ANIF Director General, Hubert Nde Sambone, dies!.

According to information gathered, the ANIF Director General is reported to have succumbed to a sudden illness, following his return from a recent visit to his native East Region.

The now late Nde Sambone is said to have taken part in the recent celebration of the 41st anniversary of the CPDM in the East Region on March 24. He is said to have returned to Yaounde, took ill and was rushed to a hospital from where he died. 

It has not been immediately disclosed what might have killed him. He is the second elite of the East Region to have died under suspicious circumstances in recent years. 

His demise, comes less than five years after that of the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development, Gabriel Dodo Ndoké, who passed away in January 2022. The late minister, it should be recalled, had died after he slumped in Yaounde. 

Meanwhile, Hubert Nde Sambone headed the National Agency for Financial Investigation, attached to the Ministry of Finance, since its creation in 2005. 

The agency is responsible for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. 

A key figure in the fight against money laundering in Cameroon, Hubert Nde Sambone was a financial intelligence expert, brought in by ANIF to oversee the detection of illicit flows and work towards the country’s compliance with international standards. 

His work was aimed at securing Cameroon’s removal from the FATF’s grey list by the end of 2026. 

Under his leadership, ANIF has processed thousands of reports, highlighting the significant scale of money laundering, particularly in the Central African Subregion. 

His tenure at ANIF was marked by the exposure of certain politicians, whose names were mentioned in cases relating to declarations of their assets.

In 2024, under the late Nde Sambone tenure at ANIF, over 1,665.4 billion FCFA was detected as suspicious financial flows in Cameroon. 

The figure, it was said, represented an increase of 180% compared to the previous year, according to a report by CONAC, which cited statistics from the National Agency for Financial Investigation, ANIF. 

The result came from the analysis of 965 Suspicious Activity Reports, SARs, submitted to ANIF by banks, microfinance institutions, mobile money operators, money transfer companies, lawyers, notaries, and other public agencies.

The document found that "various fraud cases" were the most common, nearly tripling between 2022 and 2023. The cases represented over half of the reports made in 2023.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3748 of Wednesday April 01, 2026