The Oil Company That Bankrolled a Private Hospital: How Bernard Amuor Makeny Allegedly Turned Nilepet Into His Personal ATM

The document is stamped, signed and certified. It carries the official seal of South Sudan’s Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, the blue roundel of Afriland First Bank South Sudan, and the red date-stamp of Nilepet itself, all dated 22 December 2023. On its face it is a routine commercial transaction: a one-million-dollar revolving line of credit to a national oil company for petroleum importation.

In reality, according to whistleblowers now speaking out and leaked internal records circulating across South Sudanese social media, the transaction was anything but routine.

It was, the sources allege, the mechanism by which Eng. Bernard Amuor Makeny, then Managing Director of the Nile Petroleum Corporation, extracted public money for a private medical venture operated by his wife, in a property leased from one of Africa’s most sanctioned military figures.

The full loan agreement, running to six pages and bearing the initials of Afriland First Bank’s Managing Director Clotaire Donald Dongmo Zobou and Amuor’s own signature as Nilepet’s representative, has been seen in its entirety by Kenya Insights. It is a document that raises more questions than it answers, and every answer leads somewhere deeply uncomfortable for those who signed it.

The Agreement: One Million Dollars, Aggressive Terms, One Destination

The Loan Agreement was executed on 27 November 2023, with the Ministry of Justice certification following on 21 December and final bank stamping on 22 December. The lender is Afriland First Bank South Sudan Limited, represented by its Cameroonian Managing Director Dongmo Zobou Clotaire Donald, operating under a Central Bank approval dated September 2021.

The borrower is recorded as Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet), represented by its Managing Director, Eng. Bernard Amuor Makeny, holding passport number D00012153 issued in South Sudan on 13 April 2023, just months after his Presidential appointment.

The terms are striking for a transaction involving a sovereign national oil company. Afriland First Bank agreed to extend a maximum revolving line of credit of USD 1,000,000, with the overdraft window available for a maximum of thirty days, renewable.

The interest rate is set at 1.42 percent per month, which annualises to approximately 17 percent before compounding and before fees. On top of the interest, the agreement imposes a 0.5 percent loan application fee, a separate 0.5 percent processing fee, and an agreement fee of SSP 100,000 in local currency. Late payments attract an additional 2 percent per month penalty computed on principal and accrued interest.

The collateral provisions are the most revealing passage in the entire document. Nilepet was required to provide a post-dated blank USD cheque as primary collateral, and to assign all its outlets and petrol stations to Afriland First Bank as additional collateral.

The borrower was further required to maintain its downstream operations current account exclusively with Afriland First Bank for the duration of the loan, and to remit all collections from all petrol stations to that account. The relevant USD account is specified in the agreement itself as Account No. 0001083750188, styled the Nilepet-Downstream Operations Account.

These are not the terms under which a well-governed national oil company accepts credit. They are the terms imposed on a distressed borrower with limited negotiating leverage, or on a borrower whose representative has every reason to accept punishing conditions because the proceeds are not intended for the company’s benefit. Pledging every petrol station in your network as collateral on a one-million-dollar revolving overdraft is not sound treasury management. It is something else entirely.

The Switch: From Nilepet to Nile-SLC, and the Man Allegedly Pressured to Sign

Here the story bifurcates from the formal record into the account now spreading through South Sudanese circles, and the reason Afriland First Bank is reportedly preparing to go to court. The agreement executed in November 2023 names Nilepet as the borrower. What happened next, sources allege, is that Amuor used his authority as Managing Director to direct that the actual drawdown and liability be funnelled through Nile-SLC, one of Nilepet’s subsidiaries, rather than through the parent company’s own accounts in any transparent way. To make this work, he allegedly leaned on Deng Aar Deng Chan, then Nilepet’s Director for Training and Development, to facilitate arrangements with and through the subsidiary.

