The Wall Street Journal reported the other day that US special operations teams in Yemen are training counter-terrorism units created by President Salih and "commanded by his sons and nephews". 

I do hope the Obama administration understands what it's getting into here, because working with the family of Ali Abdullah Salih can be every bit as tricky as fighting al-Qaeda.

Take, for example, the affair of the Schlumberger oil services company, which is currently under investigation by the US Justice Department regarding allegations of possible bribery in Yemen. Two of the president's kinsmen have popped up on the Yemeni side in connection with that.

One of them is Tawfik Saleh Abdullah Saleh, a nephew of the president, whose company, Zonic Invest Ltd, received a total of $1.38m from Schlumberger between 2003 and 2007. It is not entirely clear what the money was for. 

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Nearly a decade ago, Schlumberger planned a Data Bank Development Project of seismic information on oil exploration in Yemen, a joint project with the government.

According to Schlumberger documents reviewed by the [Wall Street] Journal, in 2002, Yemen's [governmental] Petroleum Exploration and Production Authority [PEPA], before signing off on the project, urged the company to hire a firm called Zonic Invest Ltd as a go-between ...

Schlumberger agreed to hire Zonic and pay it a $500,000 signing bonus, and the project went forward, the documents show.

The WSJ continues that the two companies' dealings spanned several years:

In May 2004, a Schlumberger manager "resisted signing a contract with Zonic, but he started receiving threatening calls," according to a Schlumberger internal document dated December 2008. It said the threats stopped after the contract was signed.

Zonic's Mr Abdullah Saleh denied that any threats were made. In an interview, he said Zonic was created as a lobbying and business-consulting firm specifically for the data project.

"Schlumberger came to us for help. They had been trying for so many years to get the contract," he said. "If it wasn't for Zonic, there would have been no data-bank project."

The other important name to emerge from the Schlumberger affair is that of Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. Ahmar is a kinsman of the president (sometimes, probably wrongly, described as his half-brother) and the most feared military figure in Yemen. He is also 
chairman of Dhakwan Petroleum & Mineral Service Co, which Schlumberger has been using as a customs broker since 2003. 

The Wall Street Journal takes up the story again:

Dhakwan prepares and processes customs exemptions and re-export permits at PEPA, according to internal Schlumberger documents. Schlumberger paid Dhakwan $280,000 between 2004 and 2007, the documents show ...

When Schlumberger's internal investigation revealed Dhakwan's ties to the government, the documents say, the company tried to terminate its contract. But it found its imports stalled, and decided to reinstate the broker, according to company emails and other documents. The documents say Schlumberger thought Dhakwan officials might have interfered with its imports, but didn't cite specific evidence for the company's suspicions.

"It appears that PEPA will process NO documents unless they are presented by Dhakwan (and this applies to ALL companies in Yemen, not only SLB)," read an Aug. 11, 2009, email from Nigel Bennett, Gulf Supply Chain Services Manager for Schlumberger, to several other Schlumberger employees. "It appears that we have no choice but to continue to use them to present the paperwork to PEPA if we wish to continue business."

[Note: accessing this WSJ article may require a subscription, but it is also available here on the Yemen Post website.]

A list produced by Jane Novak for the Armies of Liberation blog a few years ago gives some idea of the scale and scope of the president's kinship connections in business and the military (though the spelling of some of the names is not particularly accurate).

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 23 November 2010