Africa-Press – Gambia. Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubacarr M. Tambadou, has dismissed claims that he personally received a container scanner valued at more than D200 million from the assets of former president Yahya Jammeh.
Tambedou appeared before the National Assembly’s Special Select Committee investigating the disposal of Jammeh’s assets, where he rejected testimony by Augustus Prom, the former receiver of Jammeh’s properties, who had suggested the machine was handed directly to him.
Committee member Hon. Omar Jammeh presented Tambadou with Prom’s testimony, asking how he responded to the claim.
“What did you say to that?” he asked.
In response, Tambedou dismissed the assertion as a misstatement: “First and foremost, I believe Mr. Prom misspoke; I don’t think he intended to mean me individually because that would have been impossible. One, we are talking about a scanner that is located at the ports. I can count the number of times I went to the ports. Even as a private citizen and as attorney general, I only went to the ports once when His Excellency the President was inaugurating the Kunta Kinteh Ferry, and two, the handing over wouldn’t have been done to the attorney general,” he said.
He clarified that the scanner was formally transferred to the Ministry of Justice through the civil litigation department and was later handed over to Alpha Barry, who succeeded Prom as receiver.
“There is a handing-over note between him and Mr. Barry, the new receiver, to show which items were transferred to him, so I think Mr. Prom simply misspoke,” Tambadou said.
Hon. Jammeh further pressed Tambedou on whether the scanner might have been diverted for private use.
“Do you know if the machine is still generating revenue for the country?” he asked.
In response, Tambadou states, “As far as I know, the scanner is still at the ports. If there are questions about whether it has been used or misused, or properly accounted for, then that is a matter for the committee to investigate. But what I can say is that it was never handed to me personally,” he responded.
Committee members also questioned him about other Jammeh-linked assets, including vehicles reportedly stored at the Gambia Ports Authority and mining equipment seized from APAM and other companies. Tambedou distanced himself from their management, stressing that the Janneh Commission’s recommendations had already been adopted in the government’s white paper.
On the matter of Jammeh’s cattle, Tambedou clarified that his ministry played no role in their sale: “The Ministry of Justice did not sell Jammeh’s cattle. These sales were done under the supervision of judicial officers; our role was simply to observe the process.”
He emphasized that, during his tenure as Attorney General, his focus remained on transitional justice, governance, and peace, while the custody and documentation of Jammeh’s assets were managed by designated officials within the ministry.
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