Comium Ivory Coast, woke up to the news of their Chief Executive Officer, CEO and Chief Financial Officer CFO jumping ship heading for Dubai with unknown amount of booty from the company.
The struggling GSM company reportedly owes the Ivorian government millions of dollars in arrears together with two other operators to the tune of USD 155 million.
If recent stories are anything to go by, Ivory Coast is the most recent destination where a certain top management cum CEO and CFO brought the company to its knees by emptying the company’s coffers and heading east.
Takeovers are ideal but nationalization are certainly a scary business and the Ivorian government had just nationalized Comium with two other operators.
The Ivorian government quoting Communications Minister Bruno Kone said that the networks had missed a May 5th deadline to pay the outstanding fees.
Comium and two other operators were said to be in serious default owing the Ivorian government a collective amount of USD 155 million in arrears.
“We decided to fuse the defaulting companies to make a single entity that we will restructure and seek a financial and technical partner,” Kone told journalists. He added that following the restructuring, a 51% stake would be sold to an outside investor, leaving the government as a minority shareholder.
Kone said the plan aimed to reimburse the state for the lost tax revenues while preserving the jobs of the three companies’ employees.
The disgruntled staff cried foul for their lost jobs and the behavior of their criminal management.
Gambia’s Comium is the quitest of the four GSM operators in the Gambia and has been widely described as “the poor man’s network”.
With Comium Sierra Leone gone in dramatic fashion and Ivory Coast unceremoniously taken over, Hopefully Comium Gambia will stay put and remains in business.
