Somalia’s President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo has appointed Mr Hassan Ali Kheyre as his prime minister.
The announcement was made Thursday, a day after the president’s inauguration ceremony held at a heavily guarded airport zone in the capital Mogadishu.
Kheyre, a Somali-Norwegian, is a former regional director (Horn of Africa and Yemen) of Norwegian Refugee Council, a charity organisation, between 2006 and 2014.
From 2014, Kheyre has been the executive director of British firm Soma Oil & Gas that is exploring on 12 offshore oil and gas blocks covering around 60,000 square kilometres in Somalia.
In December last year, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office closed an investigation into Soma over bribery allegations after finding “insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction”.
Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group had also accused the Soma’s executive director Kheyre of having links with extremist groups such as Al Shabaab, allegations which were investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.