State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) Special Assistant Eric Phillips was actively representing the African Business Roundtable (ABR) as recently as June of 2018, despite claiming to have been inactive since December, 2016.
In a public statement on Monday, Phillips responded to accusations of conflict of interest, arguing that his involvement with the group, which has applied for oil block licences in 2016, did not conflict with his investigation of the questionable award of oil block licences by the former PPP/C administration shortly before the 2015 general elections.
He stated that he became inactive in the ABR in December 2016, months before his appointment to SARA in May of 2017, and stressed that “the only conflict of interest is at the level of perception not in substance.”