Former Registrar General Says His Team Lacked Resources to Effectively Identify Jammeh Properties

Alieu Jallow, Former Registrar General

By Buba Gagigo

Alieu Jallow, the former Registrar General of Companies, has claimed that his team was not adequately resourced to carry out the task of identifying properties belonging to former President Yahya Jammeh. Jallow made the statement while responding to questions regarding why only 36 out of 107 known properties were identified by his task force.

Jallow was first questioned about correspondence allegedly sent to the Janneh Commission and the Gambia Armed Forces. He initially denied writing any letters to either institution.

“If I have written to the Armed Forces, it might only be the previous notices that were served because some of the properties were occupied by members of the armed forces. That might amount to writing to the armed forces, but not per se the institution itself or to individual occupants of those properties.”

However, when shown letters he had signed and addressed to both the commission and the Chief of Defence Staff, Jallow acknowledged authorship but attributed his earlier denial to human error.

“I am a human being; there’s nothing to conceal in this, there’s nothing that is so special in this as to conceal. I could not remember writing anything to the commission of inquiry; I cannot. With all honesty, I cannot remember, and that is why I said, If you can remind me, that will be good,” he said.

Jallow was also questioned about whether he had seen a court order dated May 22, 2017, and a second order issued on July 21, 2017, which placed additional properties under the control of the Registrar General. He responded, “No, I was not shown this order (the additional order). I was never served a copy; in fact I was never aware of this order. I am aware of the order of the 22nd (of May 2017).”

When it was pointed out that some of the properties his task force visited in Banjul were listed in the second order, he insisted, “I want to be consistent with my answer. With all honesty, I am not aware of this particular order, but I know that we visited properties in Banjul. Our move is in respect of the first order. The first order is very clear as to what we have custody of and control over. That is movable and immovable assets. The very fact that we are aware of the movable and immovable assets within the City of Banjul means we will move on to attack them. That’s what happened, but I was not informed by a subsequent order.”

Jallow also distanced himself from the process of applying for the court orders. He said the Attorney General did not inform him of the intention to apply for the first order, nor did he recall any meeting with the Attorney General or the Solicitor General about the matter. However, he did recall a coordination meeting with Augustus Prom, which he said occurred after the order had already been obtained.

“I can remember that (meeting) was a coordination meeting, that was the only time I had a meeting with Augustus Prom and the only other time we interacted was when we were going round to serve the notices.”

Asked why his team managed to visit only 36 out of the 107 properties identified, Jallow cited lack of personnel, motivation, and logistical support.

“I was operating as a man army. When we started our operations, we had the paramilitary officers accompanying us for the first phase of our exercise. In the second phase of the exercise, virtually everybody dropped. The exercise we were doing was not paid for, and most of the people who were part of that team expected that at the end of the exercise, they would be paid, and this was not the case. So I could not maintain the people because there was no motivation. I was moving virtually with two people, myself, Modou Musa, and the boy from the SIS,” he stated.

Jallow concluded by criticizing the lack of institutional support for the assignment.

“My team was not given the attention it deserved, with all honesty. I think I was not given the attention I deserved. If I am given work of this magnitude or any other person given a work of this magnitude you will capacities that individual, you will provide that person with help to be able to function effectively. This requires proper coordination, it requires a small secretariat, it requires some staff, it requires some logistics. Those logistics were not provided. I don’t even have a dedicated car to do these things. I was using my own small vehicle to go to all these places,” he said.