Report reveals attempts to steal Somali assets abroad, implicating the president and a US law firm.
Nairobi, Kenya – A confidential UN report alleges that Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, his former foreign minister and an American law firm conspired to steal public funds by engaging in secret contracts that gave them hefty percentages from the country’s recovered overseas assets.
The report, obtained by Al Jazeera and presented to the UN Security Council in July, urges the UN to call on member states and financial institutions to freeze Somali assets under their jurisdiction until “a genuinely transparent and accountable recovery process can be established”.
“Continuation of a recovery process in secret … risks further exposure of overseas assets to misappropriation,” said the report, urging the Somali government to disclose the original list of identified assets, which now is only known to President Mohamud and the Maryland-based law firm Shulman Rogers as well as two other individuals.
The Somali government said it would only respond to the report in detail when it is officially released. Others accused of wrongdoing denied the allegations levelled against them.
Shulman Rogers dismissed the allegations as “false” and “malicious,” with Jeremy Schulman, the law firm’s man in charge of the Somalia project, saying, in a statement sent to Al Jazeera, that the report’s intention is “to discredit the Somali government, our law firm, and the individuals who have worked hard to support the asset recovery project for the people of Somalia”.
Jarat Chopra, the coordinator for Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group who presented the report to the UN Security Council’s sanction committee, said his group stands by its findings, but refused to comment further.
Terms challenged
The group’s mandate includes monitoring misappropriation of public funds as well as reporting on the arms embargo imposed on Somalia in 1992.
The report says attempts to steal assets were thwarted after former Central Bank Governor Yussur Abrar challenged the terms of Shulman Rogers. Abrar quit after seven weeks in office. Her action generated an international scrutiny that later enabled her successor to protect some of the recovered assets.
The report, however, alleges there is still “a secret architecture of misappropriation,” involving President Mohamud, former Foreign Minister Fawzia Yusuf Adam, Shulman Rogers as well as Musa Haji Mohamed Ganjab and Abdiaziz Hassan Giyaajo Amalo. The report says Ganjab and Amalo, who vehemently deny the allegations, served as government advisors as well as facilitators for Shulman Rogers.
