This past weekend, we revealed how politicians in Sierra Leone have been secretly selling off the country’s critical assets to multinational corporations through several non-disclosed and unadvertised public private partnership agreements with European, Asian, and North American companies and international financial institutions.

We disclosed proposed privatization of Sherbro Island and its planned transformation into a “Casino Republic” in Sierra Leone.

We highlighted the legal and political implications of the proposed takeover of Sherbro Island by multinational corporations.

Sherbro Island is one of Sierra Leone’s most beautiful touristic landscapes. In 2019, the Maada Bio regime signed an undisclosed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Sherbro Alliance Partners, a company incorporated in early June 2019 as a private limited company (#12040217) under the UK Companies Act 2006 by Idris Akuna Elba and Siaka Stevens, the grandson of Sierra Leone’s first President.

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The non-disclosed agreement proposed to incorporate and establish Sherbro Island into an autonomous economic zone to be governed by a 7-person board of directors, who will have sovereign powers to manage Sherbro Island as a distinct legal entity, independent of Sierra Leone’s financial and economic laws and regulations.

The agreement also grants exclusive powers to the proposed authority to establish its own private security, air and sea transport arrangement, its gambling infrastructure, agriculture and health, and the ability to issue its own debt securities and financial markets.

However, the details of this agreement have not been made public to Sierra Leoneans. The politicians have not disclosed how the Sherbro Island deal violates Sierra Leone’s sovereignty and national laws.

As part of our tradition of forcing public transparency into the domain of public dialogue, we have spent some months now investigating the chain of companies associated with the Sherbro Island non-disclosed agreement signed between the Maada Bio regime and Sherbro Alliance Partners.

So, accompanying this brief message today is the incorporation document of one of the multinational corporations behind the non-disclosed takeover of Sherbro Island and its planned transformation into a tax-haven and gangster economy by Sierra Leonean politicians and their corporate allies.

The document shows the registration of a subsidiary company in the United Kingdom by Octopus Energy, for the express purpose of the Sherbro Island project in Sierra Leone.

In our latest podcast episode, we mentioned how Octopus Energy recently incorporated two new companies in the United Kingdom as part of its planned takeover of Sherbro Island. The two companies are: Octopus Energy Generation Africa Company Limited (#15861172) registered on 26th July 2024, and Octopus Energy Generation (SL) Limited (#15869144) registered on 31st July 2024.

Have Sierra Leoneans been told the full details of these non-disclosed agreements? Do they know who owns Octopus Energy? Was Octopus Energy awarded these “investment rights” and “contractual agreements” over Sherbro Island through a public tender and bidding process? Are the politicians and the multinational corporations who are secretly involved in buying and selling of Sierra Leone’s critical assets in compliance with Sierra Leone’s finance and transparency laws?

Stay tuned to Africanist Press as we continue to investigate energy corruption in Sierra Leone.