Witness Testifies to Banjul Land Deal Lacking Approval, Yields $13 Million

A retired businessman shocked investigators when he admitted throwing away two million dollars on land he never checked first. Shel Elhajj told the government commission that he bought the plot from Banjul City Council back in 2019 without asking his business partners what they thought. The deal was supposed to help build a factory for fridges and air conditioners with a Nigerian company called Fani. His partners only looked at the property after Elhajj had already handed over the cash. Everything was done on a handshake with no paperwork or business plans.

The commission discovered that Elhajj never wrote down any agreements or studied whether the investment made sense. He just trusted what people told him and took a huge gamble with his money. The original land behind the National Assembly turned out to be off limits because the council had other plans for it. Officials moved the deal to a different spot on Bond Road and gave it to MK Stores instead. The new owner was a man named Nandu Rajuanu who got relocated there.

Elhajj walked away from this messy situation with more than thirteen million dollars in his pocket. He told investigators that making such huge profits was just part of taking business risks. The commission thinks something fishy happened with how the council handled public land deals. They want better rules to stop people from making suspicious money off government property.