The choice of Deng Aar Deng Chan as the operative figure in this arrangement is itself notable. A Director for Training and Development would have no ordinary role in arranging or authorising commercial borrowing for fuel importation. His involvement, the whistleblowers contend, was not because his portfolio required it, but because Amuor needed someone to execute the subsidiary routing who would comply. The pressure applied on Deng Aar, sources say, was direct and came from the top.

Once the funds were accessible through the Nile-SLC channel, the allegation becomes its most serious: the money, or a material portion of it, was not used to purchase petroleum products. It was transferred to the private account of Amuor’s wife. The stated purpose of the loan, the importation of petroleum products to ease South Sudan’s chronic fuel crisis, was in this account a cover story. The real cargo was private capital formation, secured against national assets, processed through a state subsidiary, and certified by the Ministry of Justice.

The Hospital in Jebel: Where the Money Allegedly Went

The destination alleged by whistleblowers is a private hospital in the Jebel area of Juba, established or expanded for the benefit of Amuor’s wife. The property in which this medical facility operates was not purchased outright. According to the accounts now circulating, it is a building leased from General Paul Malong Awan, the former SPLA Chief of General Staff and currently one of Africa’s most comprehensively sanctioned individuals, and hastily converted into a medical facility.

General Malong’s appearance in this story is not incidental. It is one of the most politically charged elements of the entire affair. Malong was removed as SPLA Chief of General Staff by President Salva Kiir in May 2017, was placed under house arrest, and in April 2018 announced the formation of the South Sudan United Front/Army, a rebel outfit aimed at overthrowing the Kiir government.

He has been sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council under Resolution 2206, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Monaco, among others.

The UN Panel of Experts found that under his leadership, the SPLA attacked civilians, conducted enforced disappearances, carried out acts of torture and rape, and mobilised the Mathiang Anyoor Dinka tribal militia using child soldiers.

He is, in short, precisely the kind of figure from whom a sitting Managing Director of a state oil company should maintain unambiguous distance. Instead, the whistleblowers allege, Amuor arranged for his wife’s medical venture to be housed in Malong’s Juba property, creating a financial thread linking the managing director of the national oil company, through his wife’s business affairs, to a UN-sanctioned warlord-turned-rebel-leader.

Whether rent was paid, to whom, through what mechanism, and whether any portion of the Nilepet loan facility found its way to Malong directly or indirectly are questions that a proper forensic investigation must answer.

The Certification: How the Ministry of Justice Lent Its Seal to an Alleged Looting Operation

Perhaps the most institutionally disturbing element of the leaked documents is the Ministry of Justice Certificate of Drafting a Contract, dated 21 December 2023 and signed by Deng Cyer Rehan, who styled himself Counsel-General and Director of the Directorate of Contracts, Conventions, Treaties and Legal Aid.

The certificate states, in unambiguous terms, that the Directorate reviewed the contract of loan agreement worth USD 1,000,000 for the importation of petroleum products between Nile Petroleum Corporation and Afriland First Bank South Sudan.

The Ministry of Justice is not a rubber stamp.

Its Directorate of Contracts exists precisely to protect the state from entering into arrangements that are illegal, ultra vires, or contrary to public interest.

A properly functioning Directorate would not certify a contract without asking the basic questions: Does the borrower have board approval for this facility? Has the relevant minister been consulted? Is the collateral being pledged proportionate to the loan amount? Are the interest terms commercially defensible for a public entity? Has the loan committee of the parent company signed off?

If those questions were asked and the answers were satisfactory, either the answers were fabricated or the Directorate was operating in a compromised environment. If they were not asked, the certification is worthless as a protection and raises serious questions about what the Directorate of Contracts, Conventions, Treaties and Legal Aid is actually for.

Deng Cyer Rehan’s signature sits on that document. His involvement in what whistleblowers describe as a structured looting scheme demands explanation.

