Five nuclear plants? What’s the big deal?

As it turns out, the American company that the Yemeni Ministry of Electricity and Energy is considering for a $15 billion project to build five nuclear plants in Yemen has no experience whatsoever in building nuclear facilities. 

Is Yemen so desperate for nuclear power that the Ministry of Electricity and Energy will chose any corporation to build Yemen’s nuclear plants?  

No. It’s not desperation that is leading the country towards a potential nuclear disaster, it is “coincidence.” It appears that the Texas-based company, called Powered Corporation, is headed by a Yemeni-American named Jalal Alghani who attended the same American university at the same time as the Yemeni Minister of Electricity and Energy, Mustafa Bahran, who is in charge of approving the deal.

Bahran’s classmate, Alghani, has a very shady background.  He served as Vice Chairman and CFO of another US company called Adair International Oil & Gas Inc. from 1990 to 2002, but lost his position after a group of Adair stockholders and former management members made allegations that Alghani had committed fraud, had mismanaged the company, and had misrepresented the company’s ability to raise funds for business ventures. According the Powered Corporation’s own website, that angry Adair group also claimed that Alghani had misstated his academic credentials and that various governmental agencies were investigating him for criminal activities. Of course Alghani denied the allegations and he was never charged, but does Yemen really want to put something as expensive and potentially catastrophic as five nuclear power plants in the hands of someone who, for all we know, could be a con artist? 

Wasn’t the whole point of establishing the Supreme Anti-Corruption Authority to protect the people of Yemen from corrupt officials who make major deals with complete charlatans for crooked reasons? So, what is the Authority going to do about this? And when? So far, it has been the press that has served the people by doing exactly what the press is intended to do—act as a watchdog and bark like hell.

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