Belgian company Semlex Group paid a former top official in Madagascar’s government at least $140,000 — and possibly much more — in unexplained fees, according to leaked company emails that appear to show a quid pro quo to secure a lucrative contract to produce passports.
Semlex, which provides biometric products to the likes of the United Nations and European Union with the stated aim of combating fraud, already has a scandalous track record in Africa, where it has been repeatedly accused of involvement in corruption. OCCRP has previously exposed how the company bribed senior officials to secure state contracts from Gambia’s former dictator, Yahya Jammeh, and helped a major oil trader pay kickbacks to win business in the Republic of Congo.
Now a new investigation can reveal Semlex used a similar playbook in Madagascar, where it secretly funnelled cash to a former government official, Lucien Victor Razakanirina, who contracted them as suppliers to the East African island nation while serving as Secretary of State for Public Security.
Leaked account statements obtained by OCCRP show Semlex paid Razakanirina more than 120,000 euros (about US$140,000) between 2007 and 2009 in a series of unexplained transfers and monthly “consulting fees.” Figures from internal emails suggest he also received a monthly stipend of several thousand euros during 2010 and early 2011.
Approached by reporters, 75-year-old Razakanirina confirmed that he works with Semlex as a consultant, but declined to provide comments for this article.
In 2010, Semlex recruited another high-level official, Hyppolite Rarison Ramaroson, to represent its interests in the government. When Ramaroson was kicked out of office, Semlex’s regional director at the time hatched secret plans to get him back in power.
Today, Semlex is still making Madagascar’s passports, which cost the equivalent of a month’s salary for a Malagasy making minimum wage in a country where most people live on less than $2 a day.
“Certainly the price, at 190,000 ariary [around US$50], is very expensive compared to what we earn in Madagascar,” said Marie Lucie, a teacher whose daughter lives in Germany.
“My passport just expired — that is to say, I will need to pay this sum again. When I first got my passport, the price was 128,000 ariary, so this price increase will surely affect my budget.”
Semlex representatives in Madagascar declined to comment, citing instructions from headquarters. Several government officials did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
Secret Payments
Semlex made its first overtures to Madagascar’s government more than a decade ago, after the company began to expand into Africa in the early 2000s.
In May 2006, Semlex invited Razakanirina, then a government minister, to travel to its headquarters in Brussels for talks about producing passports. Madagascar’s government signed a contract with the company that same month and less than a year later, in February 2007, it began to produce the documents.
It was a favorable deal for Semlex that included free office space, tax-free profits, and customs exemptions for any cash from the deal that the company moved out of the country. Of every passport sold for 60,000 Malagasy ariary, which at the time translated to around 22 euros, the company would keep 15.50 euros. Semlex renegotiated their cut, adding an extra euro per passport, months before beginning production.
The cost of making the passports was far more modest. Contracts show that between 2006 and 2009 Semlex was sourcing blank booklets from French state-owned printing firm Imprimerie Nationale for 2 euros or less apiece — a fraction of the cost it was charging Malagasy citizens.
Under the terms of their arrangement, Razakanirina — who left his government post in January 2007 — was also set to receive about 2 euros per passport, for no clear reason.
Internal documents, including emails and accounting ledgers, show Semlex paid him thousands of euros in a series of transactions. They include two payments in 2007 totaling about 23,900 euros, which the company labeled as “internal costs” in accounting records and correspondence obtained by OCCRP. In January 2008, Semlex transferred Razakanirina around 19,600 euros without stating a reason. The following month, a local employee sent him 6,500 euros, listed in the company’s accounts as “exceptional costs.”
Some of the payments were made to Razakanirina’s French bank account from Semlex Europe S.A., while others were handed to him in cash by Semlex staff. When 7,000 euros was mistakenly sent to him from a Semlex account in Madagascar in November 2008, he appears to have panicked. He turned to Semlex’s then-regional director for Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, Guy Ramahay.
“I already spoke to Lucien this morning,” wrote Ramahay in a November 28 email to Michele Bauters, the company’s finance director. “[He was] a little worried, but I told him to prepare a service provision invoice for an intervention as an advisory consultant in Africa” to justify the transfer.
In total, according to two emails from Razakanirina to Semlex’s finance director, the company paid him at least 122,000 euros between May 2007 and November 2009.
Tsanta Randrianarimanana, a senior judge and former Secretary General of the Malagasy Ministry of Justice, said payments from a private company to a minister in this context are “completely illegal” under Malagasy law.
“Whether the investigations are directed towards the Minister’s account or even better are interested in the accounting operations of the company from which the transfer in question emanates, corruption no longer needs to be proven. It is well constituted,” he said.
