A SOMA spokesman told the Reuters news agency: “The SFO have confirmed that no suspicion whatsoever attaches to Lord Howard arising from the business of SOMA and his role as a non-executive director of the company and he has agreed to speak with the SFO to help resolve their enquiry as quickly as possible”.
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The UK “Serious Fraud Office” (SFO), in is statement confirmed that the SFO has opened a criminal investigation into SOMA Oil & Gas Holdings Ltd, SOMA Oil & Gas Exploration Limited, SOMA Management Limited and others in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia.
Howard is chairman of Soma and owns just under 4%. As a outcome, its London headquarters were searched last week.
Officials at the firm believe that Soma Oil & Gas is confident that there is no basis to the allegation and it is co-operating fully with the SFO to answer its queries.
Somalia’s petroleum ministry declined to comment as the ministry staff has not yet seen the report, according to Ibrahim Hussein, the ministry’s head of external relations.
The deal struck by Soma in Somalia is expected to revive the impoverished country’s oil and gas industry, which has been in a state of standstill due to decades of civil war and militancy.
Soma has spent $40 million on seismic surveys of at least 60,000 square kilometers (23,166 square miles) off the Somali coast.
Soma sources say none had any influence over contract awards to the company, but the issue has caused consternation among UN monitors and NGOs.
Somalia’s government said it would cooperate with the SFO investigation.
“Soma has never made payments to individual government officials”, the company said.
According to the report, at least six officials who drew Somali government salaries were involved in the case, including director general of the oil ministry, Farah Abdi Hassan, and his deputy, Jabril Mohamoud Geeddi.
It is claimed that almost $500,000 worth of payments to the Somali Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, beginning in June 2014, were part of a “capacity building programme”.
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According to the report, Soma confirmed to the monitors that it had paid Park’s firm, Petroleum Regimes Advisory (PRA), but said it did so because the Somali government was unable to cover its own legal fees.
