Gambia Searches Former President Jammeh's Palaces for Missing Millions

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In a warehouse on the sprawling country estate of Gambia's exiled former leader, Yahya Jammeh, silver platters pile up beside dusty crates of empty champagne bottles with labels commemorating his 1994 coup.

A bailiff picks through the boxes and scribbles down notes — the start of what the new government says is a search for tens of millions of dollars of looted assets, an investigation that Jammeh's supporters have dismissed as a witch hunt.

A U.S. official in Banjul said Washington was planning to help, and government staff say they are counting on World Bank assistance. The size of the Kanilai estate — just a small fraction of Jammeh's holdings, according to the government official leading the tour — shows the scale of the task ahead.

"We suspect most of the things were taken away before he left — the treasure, possibly weapons and most of the vehicles," said the bailiff from Gambia's high court, Modou Moussa Ceesay, taking an inventory of Jammeh's possessions.

The former president, accused by opponents and rights groups of widespread violations and corruption, fled Gambia in January as regional forces descended on the capital, Banjul, to enforce the results of an election he lost.

He has not commented on the investigation from his new base in Equatorial Guinea. His still strong band of supporters left behind in the tiny West African state have called the plunder hunt a case of victor's justice.