It started as a tip between friends, an unheard-of chance to pile up riches in a poor land. How could you go wrong with a good-works company, apparently tight with the government, promising interest of 50 and 100 percent, maybe even higher?
The “investment” was a Ponzi scheme that has ended in disaster for tens of thousands of families on this sliver of the West African coast, wiping out savings, shaking the economy and threatening the president in a nation of 9 million that has long been a regional exemplar of stability.
Parliament is demanding his impeachment, high officials have been forced out and crowds of small savers up and down this land of rich traditions but limited means are demanding restitution.
Benin is on edge. Last week, dozens of fraud victims massed outside the prefecture here in the country’s bustling economic capital. They pressed up against the fence, anxious, angry and insistent that since they had seen pictures of Beninese President Thomas Yayi Boni, himself a former banker, alongside officials of the company, called Investment Consultancy and Computering Services (ICC), they assumed it must be legitimate.
Officials estimate that there are between 50,000 and 70,000 victims, with losses of perhaps US$180 million — a big sum in a place where most subsist on less than US$2 a day and breadwinners have extended families counting on them.
“I’ve lost everything,” said Christian Benhoungbedi, an auto painter waiting outside the prefecture. He said he had invested hundreds of dollars. “I just wanted to help my family.”
Benin’s pride in its domestication of political life — with an absence of military in the streets, a parliament not in the pocket of the president and a relatively free press — has made the blow even harder. Now, victims of the scheme associate Boni’s government with it. And there is corresponding fear among analysts that citizens will give up on the country’s young democracy and take to the streets as they did in 1989 to get rid of the military dictatorship.
A majority of lawmakers have signed a letter demanding that Boni be tried before Benin’s Supreme Court for “favoring the activities” of the fraudulent company.
Officials did not object as ICC, while ensnaring its victims, multiplied its good works, helping finance health clinics, feeding orphanages, digging wells and making donations to the evangelical Christian groups that are important here. Calendars and fabric showing Boni and one of the company principals circulated.
With its do-good reputation set, serious-looking men in dark suits promised secretaries, mechanics, low-level civil servants and others an investment that would deliver almost half their principal back within three months.
In fact, ICC was operating a classic pyramid scheme: Money from one investor was used to pay another. The money was not invested anywhere, but buried in the basements of the company’s principals, Boni’s political counselor Amos Elegbe said.
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