Mali's Bureau du Vérificateur Général (BVG) has identified financial irregularities totaling 625,938,181 FCFA at the Mali embassy in Cairo, covering fiscal years 2022 through March 2026. The dossier has been transmitted to the President of the Accounts Section of the Supreme Court and denounced to financial prosecutors for potential criminal proceedings.
According to the BVG findings, fictitious expenditures account for 222,317,960 FCFA of the total, including irregular rent markups of over 51 million FCFA, fabricated lodging costs, and fake school fees — totaling more than 149 million FCFA — for children not actually enrolled in Egyptian schools. The largest single category, over 361 million FCFA, consists of foreign exchange gains that were never recorded or remitted to the public treasury when embassy funds were converted from euros to Egyptian pounds.
The outgoing ambassador, named by several outlets as Brigadier General Boubacar Diallo and now posted in Kigali, and the former Secretary Accounting Agent, Ebbatna Ould Abderahamane, are identified as primarily responsible for the irregularities. Reports indicate the current ambassador, Samba Alhamdou Baby — himself a former head of the BVG before his appointment to Cairo in mid-2025 — is not implicated, as his tenure falls outside the audit period.
The finding follows a pattern of BVG reports on Malian diplomatic missions. A separate, far larger finding of more than 2 billion FCFA in irregularities, including Canal+ subscriptions for diplomatic staff, was previously reported at Mali's embassy in Ethiopia. Other Malian missions, including those in Riyadh, Luanda, and Abu Dhabi, have also faced BVG findings of financial irregularities in recent reports.
Whether any disciplinary action beyond the judicial referral has been taken against the implicated former Cairo embassy officials remains unclear.