AP Exclusive: More than $70 million missing in Somalia; politicians accept briefcases of cash

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 25, 2011 (AP) — Somali politicians are returning from Arab nations with briefcases of cash, and a Somali government watchdog report obtained by The Associated Press found that more than $70 million of it is missing instead of being used to fight terrorism, piracy or hunger.

In this file photo of Thursday March, 17, 2011 security forces stand guard near the gate of the Somali central bank in Mogadishu Somalia. Politicians are returning from Arab nations with briefcases of cash, and a new report and an Associated Press investigation found that. Farah Abdi Warsameh / Associated Press

In this file photo of Thursday March, 17, 2011 a Somali official of the central bank in Mogadishu, Somalia, arranges Somali bank notes at the bank. Somali politicians are returning from Arab nations with briefcases of cash, and a new report and an Associated. Farah Abdi Warsameh / Associated Press

The large cash payments encourage politicians to hang onto power while paying little attention to crucial needs in a country devastated by two decades of war. A lack of attention to constituents’ needs may also be fueling an al-Qaida-linked insurgency, officials say.

“Politicians want to keep the status quo. They’re profiting from it,” said Abdirazak Fartaag, the head of the Public Finance Management Unit, a Somali government body charged with overseeing the country’s financial management. “We have to hold these big shots accountable.”

Somalia’s prime minister told AP the government is trying to be more transparent by working from a budget and making records public.

In a 22-page report due to be released Wednesday and obtained exclusively by AP, Fartaag documented cash payments that came from Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and other donors in 2009 and 2010 totaling more than $75 million. Only $2.8 million was accounted for by the government. He based his report, which was written for the Somali government, on interviews with politicians who witnessed the payments or received money in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

Fartaag said in his report that the Somali government is missing more than $300 million once internal revenues from the port, airport, khat trade and telecommunications are added to the Arab millions that have vanished.

A separate AP investigation established that cash payments from Arab nations continue amid a lack of transparency over how much money politicians accept and what happens with it.

Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed told AP in an interview in Mogadishu in April that his government received one payment of $5 million dollars from a Middle Eastern country this year that he “believed” to be the United Arab Emirates.

But Finance Minister Hussein Halane told AP in April that he accompanied the prime minister twice to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, this year and had seen Mohamed personally receive $5 million in cash each time. After more than 50 phone calls and e-mails from AP over six weeks, the government produced documentation showing that only one payment of $5 million was deposited into the country’s Central Bank. The other payment remains unaccounted for.Continued