Mogadishu (Kaab TV) – Somalia Federal President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is facing a serious corruption allegation related to his personal expenditure, according to local and foreign officials privy to the matter.
President Mohamud has spent $27 millions for his personal expenses during the past eight months and has not yet been accounted for, according to sources at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
A senior official at the Somalia’s Federal Ministry of Finance, says apart from foreign trips, president Mohamud has been busy in various expensive dealings that has yet to be accounted for.
As part of the ongoing slow process of the debt relief, IMF has set to maintaining macroeconomic stability, implementing a poverty reduction strategy, and putting in place a set of reforms focused on fiscal stability, improving governance and debt management, strengthening social conditions, and supporting inclusive growth as a condition to achieving the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.
he IMF and World Bank launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in 1996 to ensure that no poor country faces an unmanageable debt burden.
The donor community has recently demanded the federal government and the president’s office to account for the $27 million expenses.
The IMF and the World Bank are monitoring the country’s financial management as part of the debt relief program.
Although it is already in debt distress, the Horn of African nation cannot yet access full debt relief from the IMF until it shows commitment to structural reforms that will ensure “public resources are used effectively and to the benefit of all the Somali people, and efforts to promote stronger economic growth that will lead to more jobs”.
In March 2023, a team of IMF staff met with Somali authorities – including finance and planning minsters and the Central Bank of Somalia (CBS) governor – after which the lender said the country is making progress towards the HIPC completion point prerequisites despite some challenges.
To reach the completion point for full debt relief under the HIPC initiative, the lender also requires countries to have a good performance record under an IMF programme and implement its poverty reduction strategy for at least one year as pre-conditions.
Licenses for Khat importation
Another scandal involving President Mohamud is that he pocketed $3 million license fees from planes carrying khat [miraa] from Kenya.
The importation of the Kenyan khat has been re-opened in June 2022 after a ban imposed by the previous administration.
A member of the federal minister told Kaab TV that the khat importers initially released $3 million for license fees.
The payment was made directly to the president.
“The president has received the money directly. Some lawmakers wanted to get their share but the president initially said he is dealing with serious issues such as lack of pay for the Ma’awisley militia and that he wanted to sort out bills incurred through his foreign travel activities,” the cabinet member told Kaab TV.
“There is no money that has been paid to the Ma’awisley so far,” he added.
The Ministry of Transport and Aviation, which is mandated to issue licenses for the airliners has been reduced to issuing landing permits to the aircrafts.
Aviation officials have been receiving direct calls from the president to instruct release of khat flights without questioning their licenses.
Owing to a reported lack of accountability in the receipt and expenditure of public funds by the government institutions, Somalia is ranked as the world’s top corrupt country, according to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index by Berlin-based corruption watchdog Transparency International that surveyed 180 countries.
Corruption in Somalia pertains to purported levels of corruption within the country’s public and private sectors according to official metrics, anti-graft measures aimed at addressing those issues, as well as political dispensations and structural changes in government affecting transparency.