Djibouti`s embattled multimillionaire, Abdourahman Boreh, is set to experience `treat or trick` come February 23, 2015, a day a judge in a London court will reexamine material evidence brought against him by his rivals in the Djibouti government. Ever since, Boreh has been in a ditch fight to reverse a ruling which has led to the freezing of his 100 million dollars assets across the world, including five million dollars in a Dubai bank.
Following his unexpected fallout in 2009 with his long-time ally, Ismael Omar Guelleh, Djibouti`s president, Boreh remains in exile facing a 15-year sentence after a court in Djibouti found him guilty of involvement in acts of terrorism. A French national, Boreh was sentenced in absentia, and denies any involvement in an incident where a grenade exploded in Djibouti City, on March 5, 2009.
The government of Djibouti produced a transcript of telephone conversations Boreh had had with his contacts in Djibouti and intercepted by Djibouti`s security agents during the time of the explosion, as material evidence to prove the allegation that he had ordered the attack.
“Last night the act was completed,” reads a transcript from one of his contacts in Djibouti, presented to the court in London. “The people heard it and it has a deep resonance.”
The judge hearing the case granted Djibouti`s government appeal for an order to freeze the assets of Horn of Africa`s richest businessman, using UK anti-terror laws.
Surprisingly, Boreh did not deny the intercepted conversations made in March 2009 were his. In his bid to overturn the ruling, Boreh argued that the phrase “scrap metal” quoted in the transcript were referring to the distributions of leaflets critical of Guelleh`s and his governing People`s Rally for Progress (PRP), not a string of grenades as the government claims.
Guelleh has been under fire from his critics after he rewrote Djibouti`s constitution in 2010, to be able to run for a third term in a row. Boreh claims to people close to him that his estrangement with his long-time friend came after he voiced his reservations on Guelleh`s intention to change the constitutional provision which limits presidential terms to two. Guelleh, nonetheless, run for the third time in an election critics dismissed as “sham,” for there was no contender who run against him. The President, whose government receives 60 million dollars a year for renting a seaside camp for the US military, however, pledges to retire in 2016.
What shattered his government`s sole evidence against its archival was the time these conversations took place. The High Court in London found out that the submission of the material evidence was “altered” to give the impression that they were recorded after the explosions had occurred. To the contrary, Boreh`s lawyers succeeded in persuading the court to reconsider the ruling, arguing that the conversations took place a day before the incident, on March 4.
“It follows that whatever was being referred to as having taken place ‘last night’ in a call that took place on March 4 cannot have been the [grenade] attack,” said Judge Julian Falux. “[This] placed a completely different complexion on the case.”
The Judge ordered both parties to appear before his bench on February 23, for further hearing.
Boreh`s lawyers, Byrne & Partners, are aiming to having the telephone taps declared “inadmissible” before the court, according to people close to the case.
While a major setback to the Guelleh`s government, the stakes are quite high to Boreh; both closest allies during Djibouti`s first transition of power in 1999, from Hassan GouledAptidon, its long-time leader since independence in 1977. Boreh was not only once chairman of Djibouti`s Ports & Free Zones Authority, and a critical link for Dubai`s mega million dollar investments in the tiny nation of Horn of Africa. A ruling by a court in London has a far reaching implications to his network of businesses in Kenya, Middle East, South Africa and Vietnam.
Both representatives of the Government of Djibouti and Boreh were not available for comment.
