More Property Owners Come Forward as Gambia Tourism Board Stays Silent on Disputes Linked to Ebrima Tamba

Written by: Seringe S.T. Touray

More people are coming forward with strikingly similar complaints involving Gambian businessman Ebrima Solomon Tamba and tourism properties administered through the Gambia Tourism Board, raising increasingly serious questions about how properties originally allocated to other people later became connected to the same businessman and why the institution holding the records has still not provided answers.

Some of these disputes stretch back decades. The Fatu Network has already documented the case of Momodou “Pa” Camara, whose connection to one of the disputed tourism properties dates back to 1992. Camara says two tourism properties he controlled were later taken from him without any sale or voluntary transfer to Tamba. He produced allocation records, tourism licences, rent receipts, legal correspondence and a 2015 High Court judgment restoring possession of one of the properties to him. He says GTBoard nevertheless later recognised Tamba in connection with the properties, leaving unresolved questions about how rights over land with such a long-documented history were changed.

Camara is no longer the only Gambian making such allegations. Another complainant, a woman whose full story The Fatu Network is preparing to publish separately, says tourism properties under her control were also taken through decisions involving the tourism authorities and later became linked to Tamba. She and Camara have already presented their complaints and supporting evidence directly to GTBoard.

The controversial decisions in those cases largely predate current GTBoard Director General Mrs Ida Jeng Njie, who took office in January 2026. But the complaints are now before the institution under her leadership. Mrs Njie has heard the cases, supporting documents have been submitted and the complainants say they were given reason to expect that the matters would be examined. Months later, they say they have received no substantive explanation.

Austrian investor Manuel Di Stofleth Mitterer, whose dispute with Tamba over The Edge apartment development and the unfinished Bitcoin Tower in Bijilo triggered The Fatu Network’s wider investigation, has separately been pursuing GTBoard for answers. Manuel’s first meeting with the Board took place on May 12th, a written request for an internal investigation was sent days later, and another follow-up was made at the end of August. He says he has still received no substantive response.

The documents Manuel has now provided raise further questions about GTBoard’s handling of the Bijilo property that later became The Edge. In January 2019, GTBoard gave Tamba a provisional allocation for a proposed hotel annex and stated that a sublease would only be granted after the development itself had been completed and was operational.

But that condition appears not to have been met when the sublease process moved forward. Tamba applied for a sublease in November 2021, while the development itself was still unfinished and further approvals were still required before the planned works could proceed. In December 2021, GTBoard was still approving changes to the development and telling Tamba to obtain a development permit before carrying out those works. Despite this, GTBoard approved his sublease application in January 2022.

The development permit for the revised project was only issued six months later, in July 2022, and authorised residential development rather than the hotel annex described in the original allocation. The question for GTBoard is therefore straightforward: if its own 2019 conditions said a sublease should only be granted after the development was completed and operational, why was Tamba’s application approved while the development itself was still unfinished and awaiting further approvals?

Another GTBoard letter dated December 16th, 2021 raises a separate timeline question. It refers to an earlier allocation dated October 2nd, 2018, while the provisional allocation Manuel supplied is dated January 15th, 2019. That could mean an earlier allocation document exists, but GTBoard is in the best position to explain the discrepancy and produce the full paper trail showing when the property was allocated, what was approved and how the project changed over time.

Those questions sit alongside a much larger financial dispute. An independent audit reviewed by The Fatu Network examined approximately D18 million recorded in connection with GTBoard-related project payments but found supporting receipts for only D5 million, paid as a TDA development levy on September 24th, 2024. That D5 million receipt raises another question because GTBoard’s own January 2019 allocation letter says the land had already been approved following payment of the same 5% development levy. If the levy had already been paid before the allocation was issued in 2019, why was another D5 million development levy collected years later?

Questions about Tamba’s influence have also grown beyond the tourism paperwork. Manuel and Angelika had themselves gone to police with an independent audit alleging serious financial irregularities involving Tamba and Dutch shareholder Marcel van Andel, yet The Fatu Network found no evidence that police opened a comparable investigation into those allegations. Instead, Tamba later made a complaint to police that led to an investigation and criminal case against the Austrian couple. After that case collapsed, multiple witnesses told The Fatu Network that Tamba had allegedly told them why he reported Manuel, saying it was because Manuel had taken control of shares Tamba had pledged as security for an unpaid €165,000 loan.

The couple also say police repeatedly pressured them to negotiate with Tamba as a way of resolving the dispute. The criminal case eventually ended in their acquittal after the court found that prosecutors had failed to establish a prima facie case (enough initial evidence to require the accused to answer the charges).

A broader pattern is now emerging from The Fatu Network’s investigation. Different complainants, different properties and different periods repeatedly lead back to disputes involving the same businessman, while public institutions including GTBoard and the police are being asked to explain decisions and actions that complainants say repeatedly worked in his favour.

This is no longer a dispute confined to Bitcoin Tower or one group of foreign investors. Camara’s property history reaches back more than three decades, another Gambian complainant is preparing to tell her story, and Manuel continues to seek answers over a separate development involving the same businessman.

The original GTBoard decisions may have been made before Mrs Njie became Director General, but the institution now has the complaints, the documents and the opportunity to explain its own records. With more alleged victims coming forward, GTBoard’s continued silence is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.