The Panama Papers – African Summary

Over 214,000 offshore entities are involved in financial transactions in more than 200 countries and territories around the world, according to the consortium. The use of offshore companies, the key tools of tax evasion, is a practice allowed in most countries.

Among those mentioned in the millions of documents including listed associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who embezzled up to $ 2 billion with the help of banks and shell companies, according to ICIJ. The king of Saudi Arabia, Salman of Saudi Arabia, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the former emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and cousins ​​of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are also mentioned.

African leaders are also mentioned, although no head of state in the exercise personally. Only the former Sudanese President al-Amad Ali Mirghani, who died in 2008, had assets in a tax haven.

Relatives of the president are however. Among them include Clive Khulubuse Zuma, nephew of South African President Jacob Zuma, Mamadie Touré, the fourth wife of former Head of State of Guinea Lansana Conté (which is already widely cited in a mining bribery case in Simandou), Mounir Majidi, private secretary of the king of Morocco, Alaa Mubarak, the eldest son of former Egyptian president, but John Addo Kufuor, the eldest son of former Ghanaian President John Kufuour. Finally, the Ivorian banker Jean-Claude N’Da Ametchi, former member of President Laurent Gbagbo and today close to Charles Konan Banny, has, according to documents of the ICIJ, assets in an offshore company and an account in Monaco.

Among the mentioned African political leaders appear Jaynet Désirée Kabila Kyungu (MP and twin sister of DRC President Joseph Kabila), Abdeslam Bouchouareb (MP and Algerian Minister of Industry and Mines), José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos (Angolan minister Oil), Kalpana Rawal (Vice-President of the Supreme Court of Kenya), Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua (former Minister of Energy and Water and current Minister of scientific Research and technical Innovation of Congo -Brazzaville), Brigadier General Emmanuel Ndahiro (director of the Rwandan intelligence agency from 2004 to 2011) and the Senegalese Pape Mamadou Pouye. Arrested in April 2013 with Karim Wade, he was sentenced to five years for illegal enrichment complicity.

 

Source: Jeune Afrique

The stake in Simone and Laurent Gbagbo indictment

From Treat Greed in Africa as a War Crime, by Kamari Maxine Clarke.

The indictments of the Gbagbos are welcome, but they don’t bring the court any closer to confronting the fundamental causes of the violence that has plagued Ivory Coast — and most of sub-Saharan African — for centuries. Colonial rule, and the military takeovers and suppression of democratic movements that followed it, have contributed enormously to the misery. But even those legacies are not the root cause.

Violence in Africa begins with greed — the discovery and extraction of natural resources like oil, diamonds and gas — and continues to be fed by struggles for control of energy, minerals, food and other commodities. The court needs the power to punish those who profit from those struggles.

[…]

For all its deficiencies, the I.C.C. — which in 10 years has achieved just a single conviction, that of a Congolese warlord last year — has a global reach and responsibility as the world’s first permanent war-crimes tribunal. Holding government officials and their inner circles accountable is a step toward justice, but the pursuit cannot end there. The Gbagbos, however heinous their alleged crimes, were ultimately figureheads in a vast and unregulated system of extractive capitalism.

How to rob Africa: watch the documentary online

In light of the “$2 billion diamond theft” from Zimbabwe, Al Jazeera published last week the interesting documentary about corruption and international money laundering.

The world’s wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption – especially that perpetrated by those among the continent’s government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world’s poorest peoples.

Africa Investigates: The Corruption behind Ghana’s gold industry

“Côte d’Ivoire is on the verge of bankruptcy”

Extract from an interview of the Ivorian journalist André Silver Konan:

Côte d’Ivoire is doing badly, very badly. Our country is on the verge of bankruptcy. Even in the midst of the war, the economic and financial indicators were not as much in the red area. This encourages an empirical management of public affairs, which took the country, in terms of management mechanisms, back to the colonial era. Obviously, this management is the open door to any kind of embezzlement.

Some facts prove my assertion. The hotel sector is growing grim. Many upscale hotels have already closed down. There are butane gas shortages in the households. Many gas stations display “out of stock”. Companies dependent of post-conflict projects funded by the Breton Woods institutions or the EU or by the cooperation of EU countries and Asia, as well as Canada or the United States, are on the verge of asphyxiation. Providers are declaring tens of billions of francs of unpaid bills from the state, just as the private schools owners, who face bankruptcy. Every day, jobs are suspended, men are made redundant or laid off. Go to the Bourse de l’Emploi of Treichville, and you will be shocked by the scale of the tragedy. Inflation, due to the shortage of liquidity and rising production costs, is the norm. And all things being equal, wages not increasing, even decreasing in some companies, I can tell you that the situation is untenable for the average Ivorian. The government now ignores the transparency system (with checks, delivery slips, correspondence, etc..) and prefers the money, available here and now. As evidenced by calls to pay taxes directly to the recipient, rather than by check.

Rentier Politics in Abidjan

“Since the introduction of multiparty politics in Cote d’Ivoire, the Ivorian political class has been incapable of making the qualitative leap that would have allowed the country to fit into a model of democracy. The political class that has emerged from this period is similar to a conglomerate of rent-seekers, each group claiming selfishly a share of the cake, using any means to be best served.

No sense of responsibility emanates to meet the needs people and country … The policy is oriented towards gratification and selfish interests, as opposed to the national well-being“.

Mamadou Koulibaly

Côte d’Ivoire sells its votes in international organizations

“A SUNDAY TIMES investigation has exposed Japan for bribing small nations with cash and prostitutes to gain their support for the mass slaughter of whales.

— They receive cash payments in envelopes at IWC meetings from Japanese officials who pay their travel and hotel bills. One disclosed that call girls were offered when fisheries ministers and civil servants visited Japan for meetings.

Barry Gardiner, an MP and former Labour biodiversity minister, said the investigation revealed “disgraceful, shady practice”, which is “effectively buying votes”.

The governments of St Kitts and Nevis, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Grenada, Republic of Guinea and Ivory Coast all entered negotiations to sell their votes in return for aid.

The IWC commissioner for Tanzania said “good girls” were made available at the hotels for ministers and senior fisheries civil servants during all-expenses paid trips to Japan.”

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