According to Alieu Jallow, the former Registrar General of Companies, his team lacked the necessary resources to determine which properties belonged to former President Yahya Jammeh. Jallow said this in response to inquiries about why his task group had only identified 36 of the 107 recognized properties.
Jallow was initially questioned on letters purportedly sent to the Gambia Armed Forces and the Janneh Commission. At first, he denied sending any correspondence to either organization.
Because some of the properties were occupied by military personnel, it’s possible that the earlier notifications would be the only ones served if I had written to the military. That may be considered writing to the military, but not to the organization or the specific residents of those properties.
Jallow admitted authorship but blamed his previous denial on human error after being shown letters he had signed and sent to the commission and the Chief of Defence Staff.
“As a human, I have nothing to hide, and nothing about this is so unique that it needs to be hidden. I am unable to recall ever writing to the commission of inquiry. To be honest, I can’t recall, which is why I said, “It would be great if you could remind me,” he added.
Jallow was also asked if he had seen two court orders that placed more properties under the Registrar General’s jurisdiction: one dated July 21, 2017, and the other dated May 22, 2017. “No, I wasn’t shown this order (the additional order),” he replied. I was never served a copy, and I didn’t even know this order existed. The order dated May 22, 2017, is something I am aware of.
He argued, “I want to be consistent with my answer,” when it was brought up that several of the houses his task team visited in Banjul were listed in the second order. Sincerely, I don’t know about this specific order, but I do know that we looked at properties in Banjul. We are acting in accordance with the initial order. What we have custody of and control over is made very plain in the first order. This includes both immovable and movable assets. We will attack the moveable and immovable assets in the City of Banjul simply because we are aware of them. That is what actually occurred, but I was not notified by a follow-up directive.
Jallow also disassociated himself from the court order application procedure. He claimed that neither he nor the Solicitor General had met to discuss the issue, nor had the Attorney General told him of the plan to seek for the first order. Though he claimed that the order had already been acquired, he did remember a coordinating meeting with Augustus Prom.
“I recall that the only time I met with Augustus Prom was during a coordination meeting; the only other time we dealt with each other was when we were delivering notices.”
Jallow gave the following explanation when asked why his team was only able to visit 36 of the 107 homes that were found: a lack of staff, drive, and logistical support.
“I was operating as a man army. When we started our operations, we had the paramilitary officers accompanying us for the first phase of our exercise. In the second phase of the exercise, virtually everybody dropped. The exercise we were doing was not paid for, and most of the people who were part of that team expected that at the end of the exercise, they would be paid, and this was not the case. So I could not maintain the people because there was no motivation. I was moving virtually with two people, myself, Modou Musa, and the boy from the SIS,” he stated.
Jallow criticized the assignment’s lack of institutional support in his conclusion.
“My team was not given the attention it deserved, with all honesty. I think I was not given the attention I deserved. If I am given work of this magnitude or any other person given a work of this magnitude you will capacities that individual, you will provide that person with help to be able to function effectively. This requires proper coordination, it requires a small secretariat, it requires some staff, it requires some logistics. Those logistics were not provided. I don’t even have a dedicated car to do these things. I was using my own small vehicle to go to all these places,” he remarked.
