Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) called for a scrutiny of ReconAfrica's activities in Namibia by the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission.
ReconAfrica denied knowing of a reason for this surge in trading, but later revealed—at the request of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada—that it had paid CA$120,000 to a German media company for a stock promotion campaign.
[6] On June 4, 2021, a complaint was filed with the British Columbia Securities Commission, alleging that ReconAfrica had not adequately disclosed that it changed its business model after the Namibian government prevented it from engaging in fracking.
[10] According to Viceroy Research; Haywood Securities’ 2020 report ‘Chasing a giant oil resource in onshore Namibia‘ does not disclose that Sproule gave the exploration less than a 4 percent chance of success.
While telling the Namibian public that fracking was not their intention, the company based their estimates on the Sproule Report which said the target was "Unconventionals" [12] Jay Park, ReconAfrica's chair, has been described as having been instrumental in establishing a close relationship with the Namibian Ministry of Mines and Energy, although in a 2015 report, a United Nations monitoring group alleged that he had a conflict of interest as he was then a legal advisor as Somalia's Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.
The report also tied Park to a 2011 incident wherein his lawyers helped transfer a US$2-million payment from Griffiths Energy International Inc. to a company owned by the wife of the ambassador to Chad, which led to a bribery investigation by Canada's national police force.
[1] In 2021, a Namibian organization, Frack-Free Namibia, accused the company's 2D seismic surveying—which entails repeatedly thumping the ground with accelerated weights—has caused "permanent structural damage" to nearby homes.
Experts have pointed to shortcomings such as: A lack of physical assessments of fauna and flora and the possible effects on local communities, on archaeological sites, and on groundwater and surface water.
[18] Kapinga Kamwalye Community Conservancy chairperson alleged that on 18 June, at a Farmers Union meeting, ReconAfrica's spokesperson showed him that she had access to his private WhatsApp messages, he told The Namibian.
[19] Then Chairperson of the Kavango East and West community Association and a pair of human rights activists were detained for six hours at the Rundu Police Station, allegedly at the request of ReconAfrica.
The Police went through his private messages On Tuesday February 21, 2023 Conservancies and Civil Society Organisations in Namibia held a protest against communities being forced to pay legal costs for challenging ReconAfrica's ECC.