He made this statement on Monday 2 September 2024 to the joint committee of the Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) and the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) while giving testimony on the ongoing petroleum saga, which is valued at $30 million.
MD Ndiaye stated that whoever was selling - Creed, Ultimate Beige or Apogee - was the same set of people that were selling; possibly they had three subsidiaries or two companies; thus these were represented by one Mr Clement and Aurimas.
“In the first meeting they came and introduced themselves, we talked, and at sometimes they were the only ones having fuel in the country,” he said. “And that's how we met and handed them over to our finance department for the paperwork. But when we realised that we were dealing with three different companies who are represented by the same individuals, we asked them - Mr Aurimas and Clement - and their response was: ‘It’s their company’.”
Furthermore, when asked about the nature of the transaction dealing with three companies represented by one individual, Mr Ndiaye said he could not explain what is in their due diligence or how they sell their company, since these were the three companies owning oil and gas, AGO or PMS, at the depot. Therefore, he added, they wouldn’t know what's in those companies since it's not their job to look into that.
“We dealt with those we bought products from, less than 8,000 in total for all transactions, and we paid cheques according to the commercial invoice we did get for all transactions,” he stated.
Additionally, Mr Ndiaye said that despite they being obliged to know who they were dealing with as a business, it was the depot that told them and certified that the companies owned the product.
“We checked with the bank, met to check if they have bank accounts there and made the payments. We didn't go and just open the tanks and get the product. The depot released the product to us,” he explained.
Likewise, Ndiaye further revealed that although these aforementioned companies were not recognised as OMCs, they were given a vast share of the depot, which hindered their fuel business, as registered OMCs in the country, and as a result led to a denial of haulage to store their products in the depot.
“We urge Mr Yoro Jallow of Gam-Petroleum to understand that his refusal to grant haulage for gas oil that we call EGOR to Oryx Energy Scandia Limited was to give preference to Apogee, who had no investment in the country, in preference over an established registered Gambia business. He relied on a decree requiring ADAX, our supplier, to apply directly so he could reference to why Apogee was given the space that all players should have a fair share to,” he told the joint committee.
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