he assets of Gambia’s former dictator, go for a song!
April 30, 2025, Mustapha K. Darboe
Mustapha K. Darboe
A Fajara property sold at a ‘giveaway price’!
In June 2020, former justice minister Abubacarr Tambadou appeared before lawmakers to update them on the sale of former president Yahya Jammeh’s assets. Tambadou submitted a report to the lawmakers that recorded the list of Jammeh’s properties and their buyers.
Baboucarr Sompo Ceesay bought back his property measuring 812.90 square metres at Fajara South Atlantic, where experts say the value of property increases by at least 10% yearly. No amount was recorded, nor was there any valuation amount in the document. According to an investigation by the Janneh Commission, Jammeh bought this property through the Kanilai Family Farm in 2008.
The property was mortgaged to the Arab Gambia Islamic Bank Limited in December 2004 by Baboucarr. “AGIB obtained a judgment for the sum of D8, 763, 254 against Baboucarr Sompo Ceesay and order for judicial sale of the property,” reported the Commission.
Sompo was recently appointed commissioner to a regulatory body of Gambia’s state-owned enterprises. In the most recent report released by the Ministry of Justice, the price to buy back the property was D3.150m, only D150,000 higher than the amount Jammeh paid 15 years earlier. A professional land valuator contacted by The Republic placed the land’s value in 2019 at D8.5m. The Fajara property made it into the report released by the Ministry of Justice in June 2023, about 2 years after Tambadou resigned. Babucarr claimed Jammeh forced the bank to sell the property to him, though there was no evidence before the Commission. “All these properties Jammeh bought should have been given back to people for free,” he said, claiming many of those transactions were a sham.
The Republic’s investigation has found no records that this property was valued as instructed by the Janneh Commission. Sources at the Ministry of Justice said the property was jointly bought by Baboucarr and his ex-wife, Binta Ceesay, who applied to put the names of their three children in the deeds. In a letter to Alpha Barry in July 2020, Binta claimed to have paid for the property. In her letter, she protested that she was withdrawing from the transaction and asked for a refund after her former husband failed to comply with some undisclosed agreement they had. Her letter appeared to have responded to a letter by Baboucarr to the Ministry of Justice in May 2020 asking for the property to be put in the names of the three children the couple had.
However, Babucarr told The Republic on April 29, a day after our requests for comments were sent, that the property is in his name and not in his children’s. Ex–justice minister Tambadou said their ministerial committee allowed Babucarr to buy back his property for almost the same price on claims that “President Jammeh, with the complicity of the Sheriff’s Division of the High Court at the time, deliberately undervalued their properties with the specific objective of enabling President Jammeh to acquire same below the fair market value at the time”.
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Thank you for being a part of the OPEN GAMBIA PLATFORM community. Mustapha K. Darboe contributed to the article published in the theRepublic.gm Investigation Journal on April 30, 2025! Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheOpenGambiaPlatform!
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“This story was supported by Code for Africa and funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).”
