Part One

by Khadija Sharife and Mark Anderson

Yahya Jammeh was a 29-year-old lieutenant in Gambia’s National Army when he directed the bloodless coup d’etat that overthrew Dawda Jawara, ousting the country’s first president after nearly 30 years of rule.

Jammeh and a handful of junior lieutenants seized a radio station, the country’s only international airport, and State House, the president’s official residence. He emerged as the country’s leader after becoming head of a transitional government.

In the two years that followed the 1994 coup, he moved quickly to consolidate his control over Gambia, a poor former British colony nearly surrounded by Senegal that has a strip of Atlantic coastline popular with European holiday makers.

Jammeh banned all political parties and arrested the top brass of the country’s army, setting the stage for two decades of rule, although it was often characterized by misrule.

The Office of the President quickly became the country’s most important institution. But in classic authoritarian style, Jammeh rotated key officials to prevent any from attaining political power that could challenge his own. Throughout Jammeh’s 22-year rule, few held the coveted position of secretary-general at the Office of the President for more than a year or two at a time.

“He turned The Gambia into an informal shop where all power was vested in him, bending the law to his will,” said William Gumede, an associate professor at South Africa’s Witwatersrand School of Governance.

Jammeh wielded his tight group of officials to eliminate political opponents and further his financial schemes. Some managed to stay in his good graces over time. Gen. Sulayman Badjie, the former head of the armed forces, which included the presidential guard, was so close to Jammeh that he fled the country on the same plane that finally took the ousted president into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017.

Others were not so fortunate. Nuha Touray and Njogu Bah, who served as secretaries-general of the president’s office, were given important duties but never allowed to rise. Touray lived in fear of death or disappearance. Bah was imprisoned on an abuse of power charge for which he was later acquitted.

Jammeh used a personal army of enforcers, “the Jungulars,” to intimidate friends and foes alike, including those in his inner circle. He also commanded a paramilitary youth group, dubbed the “Green Boys,” for similar work.

ncensed by criticism of his government in the country’s newspapers in 2004, for example, he sent the Green Boys to the home of Demba Ali Jawo, then head of Gambia’s Press Union.

Jawo told OCCRP that the Green Boys left him a note: “We have noticed that you are always happy to go hard on our good President and the work he is doing … I am sure you do not want your bones and flesh to be thrown to dogs and vultures.”

Business Inc., the Key to Millions

If Jammeh’s political and mercenary network kept him in power, it was his links to the business world that enabled much of his corruption. His office allowed foreign companies to bypass tender procedures, handing them government contracts and opening the country’s public purse for pillaging.

OCCRP analyzed thousands of documents spanning more than two decades, from 1995 to 2016. They revealed how Jammeh’s patronage network diverted, misused, and siphoned public funds from or through the Central Bank of The Gambia, the Social Security and Housing Finance Corp., the Gambia National Petroleum Corp., and other state-owned entities.

The confidential documents include directives from Jammeh’s office, bank statements, and wire transfers. Other documents provide details about loans, property holdings, lucrative contracts granted to secretive private companies, and the purchase of assets such as planes, cars, and ferries.

The records show that Jammeh gave sweetheart deals to foreign businessmen in nearly every sector of the economy, including mining, energy, shipping, construction, timber, and telecommunications. The deals were typically signed without approval from regulatory authorities and bypassed procurement processes. Some suppliers were so embedded in the country’s affairs that they could halt the economy by suspending access to basic goods such as fuel.

By far the most influential businessman in Jammeh’s inner circle was Mohamed Bazzi, the Lebanese head of the energy and petroleum companies Global Trading Group and Euro African Group. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, he was also a key financier for Hezbollah, the U.S.-sanctioned militant group. For more than a decade, Bazzi appeared to be the architect of many government deals with the private sector.

“Bazzi has been implicated in almost every big deal connected to Jammeh,” said Jeggan Grey-Johnson, a Gambian activist and communications officer at the Africa regional office of the Open Society Foundation, a pro-democracy and good governance organization. “In many ways, he was Jammeh’s consigliere for Gambia’s economy and its private sector.”

Bazzi became a useful middleman who could influence and fix deals across many sectors of the economy. In exchange for this privileged position, he arranged incentives for the president in the form of payments to his personal bank account. Just how much money Bazzi funneled to Jammeh is unclear, but it likely exceeded tens of millions of dollars, according to OCCRP’s analysis of bank records and confidential correspondence.

