South Sudan - Former Ambassador to the European Union
About
Emmanuel Lomoro Lowila was South Sudan’s ambassador to the European Union, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg from 2015 to 2021. He previously served as a top adviser to South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, and as a deputy ambassador to France.
Lowila, whose name is often spelled "Lowilla" but appears as "Lowila" in his passport, worked in Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs after receiving a master’s degree from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia in 2007. When South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, he became a Cabinet minister in South Sudan’s office of the president.
Lowila has ties to Benjamin Bol Mel Kuol, a businessman sanctioned by the United States in 2017 for alleged corruption. In 2011, Lowila, Bol Mel and others created Jebel Group Trading Co., according to South Sudanese company records.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Bol Mel has served as an adviser to President Kiir and leads a company, ABMC Thai-South Sudan Construction Co., which received government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars without competitive bids. Bol Mel later used a different company to evade sanctions, the department said.
Political Career
Ambassador to the European Union and Benelux countries (2015-2021)
Cabinet Minister. Minister in the Office of the President (2011-2013)
Ambassador,Deputy Head of Mission in the Sudanese Embassy in France, responsible for the Sudanese delegation to UNESCO (2009-2010)
In The Pandora Papers
The Pandora Papers investigation reveals Lowila’s involvement with a Seychelles-based shell company, Asianmore Investments Ltd. In 2012, when he was South Sudan’s minister of presidential affairs, Lowila used his Ugandan passport as identification when signing an affidavit to open a bank account for the company, which was incorporated that year. The affidavit was witnessed by a legal aide to President Kiir.
The account was with BMI Offshore Bank in the Seychelles and Lowila was the only person authorized to operate the account online, according to records. According to minutes of a company meeting, Asianmore Investments also opened an account at Loyal Bank on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, which, like the Seychelles, is a tax haven.Asianmore Investments planned to invest in stocks, bonds, property and commodities in Africa, according to leaked records. The company was a subsidiary of the Nile Foundation in the Seychelles, which was set up by the Musa Group, a South Africa-based private equity firm. The foundation expected to receive $1 million a year in donations, and its mission was “to provide university-level education funding for students of South Sudanese national origin,” documents show.
Asianmore Investments used nominee shareholders and directors, a maneuver that shields the identities of a company’s owners. Asianmore listed Cynthia Parrish, an American based in Mauritius and the Musa Group’s chief counsel, as its beneficial owner. Parrish was also listed in the Pandora Papers as the owner of several other companies.
Lowila told ICIJ that the company’s bank account and the Nile Foundation were established “to fund humanitarian assistance to people in South Sudan ...The intention was to raise capital globally for such purposes and that is the reason why the entities were established outside South Sudan.”Lowila said that the company and its account never made any transactions. He was “not a main party” to the Jebel Group, Lowila said, adding that that company also “had a very short life.”Lowila and a spokesperson at South Sudan’s EU embassy did not respond to questions about why and when exactly in 2021 Lowila’s appointment as ambassador ended.
Secrecy Jurisdictions
Seychelles
Secrecy Broker
At the heart of the Pandora Papers are 14 offshore firms that help clients establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. This profile draws on leaked data from these providers:
Discover this Power Player’s offshore connections.
The information on this profile is current as of October 3, 2021. Read more about the Pandora Papers data.