By Jay Bahadur

The election of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in September 2012 was heralded internationally as an almost messianic break from the past, an end to Somalia’s never-ending progression of corrupt “transitional” governments and the beginning of a brave new era. Once in office, Hassan Sheikh was feted by Western powers in London and Brussels, where he spoke of rebuilding Somalia and opening up the country to foreign investment. At a Brussels conference in September 2013, enthusiastic European donors delivered the ultimate endorsement – a pledge of $2.4 billion as part of a “New Deal” for Somalia.

But Hassan Sheikh’s tenure as the international community’s chosen one may be coming to an end. On 9 July 2014, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea submitted a 37-page letter – leaked to Reuters news agency and this writer – to the U.N. Security Council accusing the president and a Maryland-based law firm of “a conspiracy to divert the recovery of overseas assets” belonging to the Central Bank of Somalia (CBS). At least one of the president’s close advisors, who was paid by the law firm for services rendered, was implicated in the letter for supplying arms to the al-Qaeda linked Islamist group al-Shabab.

The Somali government’s contract with the Maryland law firm of Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker to help recover assets – squirreled away in vast overseas accounts by members of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre’s kleptocratic regime – first came under scrutiny following the resignation of Yussur Abrar, Somalia’s first female Central Bank governor, after only seven weeks on the job.

The story of Abrar’s resignation – and of the Somali president’s discrediting – begins with the publication in July 2013 of a highly critical report on the CBS by the U.N. Monitoring Group. The report, which referred to the CBS as a giant “slush fund,” accused the bank’s then-governor, Abdulsalam Omer, of facilitating the misappropriation of millions of dollars of government money and alleged that the bank effectively functioned as a giant ATM for ‘bag-men’ sent by high-ranking politicians.

Read more: The President’s Bank

Source:africanarguments.org