Bazzi’s now U.S.-sanctioned companies enjoyed a monopoly over Gambia’s fuel sector for more than a decade. Between 2002 and 2016, he arranged exclusive, secretive contracts with government bodies such as the main utilities supplier, the National Water and Electricity Co., for fuel imports. His exclusive control of the process created a monopoly over Gambia’s fuel imports in violation of procurement laws.

His Euro African Group, which sourced fuel from French oil giant Total, had the ability to control fuel imports and prices as the country’s sole fuel importer. In return, it received a lucrative cut of the action: Euro African Group received $60 million from the state oil company in just three transactions between 2015 and 2017, according to bank records.

Bazzi continued controlling the country’s fuel sector as Gambia fell deeper into debt. By 2015, the utility company, for example, owed $65 million to Euro African Group.

Telecoms Targeted in Secret Scheme

Bazzi’s companies had a strong foothold in Gambia after securing the fuel monopoly and other lucrative deals. His next apparent effort was to bring in a man with whom he had run a car service business in Lebanon.

The new partner was Ali Charara, another Hezbollah financier. The men appear to have concocted a scheme to take money from, and possibly launder money through, one of the government’s most lucrative enterprises. The scheme targeted the state-owned Gambia Telecommunications Co., known as Gamtel, and its subsidiary, known as Gamcel.

Together, Bazzi and Charara offered the president a proposal for the telecom operator’s international telephone and internet account, known as International Gateway. The scheme began in 2007 when Charara used one of the companies in his corporate umbrella to buy half the shares of Gamtel and its subsidiary Gamcel from the government for $35 million — a significant discount from their actual worth. Lamin Camara, a former permanent secretary for the Ministry of Communications, cited an audit by the accounting firm PKF that valued Gamtel and Gamcel at $161 million.

On paper, Gamtel controlled the Gateway account and it delivered robust returns, though some of this money never made it to state coffers. The state-owned entity generated $443.9 million in revenue between 2006 and 2014, with more than $150 million going to companies Charara controlled.

Documents reviewed by OCCRP show that over this period, the government received less than $80 million in profits, just 18 percent of what Gateway had generated. The rest was siphoned off in management fees and other costs by private companies, including Charara’s TELL International Inc. But Jammeh wasn’t satisfied with private companies taking the lion’s share of the revenue. In September 2013, his office instructed TELL to divert all future payments intended for Gamtel to a new Gateway account at the central bank, which he controlled.

While the documents don’t identify how much Jammeh or Bazzi might have received as a share of these transactions, Bazzi’s companies channelled at least $10 million into Jammeh’s bank accounts between 2011 and 2013, according to Bazzi’s testimony to the Janneh Commission of Inquiry, which is investigating the president’s financial dealings.

In front of the commission, Bazzi isn’t clear about the purpose of the payments, variously describing them as payments to the president from Charara or as a settlement of a debt. (Charara could not be reached for comment.)

“This was what Mr. Charara was giving the president from his own profit,” Bazzi told the commission.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Charara, Bazzi and their companies in part for funding Hezbollah and laundering money through Gambia.

By 2014, the government shifted its contracts from TELL to another telecom company called MGI, which hiked consumer rates by nearly 50 percent – a considerable increase from TELL’s 19 percent hike.

An internal report investigating the telecoms industry cited Jammeh’s right-hand man, Gen. Badjie, as a person of interest in the MGI case who should be investigated.

MGI, in turn, used another company, Mobicell Blue Ocean Wireless, which had just four employees. (A spokesman for MGI told OCCRP that Mobicell did technical work for MGI “on a case by case basis.”)

Ultimately, MGI racked up $47.6 million in operational expenses between 2014 and 2016. For example, the company charged $26 million for projects that were never approved and on which no due diligence was done, and which may never have existed at all. The MGI spokesman disputed that the company had ever been involved in any dubious transactions.

The government’s own internal report noted that had the companies been reigned in, Gamtel’s income would have quadrupled and prevented “1 billion dalasi in debt” (about $20 million).

To handle the millions flowing into the central bank for his benefit, Jammeh opened yet another account there in mid-2014 that he named after his “Special Vision” development plan for Gambia. The funds from the Gateway account, as well as new streams from MGI totalling $43 million, flowed into this new account. Almost immediately after the account was opened, some of the money was withdrawn. In July 2014, five cash withdrawals totalling $2.6 million were made.

The last withdrawal from the account was made on Jan. 23, 2017 — two days after Jammeh left the country.

In total, private companies had siphoned 82 percent of Gamtel’s income ($363.9 million) between 2006 and 2016. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

To be Continued

Additional reporting by Attila Biro and Daniela Lepiz