Where’s a regulatory body when you need one?

and evidence they've stopped trying

Mar 25, 2024

Hi there,

It’s been another week of steep deadlines so I did not have the time to delve deeper into a couple of the stories below. The legal parameters surrounding the banking sector and the role of the regulatory body, the National Bank of Ethiopia, in particular, deserve much closer scrutiny. Also, another thing to look into is, what constitutes, “public interest”.

I did not include the report on a national inquiry into persons deprived of liberty in the country by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. It will be in next week’s update though. If you want to read the report before then, go here.

Welcome to new subscribers - I’m Maya Misikir, a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter, every week, where I curate the week’s top five stories in under ten minutes, for you.

Now, to the news.

Banking: desperate times have called for these measures

The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia has been in the news over the past two weeks over a major incident involving a system ‘glitch’ that resulted in people taking out money they did not have in their accounts. Over 2.4 billion Birr (involving 66,000 customers!) according to sources cited in a story by Addis Fortune. Last week’s update on that, here.

Since then, the Bank has resorted to different means to get the money back, including freezing the accounts of people who had money transferred to them during the few hours of the ‘glitch’ on that fateful night of Friday, March 15, 2024. Upon the request of the Bank, a list of selected accounts was frozen across other private banks in the country as well.

The Bank announced over the past week that if people were not returning the money they took out, it would resort to a ‘name and shame’ technique and post their identities on media, according to a story on Addis Maleda.

A significant amount of these transfers are reported to have been made by university students and the same reports say that students that have already used the money are now in a bind. (They reportedly paid off debts, and bought laptops, phones, and…even crypto?)

Also, students are saying that it’s been difficult to return the money since the accounts they sent the money to have been frozen, according to a story by BBC Amharic.

While this story also talks about the possible legal consequences the students may face (up to three years in jail), I have yet to come across one that explores the Commercial Bank’s legal mandate (along with all the other private banks) to freeze people’s accounts for this long?

I spoke to a banking sector legal expert, who broke down a few things:

There are instances where the law provides the mandate to freeze accounts; these include laws on Federal Tax, Anti-Corruption, and Money Laundering, where institutions can order for accounts to be frozen, before getting court orders. Banks can also ‘deactivate’ accounts based on Know Your Customer procedures.

The laws above also set a specific time frame for freezing accounts until a court order is issued. For instance, the Proclamation on Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism gives a three-day window where the Financial Intelligence Center can freeze accounts before obtaining a court order.

The head of the Information Network Security Administration (the national agency for intelligence and cybersecurity), says that ‘further investigation is required to ensure accountability,’ according to another story by The Reporter.

The full story on the Bank’s warning, in Amharic, on Addis Maleda, here, one on the legal consequences faced by students on BBC Amharic here, and one on The Reporter that talks about the ongoing investigation, in English, here.

Law: while we’re on the topic of ‘public interest’

In the update I wrote last week, I mentioned the release of the former president of the Somali region in Ethiopia, Abdi Mohamoud Omar, aka Abdi Illey. He was jailed for over five years on account of serious human rights allegations, but was let go for “public interest”.

This week I’m adding one more name to the roster of people who once faced serious allegations but walk free among us today because of “public interest”.

The case against the former director of Metec, Kinfe Dagnew (whose name in 2019 was synonymous with the crackdown on corruption) has also been discontinued, days after courts found him guilty of the unlawful sale of two hotels, according to a story on Ethiopia Insider.

Let’s revisit a few things about the case, and this blog post sourced from the website of the International Anti-Corruption Conference, published in January 2019, a couple of months after the corruption scandal.

Here are a few excerpts from the blog post.

What was Metec (rebranded Ethio Engineering Group in 2018)?

Metec was, ‘a part of the defence industry complex…established with ETB 10 billion (€310 million) capital in 2010 by combining nine businesses previously owned by the ministry of defence.’
The company was involved in mega projects, including the ‘hydroelectric segment of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

What were some of its projects? Here’s another excerpt from the blog on that:

They were awarded the hydroelectric segment of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which the country is building on the Blue Nile River, and have been contracted to build ten huge sugar factories with a planned capacity of producing 12 million tons of sugar each per annum.

So, what were the cases brought against the former director? Serious allegations of corruption in the procurement of materials amounting to up to 37 billion Birr, according to the story on Ethiopia Insider.

It doesn’t end there.

The company, ‘was also accused of delaying and mismanaging the construction of the massive GERD.’

Regarding the electromechanical contract it took at GERD, considered as a flagship project of the state, MetEC has already collected 65 per cent of the total ETB 25 billion (€776 million) contractual amount, but it has done no more than 25 per cent of the work.

In November last year, The Reporter published a story that the government auditing agency had revealed that 65 billion Birr had vanished without trace since Metec’s establishment (the ‘embezzled funds…divided up among the former managers of MeteC and their associates.’)

