MOGADISHU, Nov 11: Somalia’s Barakaat remittance and deposit bank is likely to wind up its operations for good as a result of the freezing of its assets and closure of its US offices last week by US authorities who accuse it of funding international terrorism, a spokesman said Sunday.
“It is definite, logically it is definite” that the bank will not reopen, Khalif Farah told journalists.
The bank has categorically denied US accusations that it gives its profits to al-Qaeda, the suspected terrorist network of Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.
“God may give us a relief, but if that is not the case, we have no hope to reopen,” Farah said.
“This is for two reasons: first, financially it is hard to recover, and even if we reopen people would not trust us or even hawala,” he said, referring to the informal banking system many Muslims use.
Farah said the bank would go on radio later Sunday to tell clients expecting to collect money remitted by relatives abroad not to turn up to Barakaat branches on Monday, because there was no money in Somalia to give to them.
US authorities have frozen the bank’s US assets, that is, money given to the bank to pass on to relatives and friends in Somalia.
“We are definitely paying. We have to sell properties, we have to sell many things, there are people who owe us money... Yesterday (Saturday) we suggested we would open tomorrow (Monday), but we think that might create chaos in front of the bank, people may shout... security may start shooting,” he said.
Dozens of people expecting to collect relatives’ remittances were turned away from the bank’s Mogadishu headquarters on Saturday.
According to Farah, of the estimated nine million dollars Barakaat had taken in as deposits in Somalia, some six or seven million dollars has been paid out to recipients of money sent from overseas, and only about half a million of the remaining deposits are still in cash form.
Because bank records have been seized in the US and in Dubai, the hub of its transfer operations, Barakaat officials do not know exactly how much money it has taken in for remittance.
The bank moves about 140 million dollars around the world, but mostly to Somalia, every year, according to Farah.
“Basically (US President George W.) Bush put us out of business in less than 24 hours,” Farah told reporters on Friday, warning that about 1,000 jobs were at risk.
“They (the US) have been fed false information, perhaps from other (Somali) clans. I believe countries are involved. Some countries don’t want Somalia to move forward,” he said.
“We have become another victim... we are not what they say we are,” added Farah.
“There are things in (our) system that are not 100 percent right, but we are not terrorists... The US is a lifeline for Somalia, we don’t want anything to happen to it. How can you hate your backbone?
“The worst thing in the world is to be told you are guilty and have to prove yourself,” he lamented.
SOMALIA’S LIFELINE: Al Barakaat was set up as a small remittance company in 1985 for Somalis working in Saudi Arabia to send money home to their relatives. But it was only when civil war ripped Somalia apart in 1991 that business really took off.
Somalis fled worldwide and sent their earnings home to their relatives, many of them starving to death. Today remittances are by far the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner and a lifeline to millions of struggling Somalis.
Al Barakaat is Somalia’s biggest remittance company with branches in about 40 countries and says it handles around $140 million a year from the diaspora. —Reuters/AFP
MOGADISHU, Nov 11: Somalia’s Barakaat remittance and deposit bank is likely to wind up its operations for good as a result of the freezing of its assets and closure of its US offices last week by US authorities who accuse it of funding international terrorism, a spokesman said Sunday.
