A contract seen by OCCRP shows how Aboubakar Hima, who allegedly skimmed millions from $240 million in corrupt arms deals in his native Niger, may be up to his old tricks further from home.
At the beginning of this year, a Senegalese state agency signed a deal to purchase $77 million worth of assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols, ammunition, and other weapons from a little-known local firm that had only been set up a couple months earlier.
The contract was unusual in other ways, too. The agency that bought the arms was not the military, but the Environment Ministry. Still, the contract was never put out to bid, and once the deal was signed it was kept quiet, ostensibly due to Senegal’s defense security law. But OCCRP, in partnership with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, learned of the deal and obtained a copy of the contract.
The supplier of the arms, Lavie Commercial Brokers, turns out to have been set up by the notorious West African businessman Aboubakar Hima, who is…
