Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Khartoum (Agenzia Fides)- Three to 10 people were reportedly killed and about twenty injured in clashes between the police and about a hundred demonstrators on the way to the residence of the Governor, yesterday, Sunday 2 May, El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur (west Sudan).
The demonstrators were demanding the refund of money lost in a fraud which affected thousands of small savers in the city, which has been relatively spared in the civil war which has devastated Darfur since 2003.
The fraud, known as a pyramid schema, or Ponzi Scheme in English speaking countries (after an Italian who swindled thousands of savers in the United States in the 1920s), consists in promising high interest rates, where the first investors are paid with the money deposited by the next investors and so on.
According to local sources, the losses amount to between 240 and 350 million Sudanese pounds (120-175 million US dollars), and include money of investors resident in other parts of the country and even abroad.
Some investors used all their savings or sold plots of land to invest in the scheme.
The demonstrators are furious with the Governor of North Darfur, Osman Kibir, who promised before the presidential, political and local elections, to reimburse the people who had been swindled, but then refused to keep the promise with the excuse that the money lost is "money for interest" which is prohibited by Islamic law.
Kibir has accused the Opposition, which lost the recent elections, of fanning the fire of popular malcontent in order to destabilise the region.
The incidents connected with the swindle are creating additional tension in an area where there are reports of more clashes between the army and the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) which has announced the freezing of its participation in peace talks in Doha (Qatar, see Fides 24/2/2010). (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 3/5/2010)
