Ketakandriana Rafitoson had strong arguments and she held her ground. Monday 1er In July, she will officially take up her post as executive director of the Publish What You Pay movement – not in London, where the secretariat of the movement created in 2002 to force companies to declare the sums they pay to governments in exchange for the allocation of mining titles is located, but in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, “one of the poorest countries, rich in transition minerals and with deplorable governance”, in his words. Even if it means going back and forth to Europe.
“The minerals necessary for the energy transition are found in the countries of the South, but under what conditions are they purchased by Western or Asian companies? How do they benefit local populations? To find out and to protect ourselves from opaque transactions, we must be in the South. I will be very proud to serve from the fifth poorest country in the world”she pleaded.
The arrest, a few months before her appointment, of the chief of staff of the President of the Republic of Madagascar in flagrante delicto of attempted corruption of the Gemfields company certainly spoke in her favor. Romy Voos Andrianarisoa, arrested in London in August 2023 by the British crime agency, was seeking to obtain 10% of the shares of the company to operate in Madagascar and 260,000 euros in commission. She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in May.
A special place
“If the affair had happened here, it would certainly have been hushed up and life would have gone back to normal. The lack of independence of the judiciary is a constant problem, it maintains impunity and opens a royal road to the capture of the State by private interests”condemns the forty-year-old, experienced in the practices of corruption which, up to the highest summit of the State, plague the large island in the Indian Ocean.
At the helm for six years [2018-2024] from the Malagasy branch of the NGO Transparency International, she had the opportunity to explore in depth the darkest mysteries of this collusion between political and economic elites and to denounce some of the biggest scandals. The latest being, in 2022, the agreement between the Lychee Exporters Group and two French companies, making it possible to control the marketing sector towards Europe through an opaque financing circuit by Mauritius.
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