Hargeisa
has instructed a British lawyer to negotiate with the French group
Bolloré to hammer out the details of the agreement to manage Berbera port.
Meetings began about two weeks ago between representatives
of Bolloré Africa Logistics and the British law
practice McCue & Partners to work on an agreement for the
French group to run Berbera port. In fact, several months ago the Somaliland
government instructed the firm’s main partner, Jason Daniel McCue, 44, to look for funding to develop the
Berbera corridor towards Ethiopia.
This is a vast project including an oil pipeline, estimated to
cost a total of around $2.5 billion. This mandate was attributed to the Berbera Development Company (BDC) founded by McCue in
London in April 2013 to make the Somaliland port into a logistics hub for the
whole region.
McCue and BDC have consequently also become Bolloré’s
primary contact points for Somaliland. BDC has three directors in
addition to McCue, who is interested in security via his MODA Alliance Group. They are the
Britons John Richard Moore, 45, who heads John Moore & Co and Ibrahim Ali Yusuf, 41, plus the
Canadian Ahmed Mohamed Abokor, 48.
The latter lives in Djibouti, where he is in partnership with
the businessman Mohamed Said Guedi in the
company Afro Shnagai-Djibouti. He is also one of
the directors of Pontus Marine Ltd (ION 1359) – an industrial fishing company
in Somaliland founded last year in London – alongside the
British lawyer from Somaliland, Mohammed Yusef who is moreover the
founder of Invicta Capital. Pontus Marine has one heavyweight
as a non-executive director: the Conservative MP Henry Bellingham, a former Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in charge of
African affairs.
Source: Indian Ocean Newsletter
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