Microsoft has been accused of taking over $200 million annually in bribes in Africa.
The Whistleblower in question -Yasser Elabd – is an ex-Microsoft employee, according to TechCabal.
Elabd, who worked for Microsoft for 20 years, believes that employees, partners, and government officials with connections to Microsoft are funnelling money from Nigeria, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Zimbabwe.
This is not the first time Microsoft is being accused of bribery.
In 2018, another whistleblower signalled the US SEC to a dodgy deal between Microsoft, South Africa’s Department of Defence and EOH Mthombo, an SA IT agency that sells Microsoft licenses.
EOH Mthombo had reportedly underpaid Microsoft about $2.8 million for a procurement deal it had signed with the DoD. While it appears that Microsoft was on the receiving end of this deal, the whistleblower claims that Microsoft employees were in on it.
Elabd believes he was fired by Microsoft for asking too many questions, alleges that many more bribery deals accompany Microsoft’s operations in Africa and MENA.
In Nigeria, Elabd claims, the Senate of the Nigerian parliament complained that Nigeria had paid $5.5 million for Microsoft licenses that were nowhere to be found.
In Cameroon, the government had also supposedly purchased 500,000 3-year OfficeAcademy subscriptions that disappeared.
Similar events, as Elabd claims, have also occurred in Qatar where the government paid $9 million annually over 7 years for Microsoft Office subscriptions its Ministry of Education wasn’t using.
Other occurrences also happened in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
