Al-Barakat (Al-Barakaat): the Somali money and phone company shut in 2001

The short version

Al-Barakat ("blessings" in Arabic) began in 1987 as a Somali money transfer business, a modern form of hawala. After the state collapsed in 1991 it became one of the main ways Somalis abroad sent money home, and it added phone and internet services. By 2001 it had outlets in 40 countries, handled about $140 million a year, and was Somalia's largest private employer (BBC, 28 August 2006). The group was run from Dubai. Its owner and chief executive was Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale (UN Security Council press release SC/10549, 17 February 2012).

On 7 November 2001 the United States named Al-Barakat a financier of terrorism, froze its assets and closed its US offices. The UN Security Council's al-Qaida sanctions committee added the group and its owner to its list. Many Somali families lost the money they were waiting for, because funds in the system were frozen (Wall Street Journal, 4 December 2001).

What the investigators found

The US 9/11 Commission's staff report on terrorist financing examined the Al-Barakat case in detail. It said that an FBI-led team that went through the company's records in the United Arab Emirates found no "smoking gun" evidence, either in documents or from witnesses, that Al-Barakat funded al-Qaida or the Somali group al-Itihaad al-Islaami. The two main early claims, that Osama bin Laden had invested in the company and that it moved part of its money to armed groups, could not be shown, and some early intelligence claims proved wrong (9/11 Commission, Monograph on Terrorist Financing, chapter 5). By early 2003 only four criminal cases had been filed against people linked to the network in the United States, and none charged them with aiding terrorists (same source).

The delistings

• 2006: the US removed several Al-Barakat-linked people and entities from its blacklist (BBC, 28 August 2006).
• October 2009: the UN removed the group's Swedish branch (Stockholm News, archived).
• 17 February 2012: the UN al-Qaida sanctions committee removed Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale and all 17 remaining listed Al-Barakat entities, among them Barakat Bank of Somalia, Al-Barakat Exchange and Barakat Telecommunications Company (UN press release SC/10549).
• 30 June 2016: the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale from its list (OFAC, recent actions, 30 June 2016).
• 12 February 2020: OFAC removed the remaining Barakaat companies and the last listed executive, Abdullahi Hussein Kahie (OFAC, recent actions, 12 February 2020).

What came after

A 2019 study by the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands says Hormuud Telecom was "established in 2002, largely on the legacy of the MTO Al Barakat", and that both companies are owned by Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale, citing the newsletter Africa Intelligence (Clingendael, Transnational capital in Somalia, June 2019, box 6). Hormuud describes itself as founded by Somali shareholders; see Hormuud Telecom. A ceremony to relaunch Al-Barakat was held in 2014, and the group says it restarted work in Somalia in 2024 in retail, health care and property (Wikipedia, Al-Barakat).

Sources disagree

• Founding year. Most sources give 1987; Wikipedia's category places it in 1986, and one book dates the founding by Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale and the engineer Ahmed Sheikh Ali Samatar to the early 1990s (Wikipedia, Al-Barakat).
• Who owns Hormuud. Clingendael (2019) names Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale as owner; Hormuud's own accounts describe thousands of Somali shareholders (Clingendael 2019; Garowe Online).

For how hawala works and the other money firms, see Hawala and money transfer companies.