By Tabora Bojang
The director general of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, PURA, Dr Njogu Bah yesterday appeared before the National Assembly committee enquiring the importation and sale of fuel from a Russian ship, which was allegedly conducted under dubious circumstances.
In his testimony, Dr Bah said one of the companies involved in the deal, Ultimate Biege, had made an application to Pura for them to be issued a license to engage in importation of petroleum products in the Gambia.
However, he said during a review of the application, Pura discovered that the company was already engaging in ‘illegal petroleum supply chain operations’ with over D50 million already deposited in their account at Ecobank from the proceedings of its petroleum dealings.
“We accordingly imposed a fine of D500,000 on them, on 6 October 2023 and ordered them to stop all engagements in petroleum supply operations. They [Ultimate Biege] responded to our letter denying any engagement in illegal activities and citing the government policy on storing and lifting of petroleum products at the storage facility for transit and re-export,” the Pura DG told the enquiry. He said what the company was referring to is that international depositors are not required to have licenses to store their products at any terminal in the Gambia.
At this point, enquiry committee member Hon. Kebba Lang Fofana, asked for explanations as to why the “undue delay” on the part of Pura to enforce the fine, and DG Bah responded that there is a “history” behind that.
“When we sent the enforcement, they responded but in between, there came a government policy from the ministry of petroleum issued on 30 October 2024 that had to deal with these issues. With that Pura was tied and we had to withhold the enforcement,” another Pura senior official Ebou Nget told the inquiry.
Nget continued to say that the oil selling company was relying on this government policy as a base but he added that when a new minister came in, Pura decided to send a letter of action to Ultimate Biege on 14 August 2024, to claim the outstanding fine or else legal proceedings will be taken against them.
He said the company is yet to pay the fine though.
Asked if the policy was the main hindrance why Pura was not able to enforce the payment of the fine from October 2023 until August 2024, Nget replied: “Yes, to some extent”. “We are a regulatory authority body that regulates based on acts, government policies and regulations. So, if there is a government policy that goes against one of our enforcements, yes to some extent we can’t start enforcing, So the coming into force of the policy had made it very difficult for us to pursue that fine.”
Also testifying, the director of legal, licensing and enforcement at Pura, Emma Mendy, said the Authority was not consulted about the coming of the new policy.
Asked if they have raised this with the board, she responded that they had raised it in several meetings and even prepared a management paper to the board highlighting some of the challenges they are facing from the ministry of petroleum.
The company concerned, Ultimate Biege Logistics, Apogee FZC, a Dubai-based company registered in the Gambia and Creed Energy Limited are being investigated over allegations that they imported and sold about 36,935.614 metric tons of fuel from a Russian oil ship, from which no tax was paid to the state among other irregularities including allegations of bribery to senior officials for them to look the other way.
