Anger over shady Senegalese gas contract

Opposition politicians and campaign groups in Senegal have slammed the government after the BBC reported that a brother of President Macky Sall had benefited from lucrative dealings in the gas sector. The contracts derived from the discovery of major oil and gas reserves off the coast. In 2012, Sall confirmed a decision taken by his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade to award exploitation rights for two fields to the Timis Corporation, controlled by an Australian-Romanian businessman, Frank Timis. The BBC said Timis secretly paid a ‘bonus’ of $250 000 to Agritrans, a company controlled by Sall's younger brother, Aliou Sall, in 2014. A report on the News24 site notes that campaign group, Y'en a Marre (‘Had Enough’) said the investigation ‘has once more revealed the opacity and lack of transparency surrounding negotiations and deals in these affairs’. Opposition lawmaker Mamadou Diallo described the saga as ‘an utter scandal’.