Thursday February 9, 2023
Mogadishu (HOL) - Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre appointed Abukar Ahmed Isse Gutale as the new Auditor General following a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Gutale will replace Mohamed Mohamud Ali (Afgoi), who has held the position since August 2017. Before joining the federal government, Mohamed worked with the Government of the District of Columbia in Washington and in the private sector in the telecommunications industry.
Throughout his five-year tenure, Mohamed Afgoi revealed that the Somali government mismanaged millions of dollars in
2018,
2019,
2020, and
2021.
The incoming Auditor General, Ahmed Isse Gutale, is the co-founder and Director of Mustaqbal Media - a private media company based in Mogadishu.
Gutale made headlines in late April 2021 after he accused the Turkish-trained Haramcad (Cheetah) paramilitary force of
raiding the Mogadishu offices of Mustaqbal Media and confiscating thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
The Mustaqbal raid came on the heels of
pitched street battles between rival factions within Somalia's military who either backed the federal government's bid for a term extension or supported the opposition.
Several of his staff were reportedly
detained and assaulted during the ordeal. Mustaqbal
filed a legal complaint against Somalia's then spy chief, Fahad Yasin, and senior presidential aide Abdinur Mohamed Ahmed for directing the raid.
Gutale's appointment comes barely a week after Transparency International ranked Somalia as the
world's most corrupt country in 2022, a dubious feat that Somalia has achieved for 14 out of the last 15 years. Governance experts and Somali citizens agree that the root cause of corruption is a lack of accountability and transparency.