The Former governor Yussur Abrar

Bashir Issa Ali will fill the governor vacancy at the Central Bank of Somalia, created when Yussur Abrar quit the bank and the country amid corruption controversies

The Somali government has re-appointed former central bank governor Bashir Ise Ali to the top job at the Central Bank of Somalia on an interim basis, a month after Yussur Abrar quit amid reports she was being pressured by the government to collaborate in covering up corruption.

Newswire Reuters today reported that finance minister Mohamud Hassan Suleiman confirmed Ali had been asked to take the post on an interim basis. His first term as central bank governor began in 2005.

The Financial Times reported that it had seen Abrar’s resignation letter, in which she wrote that she had “continuously been asked to sanction deals and violate my fiduciary responsibility to the Somali people as head of the nation’s monetary authority.”

Abrar was educated in the US at Oklahoma State University and has since worked at a number of international banks. Before joining the central bank she held positions at the African Development Bank and as managing director at TLG Financial Services.

She replaced Abdusalam Omer, who resigned on September 13 after a United Nations report said the central bank was “at the heart” of a system of “misappropriation, embezzlement and outright theft of public resources”. The central bank functioned as a “slush fund” for the government’s system of patronage, the report said.

However Abdirashid Hashi, deputy director of Mogadishu-based think-tank the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, told CentralBanking.com it was “hard to believe what is being reported”, adding that Abrar’s departure was “most likely about policy and direction”.

1 COMMENT

  1. "However Abdirashid Hashi, deputy director of Mogadishu-based think-tank the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies"

    The guy above and this org is a smoke screen used to funnel funds for the "president" qoslaaye. Same guy who carried the money bags for qoslaaye during the elections from terrorist qataris, is defending the thievery of qoslaaye family members and their blackmailing of officials with violence.

  2. Right now, the insidious warfare between the FGS Pres/PM is high on the screen.
    Most likely the PM is all done deal. Then another big process to find a new PM and new
    Govt?
    Cheers.

  3. She better be careful 21 years of blood su cking doesnt vanish into thin air with everyone coming out clean. I wish her well