The Pattern: Nilepet as a Recurring Instrument of Elite Capture

Nothing about the alleged Amuor scheme is novel within the history of Nilepet. The organisation has been documented as a vehicle for elite capture and personal enrichment since at least 2018, when Global Witness published its landmark report Capture on the Nile, which found that the company had fallen under the direct control of President Kiir’s inner circle and was being used to funnel millions in oil revenues to security services, ethnic militias and connected individuals. The report specifically identified Lt. Gen. Akol Koor, head of South Sudan’s feared Internal Security Bureau, as sitting on Nilepet’s board, and documented how letters of credit intended to finance fuel imports were diverted with minimal oversight.

Amuor’s alleged scheme replicates the letters-of-credit architecture with a banking facility: borrow nominally for fuel importation, divert the proceeds through a subsidiary or associated mechanism, leave the collateral and repayment liability with the state institution.

What Amuor allegedly added to the model was the Ministry of Justice certification layer, which gave the transaction a veneer of legality that prior schemes had dispensed with.

The World Bank’s landmark January 2026 public finance review of South Sudan found that Nilepet has never published financial statements or undergone an independent audit. The 2019 National Petroleum and Gas Corporation Act, enacted during Amuor’s recent institutional memory period, increased the Office of the President’s control over the company while eliminating requirements for external reporting.

Nilepet’s website, the World Bank noted dryly, contains no annual or audit reports. Into this black box of unaccountable finance, Amuor allegedly walked with a banking agreement and a cooperative official at the Ministry of Justice.

The frequency with which Nilepet’s Managing Directors have been replaced without explanation is itself a signal of how the institution operates. President Kiir appointed Amuor in January 2023, replacing Dr. Chol Deng Thon for the second time.

He sacked Amuor without explanation in July 2024, simultaneously removing Finance Minister Awow Daniel Chuang as South Sudan’s currency fell to a record low of SSP 3,400 per dollar and civil servants went unpaid for months. South Sudanese civil society observer Edmund Yakani told Radio Tamazuj at the time that the frequent changes in the finance and Nilepet leadership demonstrate that both posts are treated as cash cows for the politically connected.

The concern, Yakani warned, is that the revolving door encourages each incumbent to extract as much as possible as fast as possible before the next Presidential decree arrives.

The Reformer Who Left a Debt: Amuor After Dismissal

Since his removal, Bernard Amuor Makeny has not retreated into silence. He has, remarkably, reinvented himself as a petroleum sector reformer. In November 2024, four months after his dismissal, he appeared at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Fiscal Devolution and Revenue Management in Juba, convened by the Council of States with support from UNMISS and UNDP, and delivered what appears to have been his most public address since losing office.

His central recommendation: dissolve Nilepet entirely. According to Eye Radio’s report on the event, Amuor told the forum that Nilepet can never perform better no matter what miracle you perform, because the overhead is higher than what is coming in, and called for the formation of a new, independent national oil institution managed by professionals and based on merit, job description and availability of the job. He identified over-employment and political interference in hiring as the root causes of the institution’s dysfunction.

The audacity of this positioning is breathtaking. A man who, according to whistleblowers and leaked documents, used the national oil company to borrow a million dollars he allegedly routed to his wife’s private hospital project is now lecturing the nation on how to run a clean oil company.

A man who allegedly pressured a subordinate to sign subsidiary documents enabling the scheme is now calling for meritocracy. A man who allegedly accepted certification from the Ministry of Justice for what was, at its core, a fraudulent purpose is now styling himself as a voice for governance reform.

This is the final trick of South Sudan’s elite capture system: those who loot the institution position themselves as its most passionate critics once they are removed, thereby inoculating themselves against accountability and positioning themselves for future appointments or rehabilitation.

The Lawsuit Approaching: Why Nile-SLC and Not Nilepet?

Afriland First Bank South Sudan is reportedly preparing to sue not Nilepet, the signatory to the original loan agreement, but Nile-SLC, the subsidiary through which Amuor allegedly channelled the funds. This is a structurally significant choice. If the loan was properly drawn on Nilepet’s downstream operations account as specified in the agreement, and if the proceeds were used for petroleum importation as stated, Afriland First Bank’s natural defendant would be Nilepet itself, which has an operational history, assets, physical petrol stations pledged as collateral, and a new Managing Director in Eng. Mohammed Lino Benjamin.

