MOGADISHU (Halbeeg News) – Central Bank of Somalia has cleared four money transfer companies from accusations of abetting money laundering and disbursement to individuals sanctioned for supporting terrorist groups.
In a report released on Friday, CBS said there is insufficient evidence Amal, Iftin, Taaj and Dahabshill money transfer services were used to remit cash to individuals fingered for aiding the al-Qaeda group in the Gulf region.
“The CBS (Central Bank of Somalia) audit team did not find any evidence of UN sanctions list violations by the four MTBs mentioned in the GI-TOC report. More specifically, none of the senders or recipients of the funds were on any UN sanctions list at the time of the transactions,” says the report authored by the regulator’s Licensing and Supervision Department.
“Crucially, the alleged receipts published in the GI-TOC report are inconsistent with the official MTBs receipts (both paper and electronic) of the same period, suggesting that they may not be genuine.
Amal and Dahabshill, both headquartered in the UAE, also have affiliated banks licenses by the Somalia Central Bank.
Hours after the release of the CBS report, Amal Express demanded apology from a Geneva-based antiterrorism financing watchdog.
“Following the release of this investigative report by the Central Bank of Somalia and based on the fact that Amal Express has been exonerated of any wrongdoing, we demand from GI-TOC an unconditional apology and for them to retract their report,” Amal said.
According to the report, the Central Bank established that there were no transactions by Abdirahman Mohamed Omar (aka Dhofaye to Abdirab Salim Al-Baydani (Al-Hayashi who is under UN sanctions for the whole of October 2019 as indicated in the Global Initiative report.
Last September, Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Organised Crime published a report claimed a number of Hawala service providers including Amal had been used to settle illegal payments to arms dealers in Yemen.
In the report titled by GI-TOC “Following the Money”, authored by former UN Expert panellist for Somalia, Jay Bahadur, said illegal payments were as high as $3.7 million between 2014 and 2020.
It also said that Somalia’s port city of Bossaso in Puntland state was the origin of most of the illegal payments to arms sellers in Yemen.
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