By Baba Sillah
Momodou Lamin Gibba, the former managing director of Gambia Ports Authority has claimed before the Janneh Commission that no due diligence has been carried out in the sale of GPA’s 10% share in Gam Petroleum.
Mr Gibba whose assets were frozen by the Inquiry earlier last month, made the claim yesterday when he reappeared before the Inquiry together with the current managing director, Abdoulie Tambedou to shed light on GPA’s shares and investment in Gam Petroleum.
Gibba who was also a one time managing director of SSHFC further asserted that the directive to sell the 10% shares was from the office of the President.
According to Gibba, he was skeptical about the management affairs of Gam Petroleum as there were a lot of problems with the management amid monopoly in the services and Gam Petroleum was also incurring losses and his relationship with some of the employees was not cordial.
He explained: “I wrote to the office of the president to check the whole management, and the office of the president agreed for us to have some people to represent GPA. We made arrangements to work with Gam Petroleum, and we sent two representatives but they were not allowed to be at the meeting. We wrote to the office of the president again but they did not acknowledge my letter, instead my service was terminated.”
Commission Counsel, Amie Bensouda at that juncture showed him a copy of his statement submitted to the commission, which he confirmed before it was admitted in evidence as exhibit together with a bundle of documents including the minutes of the AGM meeting and the witness’ statement.
Meanwhile the managing director of GPA, Abdoulie Tambedou testified that the statement of affairs of Gam Petroleum was prepared by DT Associates instead of PKF as he earlier indicated in his evidence.
He further recalled that DT Associates did not sign the statement of affairs, noting that this was the issue of €33,000,000 and €35,000,000 respectively and a memo dated July 2008 addressed to the former managing director indicated the difference between the said sums.
On the statement of affairs report, he disclosed that it was only signed by Muhammed Bazzi but there was no signature by Amadou Samba where the €35,000,000 was mentioned in the report.
Making reference to minutes of meeting, Mr Tambedou explained that it was highlighted in the Annual General Meeting that DT Associates had served as auditors of Gam Petroleum since inception.
Sitting continues today.
