Prince Ebrahim Sanyang, the chairman of Royal Africa Capital Holdings, parent company of Africaada Airways, has refuted his companies’ association with former president Yahya Jammeh, and denied any financial association with him.
Speaking to The Standard yesterday, Sanyang said he felt disappointed that no one contacted him or any of his companies to find out their status or relations before coming to the conclusion.
”I think the authorities should have first conducted a thorough investigation before including my companies’ names in any list. Neither my businesses nor myself have any connection with Yahya Jammeh,” he stressed.
Asked to explain the involvement of Ansumana Jammeh, brother of the former president who is listed as a shareholder in most of the companies in the list, Prince Sanyang said “if the government had contacted us and investigate they would have got the needed facts.
The mere fact that our offices are located in a building associated with him does not mean he has shares, but this is too little too late now. All this would have been very clear to the authorities if they had contacted us and find out,” he said. He added: “We wrote and frequently visited AG Chambers and submitted board resolutions to them addressing all these matters but again no action taken.”
Sanyang said the inclusion of his name and those of his companies in the list will inevitably harm his reputation and businesses, which has a reputable link on the African continent with debt equities and pipeline investment of some eight billion dollars.
“The right thing the government should do is to apologise forthwith and unreservedly for staining my name,” he said.
Sanyang added: “The new government should instead concentrate on creating opportunities for its youths by attracting investments especially investors who are already with capital in the country rather discouraging them with this pre-emptive cause of action.
“How can I have anything to do with Jammeh when his government extorted D10 million from me; when his government was in contractual defaults of over USD$11 million; when government did not grant my aircraft operational licence for over two years; when his government was embarrassingly impounding my cars on frivolous grounds of ‘executive directives’?
“Even an elementary school child can put one and one together to know that myself and my companies are clean, and should not have been mentioned pre-emptively like this. It is wrong and it is illegal… Why selective and cherry picking justice?” he enquired.
“It is unfortunate that the same government that has been a democratic, legal and freedom evangelist will perpetrate a pre-emptive cause of action with very high libel implications. Unless this government apologises, I will seek every legal route at my disposal nationally, regionally and internationally to get fair justice myself and my companies deserve,” Prince Sanyang concluded.
