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Following the 14 April arrest in Florida of a former BSG Resources (BSGR) associate, Frédéric Cilins, the Guinean authorities have detained Ibrahima Sory Touré, a senior manager in the company’s local unit. Cilins, who was involved in setting up the BSGR office in Guinea in the mid-2000s was charged with obstructing a criminal investigation, tampering with a witness and destruction of records.

Italy’s Saipem has said it could lose up to €500m ($653m) in payments due from Algeria because of an investigation into allegations that it paid bribes to win contracts. Chief executive Umberto Vergine said on 23 April, “we are having some difficulties to get recent payments and the worst-case scenario is we won’t get these payments.” Saipem said it had been informed that an Algerian court had extended its investigation, but added it had no details on the state of the case or the people involved.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) temporarily suspended the Democratic Republic of Congo on 17 April, saying its reports were not up to standard in terms of full disclosure and the reliability of the figures. EITI national co-ordinator Mack Dumba Jeremy has said that tax authorities have failed to account for $88m in revenue from the mining sector.

State oil company PetroSA has come under scrutiny over corruption allegations, forcing the resignation of chairman Benny Mokaba and an official investigation ordered by energy minister Elizabeth Dipuo Peters. The Central Energy Fund, PetroSA’s parent, said: “A preliminary report issued by the investigating team last month unearthed several instances of inappropriate executive override of internal control systems at PetroSA. The report also made serious allegations against certain senior officials.”

Former president Rupiah Banda is on trial in Lusaka, having been stripped of his immunity, arrested and charged with abuse of office in connection with a Nigerian oil deal with the Abuja-based Sarb Energy. Banda’s son Henry has also been named in court documents. Sarb Energy was reported to have been paid $2.5m for shipping oil to Zambia, but failed to deliver.

Houston-based oil services company Parker Drilling agreed in mid-April to pay the US authorities $15.9m to settle foreign bribery charges. The company was accused of making a payment to a third party while knowing that it would be used to influence a Nigerian government panel’s decision on whether the company had broken local customs laws.

Anti-corruption campaigners including the London-based NGO Corruption Watch and Angola’s Associação Mãos Livres, have called on the Swiss government to reopen an investigation into a 1990s debt repayment deal between Angola and Russia. Corruption Watch, run by the former African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein, released a 166-page report, ‘Deception in High Places: The Corrupt Angola-Russia Debt Deal’, on 16 April detailing how more than $700m ended up in private hands following a mid-1990s restructuring of Angolan debt to Russia. The report was presented in the European Parliament on 23 April as an example of the plundering that can take place in developing nations with the complicity of European banks and tax havens.

Israeli-French mining entrepreneur Beny Steinmetz has launched a case in London’s High Court against his former public relations adviser FTI Consulting, naming individuals such as former UK minister Lord Mark Malloch Brown (MMB) and business magnate George Soros. In court documents, Steinmetz’s company BSG Resources (BSGR) details how FTI was instructed to defend its interests when it was facing “untrue and damaging” allegations over a mining project in Guinea, but “from the moment MMB joined FTI [in September 2010 as Europe, Middle East and Africa chairman], FTI was in serious breach of its contractual and fiduciary duties to BSGR, including to act in its best interests”.

Moves to make the operations of national oil company Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (SNPC) and Republic of Congo’s management of revenues more transparent have slowed down in the past two years, according to sources in Brazzaville and abroad canvassed by African Energy.

President José Eduardo dos Santos and his Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) party mobilised the apparel of state (along with Brazilian election experts and a massive birthday bash for the 70-year-old leader) to secure a landslide in the 31 August general election. The MPLA may not win as much as the 82% it won in 2008, but it will have gained enough votes to legitimise dos Santos’ 33-year rule – at least in the eyes of Angolan power-brokers – and open the way for peaceful political transition.

Alstom Hydro France and Alstom Network Schweiz will be banned from receiving World Bank-funded contracts for up to three years after Alstom admitted misconduct in a Zambian hydro project

As usual, there was no explanation from Luanda of President José Eduardo dos Santos’ partial government reshuffle on 5 October, which reorganised key economic departments and the senior ranks of the military.

The government is seeking expressions of interest from consultants to draw up a communications strategy for the executive committee implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

Lundin Oil chairman Adolf Lundin has said he would welcome a formal inquiry by the Swedish government into his company’s operations in Sudan following a critical new report by Christian Aid reviving the controversy over the role of foreign oil companies in funding the government’s war against southern rebels.

The decision by Senegal’s new government to cancel major contracts with foreign investors sends a worrying signal. Hydro-Québec told Thalia Griffiths it would steer clear of further expansion in the region for now.