”, to publish his assets as well. It took 3 months after his installation in power, on 2 April, for the Constitutional Council to finally publish what the 7 Wise Men call a “written declaration of the assets of the President of the Republic”.

The document shows that, although he is described by his supporters as a ‘simple civil servant’ with no official 20 years’ service in the civil service, President Diomaye Faye has a declared wealth that is the envy of many white-collar civil servants and even medium-sized company directors.

The President indicated in his declaration that his monthly salary in July was 4 million 859 thousand 302 CFA francs. He did not specify that this should be, at that date, his emoluments as Head of State of Senegal. As a tax and property inspector, his basic salary, like all his colleagues, should be around 300,000 CFA francs. This was the case until President Macky Sall, in his legendary generosity with public money, decided to double his income and raise his salary to 600,000 CFA francs.

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Many Senegalese civil servants do not have such assets. Nevertheless, this income increases every quarter. In fact, thanks to what are known as ‘common funds’ in the jargon of specialists, someone of the same rank as Bassirou Diomaye Faye can find himself receiving, in addition to his salary, around 10 million CFA francs, to which must be added, more or less regularly, 500,000 francs in collection bonuses. In total, each year, with his legal income, tax inspector Bassirou Diomaye Faye can end up with a pre-tax income of around 50 million CFA francs. But does this give him the means to acquire his assets?  Already, his home in Mermoz, Dakar, acquired ‘on a union allocation’, as he puts it: in the same way as the house of his partner Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, in Cité Keur Gorgui, the said home, we say, is estimated by its owner, at 274 million 976 thousand F Cfa, after expert appraisal, with its buildings. And, that’s not all, the Head of State also declared 4 undeveloped plots of land in the regions of Thiès and Fatick, one of them acquired by deliberation or lease.  We can take this statement for what it is worth, remembering that in his first campaign ‘statement’, he mentioned certain acquisitions, which have been omitted here. These include the land he sold to his colleague Cheikh Diba, now Minister of Finance and Budget, for more than 25 million CFA francs. Not to mention another plot of land sold at Almadies 2 to another civil servant, who paid cash for it.

Le Quotidien does not insist here on the amounts claimed by the Head of State.

It is not easy at this level, without access to official documents, to verify the amount of the 3 bank accounts that Mr Faye claims to have. And even if we are obliged to agree that there are few civil servants in this category who have the capacity to feed their families and relatives, to respond to the many requests of the Senegalese, and to set aside more than 25 million CFA francs in 3 different bank accounts. And they have the luxury of obtaining a bank loan with repayments in excess of 30 million CFA francs.

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Bassirou Diomaye Faye is an interesting case, in that he is not an exceptional civil servant and has not climbed the ladder at a remarkable rate. So; this is just an ordinary tax official. And he has never been accused of any wrongdoing in the course of his work. His resources are more or less traceable.

However, for a long time, Pastef party activists, pumped up by their leaders, waged a merciless campaign about Amadou Ba’s billions, based on his lifestyle and the assets lent to him. However, Amadou Ba, who belongs to the same body of civil servants, is more than ten years senior to Diomaye and Sonko at Finance. Unlike Sonko and Diomaye, he was Dgid, i.e. their direct boss, for more than 6 years, while both were not even heads of department.  He then became Minister of Finance, before taking the ‘final step’ by becoming Prime Minister under Macky Sall. If it’s only natural that Diomaye and Sonko should be able to live high on the hog as Finance officials, why are they attacking Amadou Ba, whose only fault was to have preceded them in their posts? Speaking of posts and assets, Diomaye has assumed his role as leader and set an example. When will his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko follow his example?

By Mohamed GUEYE / mgueye@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH