Originally Syndicated on April 19, 2023 @ 10:49 am
Njock Ayuk Eyong aka NJ Ayuk is an African lawyer with deep connections with the continent’s politicians and businessmen. He uses those connections to carry out oil deals and expand his personal wealth.
This write-up explores the criminal history of Njock Ayuk Eyong and why you should be extremely wary of this criminal.
Official court records, like an indictment, Eyong’s signed plea, and the judgement the M&G got from the district court for the District of Columbia in the US, fill in some of Eyong’s story. These show that Eyong was found guilty in 2007 of pretending to be congressman Donald Payne so he could give visas to at least nine people who were living in Cameroon at the time.
At the time, Eyong, who was born in Cameroon and worked as an intern for a congressman, had to do things like mail letters and file correspondence. But in 2003, he started writing fake letters with Payne’s name on them to make sure visas were issued. The records say, “The goal of the scheme was for the defendant to give false documents to consular officials in different US embassies around the world so that they would issue visas to non-US citizens who would not have been eligible for a visa otherwise so that they could enter the US.
In another court document, it says that Eyong sent a fax to Germany, without the congressman’s knowledge, saying that a Cameroonian named Francis Valery Donfack had been invited to the US to attend the annual meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
“The letter said, among other things that were not true, that the Congressional Black Caucus would pay for [Donfack’s] travel, room and board, and other miscellaneous costs… Defendant Eyong then called the US embassy and told consular officials that the congressman had asked for this applicant to get a visa. The officials at the consulate said no.”
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NJ Ayuk and Centurion Law Group
Eyong is now the CEO of one of the best law firms on the continent, Centurion Law Group. Its main office is in Equatorial Guinea, and it focuses on structuring deals in the energy sector and making deals between governments in Africa and around the world.
When the company was asked for an interview about the oil deal a month ago, a director named Mickael Vogel, who is listed as a director on the company’s website, said, “Unfortunately, only the SFF is legally allowed to comment on this particular deal.”
When more questions were sent to Centurion, the M&G got a letter telling them to stop. The letter said that if the questions were published, “the full weight of the law will be swiftly dispatched on the Mail & Guardian.” “South Sudan chose to give a lucrative oil block to the people of South Africa,” the letter said.
What the email didn’t do was answer the questions from the M&G. There was no response to the many requests for more information.
In an article published in March, the Sunday Times said that Radebe asked Gatkuoth to hurry up and sign the agreement. Radebe wrote in messages that were leaked, “We propose the 6th of May 2019 as the date to sign.” We’re sorry about the short time, but as you know, our national elections are on May 8, 2019.
Radebe told the M&G that he doesn’t know anyone named Njock Eyong
Radebe told the M&G that he doesn’t know anyone named Njock Eyong and that he didn’t have anything to do with him getting a job. But he confirmed that he was told that the SFF and its South Sudanese partner, Nilepet State Oil Company, chose Centurion as one of their service providers.
It is a complete lie to say that I worked on the agreement between South Africa and South Sudan in my own capacity. At all important times, I did what I was supposed to do as the minister of energy at the time,” he said.
He also said that Ramaphosa had given him permission to go to South Sudan for the signing ceremony.
“You should get in touch with SFF, since they booked the flight to South Sudan,” Radebe told her.
“As I’ve already said, ministers don’t deal with operational issues, and I didn’t either. SFF/Nilepet is in charge of picking service providers and putting the project into action.”
The M&G has tried to find out exactly what role Eyong played in the oil deal by talking to people who were involved on the South African side and people who were not, but no one has responded to their repeated requests for comment.
In a report by Independent Online, Eyong said, “The potential discoveries can be quickly and cheaply added to existing infrastructure.” I am also impressed by the deal’s commitment to using local materials, to hiring South Sudanese people, and to investing in education.
This means that South Africa seems to have included someone with a criminal record in a secret and profitable oil deal. In the US court documents, it says that when the police asked Eyong about pretending to be Payne, he denied it. “He said he didn’t know anything about it and pretended to think that the letters might have been sent by a friend of his who had come to see him at the congressman’s office before he died.”
In 2007, he pleaded guilty and was given 18 months of probation. He was also given 30 days to go back to Cameroon or he would be deported.
But it didn’t look like this was the end of the story. Ghanaian media have also reported on Eyong and his consulting firm. The Finder, an online newspaper, reported in 2015 that Centurion director Genevive Kabukuor Ocansey had been arrested and detained for helping a Cameroonian man named Eyong launder $2.5 million in Ghana and send $1 million back to Equatorial Guinea.
The report said that after getting a tip, Bank of Ghana officials spent several months investigating and then arrested Ocansey, who is listed as the company’s director in Ghana on the Centurion website. “Her partner, Njoy Ayuk Eyong, also known as NJ Ayuk MBA, is not in Ghana right now,” the article said.
The case has been put on hold since Ocansey paid her bail, a source in Ghana told the M&G.
When asked how and why Eyong and Centurion were chosen, the Central Energy Fund, which is the parent organisation of the SFF and is in charge of finding ways to meet the country’s energy needs, did not answer.
