At the centre of the report is former attorney general and minister for justice Abubacarr M. Tambadou, whom the committee says presided over a pattern of actions that violated provisions of the Public Finance Act 2014 during the disposal of landed properties recovered through the Janneh Commission process.
One of the report’s revelations concerns how proceeds from the sale of state assets were handled. Evidence before the committee shows that money generated from the recovery exercise was initially deposited into a commercial bank account rather than being paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund as required by law. The Ministry of Finance, led at the time by former minister Mambury Njie, raised repeated objections to this arrangement.
In correspondence examined by the committee, Njie warned that lodging public funds in a commercial bank account without the authorisation of the Accountant General or the Ministry of Finance violated the Public Finance Act. He also cautioned that such practices could lead to financial losses for the government through commissions or interest arrangements outside the treasury system.
The disagreement escalated into an extraordinary exchange of letters between Njie and Tambadou in late 2019 and early 2020. In one of the letters, the finance minister rejected what he described as the attorney general’s claim of discretionary authority over the management and liquidation of forfeited assets.
“Discretion must be exercised according to the rules of reason and justice,” Njie wrote, arguing that the Ministry of Justice had misunderstood the role of the finance ministry in overseeing government assets and revenues.
According to the committee, the correspondence documented a pattern of alleged violations of several sections of the Public Finance Act, including provisions governing the handling of public funds and the opening of bank accounts for government money.
Even more troubling for the committee were claims contained in Njie’s letters that Tambadou attempted to intimidate him for insisting on legal compliance. The finance minister alleged that the attorney general threatened criminal proceedings against him while simultaneously insisting he remain silent on the irregularities.
The committee described such conduct as distasteful and unethical, concluding that it amounted to an abuse of the authority of the attorney general’s office and an attempt to obstruct legitimate oversight.
Investigators also found that the Ministry of Finance had been excluded from the Inter-Ministerial Taskforce established to oversee the disposal of some of the recovered assets. The taskforce included several senior ministers but left out the finance ministry despite its statutory responsibility for government revenues and assets.
Evidence before the committee indicated that this exclusion enabled the creation of what it called parallel financial systems operating outside constitutional and statutory financial controls.
The report further revealed irregularities surrounding the documentation of decisions on asset disposal. Both the technical committee report and the inter-ministerial taskforce report submitted to cabinet were unsigned, and no witness was able to produce a signed version when requested by the committee. The secretary to cabinet reportedly admitted that presenting an unsigned report to cabinet was unusual and improper.
Although Tambadou left office in 2020, the committee found that the same administrative arrangements continued under his successor, Dawda A. Jallow.
The continuation of those systems, the committee said, demonstrated an institutional failure to correct practices that had already been identified as unlawful.
In its recommendations, the committee urged the executive to initiate criminal investigations against Tambadou under the supervision of the Director of Public Prosecutions for alleged violations of the Public Finance Act, abuse of office and other economic crimes. It also recommended that Jallow be reprimanded for perpetuating the administrative arrangements established by his predecessor.
