By Nik Harris, Matthew Anderson, and Mark Feldman
Transactions in bank statements from the Office of the First Lady provide comprehensive details on how more than Le1.3 billion was paid directly to a private company in Freetown for “fuel purchase.” The transactions violated Sierra Leone’s public finance laws and procurement regulations.
The 17 payments were all processed by the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) between 19 July 2018 and 4 November 2020 and paid directly to Demba Enterprises in multiple recurring amounts ranging from Le28,400,000 to Le49,770,000; and between Le87,480,000 and Le154,632,000 respectively.
These payments were processed without compliance to procurement regulations, including the required open advertisements and competitive bidding documents that would show how Demba Enterprises was selected as sole fuel supplier for the First Lady’s Office. In some cases, multiple pre-paid payments were made annually for fuel supplies that were supposed to be used at least three months in advance of the purported supply.
On 12 December 2018, for instance, a total of Le96,992,000 (transaction ID FT1834641551) was processed as advanced payment to Demba Enterprises for the supposed supply of 12,124 liters of fuel for the months of January, February, and March 2019. This amount is the approximate equivalent of over 265 automobile tanks – a typical tank of fuel in a car can drive about 2600 km; this means that the First Lady’s office paid for over 690,000 km of car travel.
Although we found no documents showing how the 12,124 liters were supplied, or the specific dates of the supply, but we noted specifically that on 26 February 2019 another payment of Le87,480,000 (transaction ID FT1905783070) was processed in the name of Demba Enterprises as supposed advancement for another 11,664 liters of fuel for the months of March, April, and May 2019 even though the earlier payment in December 2019 (transaction ID FT1834641551) specifically covered the month of March 2019. A payment of the same amount – Le87,480,000 (transaction ID FT1913587677) was processed on 15 May 2019 also as advance payment for another 11,664 liters of fuel even though payment for the month of May 2019 had been processed in the February 2019 payment.
In total, we discovered that by 30 December 2019, total payments to Demba Enterprises for fuel supplies amounted to Le566,215,000. Most of the 2019 transactions were paid three months in advance of delivery. This pattern of advance payment for fuel is unusual and recurred in 80% of the 2020 transactions from the BSL Account of the Office of First Lady to Demba Enterprises. On 4 November 2020, for instance, an amount of Le180,180,000 was processed as advance payment for the months of January, February, and March 2021. The November 2020 transaction (FT2030913634), processed two months prior to the close of FY2020, represented the highest single transaction paid by the First Lady to Demba Enterprises for alleged fuel supply four months in advance of the actual date of the supposed supply. In total, we discovered that all payments made to Demba Enterprises between July 2018 and November 2020 amounted to Le1,380,417,000; the 17 transactions averaged Le81,200,000.
The funds were drawn directly from the BSL Bank Account of the Office of the First Lady, which was established in June 2018, about two months after the election of Julius Maada Bio as President. This situation is unusual because Sierra Leone’s finance laws preclude the wife of any sitting president from receiving direct public funds to undertake any campaigns or for any public activities while in office. Documentary evidence reviewed by Africanist Press shows that Fatima Bio received at least Le49.5 billion (nearly US$5 million) in combined government funds, including Le29.7 billion transferred directly from the CRF into her BSL Account, which was opened in June 2018 by finance officials of the Bio administration. Documents on expenditure details of the First Lady’s Office show that a total of Le22,188,104,986.87 (about US$2.2 million) was withdrawn and spent by Fatima Bio within a 30-month period – from June 2018 to December 2020. Expenditure statements claimed that 85% of the Le27.9 billion disbursed into the BSL Bank Account of the Office of the First Lady were used allegedly on furniture, fuel payments, events planning, hotel accommodation, travel-related costs, and staff expenses.
Demba Enterprises is listed as one of the companies that received payments for alleged services from the illegal budgetary allocations. Others included AA Enterprises for similar recurring and repeated payments for office furniture, and a host of other companies for alleged media, travel, and hotel-related services.
Central Bank records and financial correspondence from the Office of the First Lady also state that the Le29.7 billion disbursed into the organization’s BSL Account does not include other government funds received directly from the Ministry of Finance, and those also deposited by telecommunications operators, and other non-corporate institutions – NGOs and donor agencies – into the organization’s bank account held at the Rokel Commercial Bank (RCB) in Sierra Leone. The combined totals from these deposits into the RCB exceeded the total amount held by the First Lady at the BSL during these 30 months of the Bio administration.
