This one I’ll share with my minister’

Mr Cheng – not his real name – had been in The Gambia for barely two years. He does not have thorough knowledge of the geography of Batokunku, but he did not not miss his way to ‘a very big compound on the highway’ in the coastal village.

While there on one of his several visits, together with two fellow Chinese nationals, he was welcomed to the yard by a middle-aged man who would become a regular host to such rendezvous.

His name is Dr Bamba Banja, permanent secretary, ministry of fisheries. He is a richly experienced and educated career civil servant who is just one year shy of four decades at the ministry. 

Cheng was a staff member of Golden Lead, a controversy-laden Chinese company that has been operating a fishmeal factory in Gunjur since 2016. Now, he is a whistleblower after falling out with his employers, opening a rare window into the inside of a company whose operations and dealings have been veiled in secrecy. 

“In this country, if you have money, you can do anything,” he told Malagen, wearing a smile. “Everyone is corrupt. Everyone!”

He said that he had participated in at least five payments of one hundred thousand dalasi each (a total of approx. $10,000) Dr Banja, between 2018 and 2020. Two of the payments were connected to the lifting of the ban on night fishing. And another was made as recently as April 10, 2020, which was meant to bribe fisheries ministry officials to allow the company to operate during Covid-19 despite restrictions.

However, Dr Banja has told Malagen that he has never received Mr Cheng at his home. 

“I would not allow people to come to my home. I have a reputation [to protect]. Do you think I am cheap?” he said.

But there is an audio clip – a recording of one of the alleged transactions. “This one [D100, 000], I will share with the Minister…,” a voice purportedly of Dr Banja could be heard saying. “I will give him half and I will take half.”

When confronted with the audio, Minister Gomez and Dr Banja have both dismissed it as untrue. “You think I am cheap?” Minister Gomez told Malagen. “I’ll not accept that.”

Dr Banja, on his part, said the audio was manipulated. “It is not me. You think if this is true, I’ll be here?”

But the voice in the audio clip, whoever it was, had a bit more to say, and the context it provides appears to give clues that are revealing.

“When we meet, we will solve that – one of the cases,” the voice continues. “But the other charges, the other crimes— when we meet— we will make decisions. Maybe it will be a fine… We want to help. Otherwise, we will go to court but we want to help quickly, take a decision today.”

The atmosphere in the environment, as captured in the recording, does not seem to help Dr Banja in his denial. 

The informant’s description of the house has been independently verified by Malagen to be accurate, suggesting that he has indeed been to the compound. Kids were playing in the background. “Manka man sirangho nati?’(meaning – Manka didn’t bring the chair yet?’) was also heard in the audio. Our investigations reveal that Ousainou Manka is a driver at the Ministry and used to drive Dr Banja. Our informant said that two of the payments were for the Ministry to lift the annual six months moratorium on night fishing, which starts from June. Our investigations also revealed that the Ministry had this year reduced the moratorium to four months, starting August, citing Covid-19. The protest by artisanal fishers against the decision fell on deaf ears. Could it be a coincidence?

Bribery or no bribery, Golden Lead wins

A ministry turned court

The Fisheries Act, 2007, caters for establishment of a ‘Consultative Committee’ to deal with infringements in the country’s waters. Chaired by Dr Banja, it has representatives from the Gambia Navy, Gambia Maritime Administration, Ministry of Finance and the Attorney General’s Chambers.

“The courts take time,” Dr Banja said, defending the out-of-court mechanism.

In little over 2 years– between 2018 and July 2020, the authorities arrested at least 32 fishing trawlers for infringements in the waters, the Fisheries Minister James Gomez had said. Of that, 21 trawlers are registered in The Gambia, 2 Senegalese, 6 Chinese and 3 Turkish.

None of these cases were taken to court.

For Dawda Saine, a marine biologist and the executive secretary of the National Association of Artisanal Fisheries Operators (NAAFO), the out-of-court settlement is open to abuse. “If they are persistent all the times on out-of-court settlements, without taking it to the open court, it will raise doubts,” said Saine.

And a senior government official who is familiar with the workings of the Committee told Malagen that the committee is not properly constituted and there are no rules of procedure or consistency in decision making.

“The fines imposed by the Committee for infringements are small compared to what obtains in neighbouring countries,” he said.  

The membership of the Committee is exhaustively listed under the Act and does not include the deputy permanent secretary of the ministry of fisheries who nonetheless sits on the committee.

But Dr Banja will not be deterred. “Even if we have one now, and the offender wants to settle it out of court, we will listen. Tell them,” he told Malagen.

And Golden Lead is always ready and willing to do that. 

‘The law doesn’t make sense’

If foreign vessels breach their license conditions they can face a mandatory minimum fine of D5 million dalasis (approx. US$96,500) and a maximum of D25 million (approx. US$482,700). However, none of the fines imposed are compliant with the dictates of the Act. Golden Lead, for example, has been fined to pay D1 million for fishing in prohibited zones.

