How Yahya Jammeh Stole a Country
Gambia’s fearsome former leader looted nearly $1 billion from state coffers and through illicit timber deals. He...
Gambia’s fearsome former leader looted nearly $1 billion from state coffers and through illicit timber deals. He...
Throughout his military and political careers, Yahya Jammeh assembled trusted groups of confidants, including...
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The looting of Gambia's state-owned oil company reveals how Yahya Jammeh targeted government entities and usurped...
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OCCRP’s trove of thousands of confidential documents provides comprehensive insight into the financial dealings of former Gambia President Yahya Jammeh. It includes bank statements, contracts, government correspondence, internal reports, and Jammeh’s own directives.
The records primarily cover the five-year period between 2011 and 2016, but some documents reach back to 1998. Jammeh ruled Gambia from 1994 to 2017.
Over several months, OCCRP reconstructed a detailed version of Jammeh’s private economy by mapping relationships between the people, government entities, and local and foreign businesses in the president’s orbit.
The analysis included a review of nearly 10,000 banking transactions and a forensic investigation of how government money flowed between Gambian and foreign recipients. This included identifying irregular and “red flagged” transactions, differentiating between money siphoned in cash or via bank accounts, and assessing various forms of debt. OCCRP relied on financial experts during this process.
Though the records are incomplete and fragmented, they show how public money was controlled through the Office of the President. They also show how Jammeh repurposed the Gambian state to function as a bank run by his office and for his benefit. To do so, he used a currency of political power in a market dominated by only one person: himself.
From his successful coup d’etat in 1994 to his late-night flight out of the country in 2017, Yahya Jammeh's time in power was marked by human rights abuses, corruption and brutal crackdowns on dissent.
From his successful coup d’etat in 1994 to his late-night flight out of the country in 2017, Yahya Jammeh's time in power was marked by human rights abuses, corruption and brutal crackdowns on dissent.