The brother of Senegal’s president has resigned as head of a state-run savings fund after the BBC named him in a report over alleged corruption.
The report alleged that Aliou Sall was secretly paid $250,000 (£196,300) in 2014 by a gas company that sold its shares in Senegalese gas fields to BP.
Mr Sall has denied the claims, calling them part of a campaign to make him “public enemy number one”.
Senegal’s attorney general said an investigation had been launched.
“This unfortunate controversy is based only on untruths,” Mr Sall said in a statement on Monday.
He had directed Senegal’s Caisse des Depots et Consignations, or CDC fund, since September 2017.
In 2012, Senegal’s then government awarded exploration rights for two offshore oil and gas fields to Petro-Tim. The firm was part of Timis Corporation, run by Romanian-Australian business tycoon Frank Timis.
The company had no previous experience of oil and gas exploration and an investigation – ordered by President Macky Sall after he took office – concluded that Petro-Tim should lose its concessions. President Sall still pushed the deal ahead, leading to protests in Senegal.
According to the BBC investigation, his brother was later hired by Timis Corporation and paid $1.5m (£1.18m) over five years. Aliou Sall was also promised shares in some of Mr Timis’s companies which were worth $3m.
