South Sudan’s citizens raised their flag on the eve of the country’s independence. |File Photo|.
A preliminary oil contract signed by South Sudan with an obscure company based in the United Arab Emirates raises concerns about potential fraud. Behind this entity lies a man suspected to be implicated in international financial crimes.
On paper, it is one of the largest oil deals recorded in Africa during the last few years. At the end of 2023, South Sudan signed a preliminary contract with a small Dubai-based company called HBK DOP for a €12bn loan to be repaid in oil.
The deal effectively gives the company a 20-year cut-price monopoly on all South Sudan’s oil, a commodity that accounts for 90 per cent of the country’s revenue.
Behind this set-up is a man who represents himself as a relative of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (aka MbZ) even if the extent of his royal connection is just that his great-grandfather was a distant cousin to the federation’s founder Zayed Ben Sultan al-Nahyan.
He is not actually a member of the ruling Zayed dynasty but comes from the Nahyan clan, who are very distant cousins. Moreover, none of his immediate family hold any official positions in the UAE government.
He was born Adil Al Otaiba, after his mother Muza al-Otaiba, and was given permission to change his patronym, and he uses the new one in his business dealings. His ubiquitous use of the honorific “Sheikh” is, therefore, widely seen as unmerited.
The name of the businessman’s company is derived from the initials of his adopted moniker, Hamad Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, suffixed with ‘DOP’ for ‘Department of Projects.’
He lives with his wife and four children in a modest residence in Abu Dhabi and seldom appears in town or attends Dubai dinner parties. His signature- as “Sheikh Hamad_- is found at the bottom of the three-page document ratified in December by South Sudan’s then-finance minister, Bak Barnaba Chol.
That deal, whose final terms are still under negotiation, is being overseen by Benjamin Bol Mel, one of the most influential advisers of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.
Embellished resumes
Juba seems not to have conducted much due diligence into HBK DOP, a mysterious company that barely exists (even its website is a work in progress), and behind which hides a multitude of businessmen with largely exaggerated CVs.
These include Kenyan national Anwar Majid Hussein, who once moved in opposition leader Raila Odinga’s business circles; a Malian self-styled banker, Yoro Mohamed Diallo; a Malian former minister; and a Greek lawyer.
In their business dealings, all of them flaunt dubious references and sometimes made-up job histories with fictitious companies. Contacted by Africa Intelligence, neither HBK DOP nor most of its associates responded to inquiries.
Misleading acronym
In December 2020, the Israeli Megiddo Financial Intelligence agency exposed “Sheikh” Hamad while investigating him as a potential 50 per cent buyer of Beitar Jerusalem Football Club for $32m.
The agency discovered that HBK Group consisted of companies purportedly operating in sectors such as cryptocurrency and renewable energy, but which in practice did very little.
The network included the Arab Investment Development Authority (AIDA), whose initials seem misleadingly close to those of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). The Israel press published some of Megiddo’s findings.
These revelations sparked outrage in the royal cabinet, which reprimanded the “Sheikh”, accusing him of “sullying” the name of the ruling family.
With HBK, which could also be mistaken for a group owned by Qatar’s ruling family, “Sheikh” Hamad has deceived several companies in Asia and Europe since 2019. In the United Kingdom, he co-directed two firms with Sencer Sekvet, a Turkish Cypriot who was sentenced to seven years behind bars for fraud in the UK in 2013.
He also acted in connection with two Dubai-based Iranian businessmen brothers, Rahmatollah Bakhtari Musa and Hedayatollah Bakhtari Musa, whom US financial investigators suspect of providing oil services in violation of sanctions against Tehran.
False investments
All three are linked to several cases of alleged fraud. In 2019, AIDA falsely announced $5bn worth of energy investments in Bangladesh and, through an ad hoc company, STC-Energy, $2bn in Ukraine. Anastasiya Abramova, Hedayatollah Bakhtari Musa’s wife—and alleged frontwoman—is Ukrainian and, via the Marshall Islands-registered Amar Offshore, is the sole beneficial owner of STC-Energy.
Abramova managed AIDA for a while and is linked to several financial vehicles established in the Marshall Islands, Cyprus, and Ukraine. Some of these are suspected by the US and Swiss financial watchdogs of being instruments of massive fraud.
The Iranian-Ukrainian couple is, alongside Russian-Swiss financier Aleksei Korotaev (Al, 02/05/23), caught up in a case of alleged embezzlement from clients Helin International, a defunct wealth management company now frozen in the UAE (Al, 08/05/23).
Korotaev is still the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by Switzerland, which does not rule out doing the same for Abromova.
In Latvia, the Bakhtari Musa brothers targeted a small banking institution, the Baltic International Bank, which in March 2022 saw the majority of its shareholding fall into the hands of “Sheikh” Hamad.
Nine months later, the Latvian Finance and Capital Market Commission (FKTK) decided to close the bank following a raid by special forces and an investigation into a series of financial malpractices and alleged laundering of suspicious Russian funds.
Korotaev, Abramova, and Hedayatollah Bakhtari Musa all declined to respond to questions.
Strained economy
Despite the US sanctions slapped on him in 2021, Bol Mel, one of the architects of the cash-for-oil deal with HBK, has remained within President Kiir’s inner circle.
He is a frequent traveler to Dubai, where his wife lives, and has been staying at the city’s opulent Jumeirah Beach Hotel since mid-May.
An influential board member of the state-owned Nilepet and President Kiir’s right-had man on a range of issues, including oil, he is still negotiating the HBK deal.
Concerned about the potential consequences of such an agreement on South Sudan’s fragile economy, major financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are keeping a close eye on the situation.
South Sudan, already dependent on these entities, is seeking a new disbursement of $250m from the IMF to help it cope with its economic crisis, on top of January’s emergency injection of $114m.
In April, South Sudan’s auditor general, Steven Kiliona Wondu, reported that that money had been spent opaquely.
In May, the World Bank and the IMF established conditions for an eventual new loan, just as South Sudan is weeks away on defaulting on a $1bn debt to the Qatar National Bank (QNB).
Resisting transparency
The international community’s insistence on transparency is not going down well in Juba. This has been one of the main sticking points in Petronas’s sale of its South Sudanese oil assets to British firm Savannah Energy (AI, 20/10/21).
Salva Kiir is bitterly opposed to this $1.25bn in deal, which requires some financial transparency from Juba.
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Bak Barnaba Chol, the then finance minister, even announced having made a counter-offer to the Malaysian company – with the support of Caltech Investment, a New Jersey-based firm with no apparent financing capacity – before backtracking.
South Sudan is now caught between a rock and a hard place. It is on the brink of bankruptcy, as 80 per cent of its oil exports were cut off in February after the pipeline connecting Upper Nile oil fields to the Red Sea was damaged by the war in neighbouring Sudan (AI, 03/06/24).
Faced with the risk of such an economic calamity, which could directly challenge his leadership, Kiir is looking for an exit strategy. This situation is being exploited by “Sheikh” Hamad and is of great concern to South Sudan’s partners, especially the World Bank and IMF.
Contacted by Africa Intelligence, government spokesperson and communications minister Michael Makuei did not respond to our questions, and Bol Mel could not be reached.