“It does not make sense to fine an offender D5 million or D25 million for fishing in the wrong zone…,” Banja told Malagen. “Those laws came into being during the latter part of the last regime… If we are to apply those laws, we will kill our industry. We are going to revisit those laws.”

For now though, the law is the law, but for Dr Banja, whose ministry has been turned into a court of sort, the law can be damned. “We cannot go by that law,” he said, a position strongly shared by Minister Gomez. “That law is draconian,” Gomez said. “We don’t want to kill our industry.”

The process of the Consultative Committee is not transparent. The full details of its activities are kept in secret, including details of the charges of infringements, how decisions are reached and the full list of the fine imposed and paid.

“We don’t release that information like that. People use that information to go and write their thesis,” said Famara Darboe, the director of the Department of Fisheries and the secretary to the Consultative Committee.

No treatment plant

In early 2017, Golden Lead came under heavy criticism and a legal suit for operating without an environmental approval license. The residents in Gunjur and activists had also protested over the ‘foul odour emitting from the factory and discharging of toxic waste into the river’.

The company had denied allegations of disposing of toxic waste into the ocean. However, details of the court case filed against the company by the National Environment Agency (NEA) showed that the company was lying. That case was also settled out of court.

The Minister for Environment, Mr Lamin Dibba, had told journalists that it was because Golden Lead was ‘cooperating’. “This is one of the processes now that led us to have a wastewater treatment plant,” he said. “And the ecological assessment was conducted and we were satisfied with the results. That was the basis for withdrawing this from the courts.”

Exporting without food certificate

Investigations into the practice of fish meal by Changing Markets Foundation, published in mid-2019, revealed that all three fish meal plants in the country have since 2017 been exporting fish meal and fish oil without the required certificates.

“This reveals serious gaps in international oversight on food security and product traceability, putting consumers’ safety at risk,” the Foundation says in their report Fishing For Catastrophe.

Golden Lead in particular was alleged to have forged a certificate from the Gambia Food Safety and Quality Authority (FSQA). It was the Japanese authorities who, upon receipt of these containers, flagged this transaction.

In September last year, the Authority wrote to their Japanese counterparts informing them that Golden Lead’s food quality certificate that enabled them to export their product to Japan had been falsified.

“All certificates from the Food Safety and Quality Authority are handwritten and endorsed and do not use electronic signatures or stamp name tags. Please also be informed that Muctarr Sonko is not currently a signatory to any certificate as he is currently not with the FSQA,” the Authority states in a letter seen by Malagen.

A senior person at the FSQA who spoke to Malagen on condition of anonymity, said the case was reported to the Kotu Police Station for investigation.

“Golden Lead fraudulently used the signature of our officer and the person was in China at the time,” said the source.

However, the spokesperson of the Gambia Police Force, Lamin Njie, said the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) operatives stationed at  Kotu Station had concluded their investigations and found no wrongdoing.

He added: “…as far as the clearing of the containers in the Gambia is concern, they [CID] did not see any irregularities there because the containers were all cleared by Food Safety in accordance with their regulations.”

According to the police spokesman, the forgery was done in Japan, contradicting the position of the Food Safety Authority in The Gambia.

Normal to dine with Chinese

The relationship – and the appropriateness of it – between the officials of the government and Golden Lead has for long been a subject of intense public focus. Recently, Minister James Gomez was roundly criticised when a video of him having dinner in Dakar with the Chinese owners of Golden Lead surfaced online. Gomez confirmed that the video was true, but defended his actions as a normal thing to do with a partner.

He saw nothing wrong with his behavior even when the code of conduct for civil service advises civil and public servants against placing themselves in such situations and to ‘refrain from accepting gifts, presents and others favours that will compromise their integrity and objectivity’.

However, for human rights activist Madi Jobarteh, the actions of Minister Gomez constitute conflict of interest and need to be investigated. “By going to Senegal to meet this company raises concern that the reason this company continues to flout our laws and perpetrate harmful operations with impunity is because it has control over such ministers,” he said.

Old wine in old bottles  

The fisheries sector is not new to corruption scandals. In 2014, President Yahya Jammeh, now exiled in Equatorial Guinea, had commissioned a special audit into the state of affairs in the fisheries sector.

The exercise uncovered massive corruption with loss of millions of dalasis in revenue. For instance, an estimated D1.3 million (approx. US$25,000) of revenue was ‘undercollected’ from vessel owners. Fines imposed on poachers had disappeared and receipts could not be traced to the cashbook. The incidents of fraud and misappropriation of funds, as detailed in the audit report, were varied and many.

In 2015, nine officials of the fisheries ministry indicted by the audit were dragged to court over charges of economic crime, negligence of duty and abuse of office. Dr Banja was among them. So was the director of the fisheries department, Famara Darboe. After several court appearances in 2015, the case stalled until 2017 when it was withdrawn after the change of government.

Dr Banja was reinstated as permanent secretary. He didn’t leave Famara behind. But he maintained that he is innocent, describing the charges as bogus. 

Additional reporting by Kebba Jeffang