On 18 February 2021, parliamentary leaders of the All Peoples Congress (APC) and National Grand Coalition (NGC) wrote a joint letter to the Speaker of Parliament calling on Ministry of Finance officials to be invited to Parliament in reference to the illegal budgetary allocations. Section 93 (6) and Section 111 (3)(4) of the Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991 fully empowers the Sierra Leone Parliament to probe into reports of illegal budgetary allocations to the First Lady’s Office, a non-statutory institution. In the letter, the APC’s Chernor R. M. Bah and NGC’s Kandeh Yumkella stated that “the above provisions give parliament the responsibility to investigate these serious allegations, including the interviewing of all those cited in the allegations and to examine all required documents.” Although the two senior MPs clearly underlined their powers in the letter, they nonetheless made no follow-up steps to act on the evidence that warranted them to write the said letter.
Even where the Speaker of Parliament was not inclined to convene a parliamentary probe on the issue, Section 86(2) of the Constitution of Sierra Leone 1991 makes it mandatory on the Speaker to convene such a meeting if at least a minimum of 20% of all MPs had requested for a meeting of Parliament.
“If twenty percent of all MPs had requested a meeting of Parliament, it becomes compulsory on the Speaker to summon such a meeting of within two weeks. The APC alone has the numbers to request such a meeting if they ever wanted,” a lawyer told Africanist Press.
Almost two years since they sent the letter, neither the Sierra Leone Parliament nor the two MPs ever discussed the illegal allocation of public funds to the Office of the First Lady.
“The obvious thing is that the letter itself was a pretentious move by the said MPs to avoid public scrutiny on why they refused to sincerely perform their parliamentary functions, including the duty to exercise the stipulated constitutional powers that allow them the right to oversee and probe into government financial operations,” says Mohamed Warisay, a former director of the civil society group, Democracy Sierra Leone.
Currently exiled in the United States, Warisay is among a group of Sierra Leonean activists who expressed concerns over the failure of Sierra Leone’s opposition parliamentarians to probe into reports of corruption in the Bio administration.
“Some of the opposition MPs are defending the president’s record on corruption,” he said, adding that the APC’s parliamentary leadership has conspired with the Bio administration to destroy democracy and transparency in the country.
One opposition parliamentarian, Hon. Lahai Marah of the APC, recently posted on his Facebook page that “all assertion [sic] against the present SLPP government of Sierra Leone on corruption and money laundering are not correct” and that he doubted “corruption claims against the Bio government” by Africanist Press.
Marah’s remarks followed an Africanist Press report published on 24 June 2022 revealing that MPs were discussing legislative proposals to amend Sierra Leone’s electoral laws in ways that might suppress thousands of potential voters who are most likely to vote against incumbent President Julius Maada Bio in next year’s elections.
The parliamentarian was forced to delete the Facebook post after dozens of reactions from his supporters who condemned the message as an unfortunate attempt to discredit and cast doubts on the work of Africanist Press.
After casting itself as a fighter against corruption, Sierra Leone’s government came under fierce scrutiny from Africanist Press after reports on corruption revealed bank details showing cases of alleged financial impropriety and unregulated public spending by President Bio and leading officials of the administration.
“The Africanist Press corruption reports into Bio’s administration came as an embarrassment to the president who promised to clamp down on corruption and frivolous spending,” says Freetown resident, Ibrahim Kamara.
In 2019, Bio launched a corruption investigation into his predecessor, Ernest Bai Koroma and several of his former ministers, placing many of them on a travel ban after a transition report detailed alleged corruption and abuse of office for a number of the former government officials.
In mid-November 2021, the President suspended the head of Sierra Leone’s national auditing agency after the agency highlighted financial and procurement irregularities while investigating the President and the First Lady’s travel expenditures and procurement activities for FY2020. Audit officials reportedly discovered that the President’s Office had submitted several forged documents, including fake hotel receipts and invoices to the Audit Service as part of the President’s travel expenditures for FY2020.
By December 2021, Africanist Press learned that over 170 civil servants, mostly internal auditors in the Finance Ministry and Office of the President, were also indefinitely suspended or dismissed on grounds of suspicion that they were providing information on government corruption to Africanist Press.
Thanks for the good work meaningful sierra leonean do appreciate your information. We will surely bring all those involved in this corrupt act to book.