Last week the former director walked out, charges discontinued, after five years in prison.

Btw, did anybody else get a text earlier today asking for donations from the project office of the Grand Ethiopian Rennaissance Dam?

The full story on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here, the story on the auditing results from last year on The Reporter here, and the full blog from 2019 entitled, “Recent Corruption Crackdown in Ethiopia: What Can We Learn From It? here.

Labor rights: kidnapped workers return home

Earlier this month, I wrote about an incident where 285 workers from Ethiopia’s Southern Region were kidnapped on their way from their hometowns to start work on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The workers were kidnapped en route in Amhara region by Fano militants. You can brush up on that, here.

Last week, the workers were released and safely returned to their homes according to a follow-up story on Addis Standard. The company that initially hired the contracted workers says that a 6 million Birr ransom payment was made.

Here’s an excerpt:

…a representative of the Fano group denied receiving any ransom payment when speaking to Voice of America. The representative claimed they had requested the Ethiopian Red Cross Society to facilitate the transfer of the workers, but the organization could not do so. He alleged that the laborers were held captive under suspicions of being members of government forces.

The full update on Addis Standard, here.

Security: disaster averted (with photos to prove it)

Last week Tuesday, the Ethiopian Federal Police posted a statement saying that 50 individuals suspected of trying to cause unrest in Addis Abeba had been apprehended. The individuals were arrested following an investigation by the Joint Security and Intelligence Task Force.

Here’s an excerpt from a story in Addis Standard:

The task force stated that the group had been “conspiring to perpetuate terror in Addis Abeba and the bordering areas of the Oromia region, after their mission to create chaos and violence in the Amhara region was foiled by the coordinated efforts of regional and federal security forces.

I won’t add any more details to this story, but the photos of confiscated arms presented as ‘evidence’ in the post have been circulating on the internet as early as 2016, in case anyone has the time to reverse image search them.

The full story on Addis Standard here, and the post with the photo (still up as of time of publishing) from the Ethiopian Federal Police, here.

Media and religion: have we come full circle? (III)

This is the third and final part of the research report on religion and media in Ethiopia. If you want to take a look at the first and second parts, go here and here, respectively.

In this last section, researchers of the report look into what religious reporting across Ethiopian broadcast media looks like.

What did they find in terms of how stories were reported?

Well, for starters, the reports on religious issues are shallow. More than 30% of stories in the research were found to be sourced from press conferences (‘typically organized by the government or religious leaders’).

A majority of the stories also had just one source. ‘This simply does not bode well in a land of diversity,’ add the researchers.

And while the stories did not have diverse voices, they had dominant ones. What does this mean? That, ‘only the voices of religious leaders and the ruling parties are being heard.’

What kind of narratives are being pushed out when media report on religious issues?

One was a message to unite or what the researchers put as homophily: ‘the preference of religious members to be near others who are like them, with a lack of interest in showing diversity.’

The other was encouraging tolerance but without showing how this ‘works in real-life scenarios’.

What about polarization? Plenty of it. Most media coverage of religious issues portrays ‘extremely negative views about others’, says the report. While some media houses choose to ignore the issue, entirely.

The research looked into the case of the attempt at schism within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (the Church).

What was that? In January 2023, three archbishops of the Church appointed 26 bishops without the blessing of the Holy Synod (the highest authority in the Church), threatening a split. I wrote about the details in the first edition of my newsletter, which you can find here.

So how did the media report on this issue? Religion was reported as intertwined with and appropriated for political ends by two media houses the research looked at.

One example, Prime Media, had a ‘sensationalist presentation of the disagreement’ and ‘frequently used hostile terms and hate words in their weekly discussions.’

While Prime Media refers to the dissenting archbishops as heroes, another media house, ESAT, named them as an illegal group.

When the disagreement within the Church was finally sorted, this was again framed differently.

Prime Media reported that the dissenting group did not apologize, but ‘came to terms’ following negotiations. ESAT framed it as the church ‘forgiving offenders’.

Public media houses did not report on these issues at the time. Why?

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

An informal discussion with journalists from the public media reveals that they attempt to promote secularism and therefore could not report the cases. Some other public and private media outlets noted that they received a clear warning from the government officials not to report this case.

When the Church had asked followers to wear black in solidarity, journalists from different media houses also joined this call, according to the report.

What of the Prime Minister’s ‘religious overtone’?

Here’s another expert:

Arguably, it is a consciously framed religious language intended to appeal to the majority of ordinary people who believe in divine intervention in their daily lives. It also hints at the interest in restoring the national identity entangled with religiosity.

The report says that the Prime Minister had warned officials not to interfere with religious issues when the schism happened, though, ‘paradoxically, it is he who attempted to intercede and solve the conflict between the two blocs.’

If you want to read the full report, hit reply and let me know, I’ll share it with you.

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