The sheer volume of fuel smuggling in the Sahel suggests that legal retailers located in border areas are complicit in the illicit cross-border trade, according to a new UN report.
“Necessarily involved and therefore legally in the wrong,” is how the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) points to the role of traders in the ongoing smuggling of fuel in the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
In its report entitled: “Fuel Trafficking in the Sahel”, the UN agency points out that in addition to small players, investigations carried out in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have shown that “a large number of traders maintain illegal depots where fuel accumulates and, in some cases, there appears to be some official complicity, whether compensated or not.”
Four main flows feed this trade to Sahelian countries: from Nigeria via Benin to Burkina Faso and Mali; from Nigeria via Niger to Mali; from Algeria to Mali; and from Libya to Niger and Chad.
Although some of these countries produce oil, they depend on imports of gasoline and diesel from Algeria, Libya and Nigeria, where these products are heavily subsidised, the UNODC reveals.
The UN agency report concludes that the low prices of the commodity in these three states “are among the most important drivers of fuel trafficking in the Sahel.”
Trafficking with multiple actors
In the Sahelian countries, the UNODC reports that the ratio of registered vehicles per capita is low and daily per capita gasoline consumption is estimated to be among the lowest in the world.
Nevertheless, it notes that an average pump price of $1 per liter would translate into a combined total annual market value of at least $5 billion for legal and illegal fuel in the region.
This financial windfall attracts players from all walks of life.
“A large part of the trafficked fuel market in Sahelian countries appears to be organised informally. However, recent investigations have revealed the involvement of structured groups with links to influential figures with interests in fuel distribution companies, financial institutions, and corrupt law enforcement officials. This underscores the importance of the formal trade in laundering contraband fuel,” the report notes.
In Niger, for example, the paper says, the High Authority for the Fight against Corruption and Related Offenses (HALCIA) documented the involvement of 150 economic operators in a round-trip fuel scheme during 2017/18.
The involvement of bank employees and tax officials in schemes to launder the proceeds of illicit fuel trafficking from Nigeria has also been documented in Niger.
In addition, customs officials have been reported to allow traffickers to cross the border in exchange for bribes, the study says.
In Burkina Faso, a 2021 smuggling case cited in the report shows that some of those arrested are wealthy businessmen, one of whom owns several small gas stations in the town of Kaya, northeast of Ouagadougou.
He also established several small warehouses in the remote villages of Barsalogho, Pissila, and Pensa, which receive smuggled fuel from Nigeria and where violent extremist groups active in the region, including Ansaroul Islam, which is affiliated with al-Qaida’s branch in the Sahel, the JNIM, obtain gasoline and diesel fuel.
Five customs officers, two police officers, and a gendarme were arrested in April 2022 on corruption charges in connection with this case.
In Mali, the UN Panel of Experts on Mali documented the involvement in smuggling of individuals under UN Security Council sanctions or persons associated with them.
Among them is Mahamadou Ag Rhissa, an influential businessman from the Kidal region and member of the non-state armed group High Council for the Unity of Azawad (HCUA), the research reports.
According to UNODC, companies linked to individuals under UN Security Council sanctions are also involved in smuggling fuel from Niger into Mali. In northern Mali, the activity appears to be tolerated by Malian authorities, with the panel referring to a “tacit agreement between the government and the armed movements to help the north recover economically from the crisis.”
What solutions?
In a region with a high rate of informal employment (ranging from 78.2 percent in Niger to 96.9 percent in Chad), ending fuel smuggling could have serious social consequences, UNODC acknowledges.
“It could raise transport and energy prices, which would affect the cost of most commercial goods and services,” it admits.
The UN agency says efforts to combat smuggling in the region, including through customs controls, have been met with violent resistance that has made it virtually impossible for customs officials to carry out their duties and has even led to the death of a law enforcement officer.
UNODC also notes that fuel smuggling causes significant fiscal losses for countries with already constrained budgets and fuels corruption, armed groups, and organised crime in the Sahel.
One solution to this latest scourge is for Sahelian states and their neighbouring countries to address cases of fuel smuggling with direct links to organised crime, armed groups and corruption, suggests the UNODC.
This could be facilitated, according to the UN agency, by using the international cooperation provisions of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the UN Convention against Corruption, where applicable and appropriate, in order to investigate and prosecute the most damaging forms of fuel smuggling by high-level perpetrators.
ARD/los/ac/fss/as/APA