Amal group: Amal Express, Amal Bank and the 2020 to 2021 audit

The short version

The Amal group is a Somali business group based in Dubai, working in money transfer, banking in the Somali regions, foreign exchange and property. A Wikipedia article on Amal Express, preserved in mirrors, says the parent company was set up in the late 1990s by seven Somali entrepreneurs through a merger of several money transfer operators, and that the group is organised as a holding company with many wholly owned subsidiaries (Wikipedia, Amal Express, mirror). A Winnipeg business listing for an Amal Express branch gives the founding year as 1997 (Downtown Winnipeg BIZ, Amal Express).

The Clingendael Institute's 2019 study of Somali business groups lists Amal Bank, Amal Capital, Amal Express and Amal Group among the company sources it examined, and a 2013 Amal Group profile was presented at a remittance roundtable (Clingendael, Transnational capital in Somalia, June 2019).

The companies

• Amal Express, headquartered in Garowe, is on the Central Bank of Somalia's list of licensed money transfer businesses (Central Bank of Somalia, licensed money transfer). It works in most East African countries; its chief executive in 2020 was Guleid Jama (Daily Nation, via WardheerNews, 2020).
• Amal Bank, based in Garowe and Mogadishu, is on the Central Bank's list of licensed banks (Central Bank of Somalia, licensed banks) and on the Bank of Somaliland's list (Bank of Somaliland, licensed banks). Its SWIFT code is AALLSOSG (Wise, SWIFT codes, Amal Bank). It has pledged finance for small cooperatives that supply the Kobciye company (Dawan Africa). See Somalia's main banks.

The 2020 report and the audit

In September 2020 the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) published Following the Money, by Jay Bahadur, a former member of the UN panel of experts on Somalia. It said Somali hawala firms had carried about $3.7 million of payments linked to weapons traders between 2014 and 2020, most of it starting in Bosaso, and that Amal had handled money for a man in Yemen under US sanctions (Daily Nation, via WardheerNews).

Amal rejected the claim, said the receipt in the report was "not authentic", invited the Central Bank of Somalia to audit its systems, and said it uses the World-Check screening system (same source). In April 2021 Amal said the Central Bank's investigation had found no transfers from the named sender to the sanctioned man and that the receipts did not match its own records. It asked GI-TOC for an "unconditional apology" and a retraction (Hiiraan Online, April 2021; Daily Nation, 2021).

Sources disagree

• The 2020 allegations. GI-TOC's report says the payments went through Amal; Amal and, by its account, the Central Bank audit say the named transfers did not happen (sources above).
• Founding. The Wikipedia article says the late 1990s; the Winnipeg listing says 1997 (sources above).

For how hawala works, see Hawala and money transfer companies. For all licensed firms, see the Somali businesses.