Pursuing Nile-SLC instead raises the possibility that the actual drawdown occurred through the subsidiary’s accounts rather than the parent’s, that the documentary trail of fund flows runs through Nile-SLC, and that Afriland First Bank is suing wherever the money actually moved rather than wherever the loan agreement says it should have moved. If so, that is a tacit acknowledgment that the loan was not used as documented, and that the bank knows it was not.

It also conveniently places the legal exposure on a smaller subsidiary that Nilepet’s new management may be less inclined to defend vigorously, rather than on the parent company whose new leadership might ask the very questions about fund flows that nobody appears to have asked during Amuor’s watch.

The subsidiary becomes the fall entity, Nilepet’s new management inherits a cleaner balance sheet, the bank recovers what it can, and the man who allegedly structured the whole arrangement is gone, reforming the sector at public forums funded by the United Nations.

The Questions That Demand Answers

Bernard Amuor Makeny owes the people of South Sudan direct answers to the following questions, posed publicly and on the record. What happened to the USD 1,000,000 drawdown from Afriland First Bank? Can he produce import documentation showing petroleum products were purchased and delivered to Nilepet’s downstream operations using those funds?

Why does Afriland First Bank appear to be suing Nile-SLC rather than Nilepet? Did he direct Deng Aar Deng Chan to facilitate any arrangement through Nile-SLC in connection with the Afriland First Bank facility? Does his wife operate a hospital in the Jebel area of Juba, and if so, when was it established and how was it financed?

Did he enter into any lease arrangement with General Paul Malong Awan or any person or entity associated with General Malong?

And what, precisely, did the Directorate of Contracts, Conventions, Treaties and Legal Aid review before Deng Cyer Rehan signed the certification?

Deng Aar Deng Chan, currently Nilepet’s Director for Training and Development, should similarly answer whether he was pressured to facilitate any subsidiary-level arrangements connected to the Afriland First Bank loan, and by whom.

Deng Cyer Rehan, as the certifying official, should explain what documents and representations he received before endorsing a USD 1 million loan agreement and what assurances he obtained that the facility was authorised by Nilepet’s board and consistent with the company’s mandate.

The Arithmetic of Impunity

South Sudan’s oil sector has produced billions of dollars in revenue and, simultaneously, one of the most impoverished populations on the African continent.

The two facts are not contradictory. They are causally related.

Every USD 1 million borrowed in the name of the national oil company and allegedly diverted to a private hospital project is a million dollars not importing fuel for the stations that serve ordinary South Sudanese who queue for hours.

Every petrol station pledged as collateral for a facility that allegedly served private purposes is national infrastructure held hostage to personal enrichment.

During Amuor’s tenure, Nilepet staff reportedly faced fifty-percent salary reductions while the company cited pipeline crises and force majeure declarations in joint operating agreements.

Workers were told the institution was under financial stress. If a million-dollar credit facility existed, drawn down through the downstream operations account, and the downstream operations staff were simultaneously taking salary cuts, those two facts need reconciliation.

The people of South Sudan deserve a forensic audit of every facility, every subsidiary transaction, every collateral pledge and every fund flow that passed through Nilepet during Bernard Amuor Makeny’s eighteen months at the helm.

They deserve to know whether the petroleum imports that justified this loan ever arrived, whether the petrol stations that were pledged as collateral are unencumbered, and what other arrangements of this nature may exist in Nilepet’s books that no published financial statement will reveal because no published financial statement exists.

Afriland First Bank South Sudan will have its day in court. When it does, the documents it produces in litigation will be public.

The fund flow it traces to wherever the money went will be on the record. Bernard Amuor Makeny has an opportunity now, before that day arrives, to offer his account. The documents are fresh. The discomfort is only beginning. And the arithmetic of impunity, in South Sudan as everywhere else, eventually reaches a sum.