Angola: país onde se constroem grandes fortunas

Angolan Anti-corruption campaigners are taking legal action in Switzerland and Angola over a debt deal with Russia that robbed the country of over US$700 million. Some of the money was diverted into the pockets of President dos Santos and other Angolan officials. The Angolans have filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office in Berne, asking it to reopen an earlier investigation into the deal, on the basis of new information contained in a report - Deception in High Places - released by Corruption Watch UK and Associação Mãos Livres, an Angolan anti-corruption group. What was the debt deal? In 1996 Angola signed a deal with Russia to restructure its $5bn Soviet-era debt, to reduce its debt to $1.5bn; Angola would pay off the debt over 15 years beginning 2001(together with $1.39bn interest for the period through 2016). Russia then engaged an entirely unnecessary intermediary, Abalone Investments, which was based in the Isle of Man and set up purely to service this deal. Abalone arranged to buy the debt from Russia for only $750m (with no interest payment), but to complete purchase of the debt by 2006. However, Angola paid Abalone the full $1.5bn to write off the debt - with the extra funds being corruptly siphoned off to the people involved in Abalone, senior Angolan officials and others. Abalone was set up by Arcadi Gaydamak and Pierre Falcone, two well-connected and controversial businessmen who had close links with Angolan officials thanks to their involvement in what would become the separate Angolagate arms and oil scandal. (They paid Russia $4.5m for the right to set the Deal up). How did the deal work? Angola gave Russia 31 Promissory Notes (IOUs) worth $1.5bn, which it planned to buy back over 15 years from 2001-2016. Instead, Abalone would buy them from Russia over 7 years, from 1997 to 2004 at half price. But Angola paid Abalone the full amount to write off the IOUs, with payments coming from Angola's state oil company, Sonangol. So Abalone made a 50 per cent mark-up, with no significant risk. Indeed, with no risk since it only bought the IOUs from Russia after it had received payment from Angola. In fact, Abalone provided no service whatsoever to justify its $750m 'profit'. The deal could have been done directly between Russia and Angola. Why would anyone want to set up a Deal like that? There is no obvious explanation for why Russia would accept only half of the agreed payment when Angola was clearly prepared to (and did pay) the full amount. It is also unclear why Russia would involve Abalone - an unnecessary intermediary, which provided no real service and took on no risk. However, in December 1999, Vitaly Malkin, a Russian oligarch and senior member of the Russian parliament (the Duma) secured a 25 per cent stake in Abalone. Open Society Iniciative for Souther Africa

Bissau: o lobbying limpa a sujidade dos sistemas

There are few more hopeless places on Earth than the tiny, impoverished West African nation of Guinea-Bissau. In addition to the usual challenges afflicting that part of the world, the former Portuguese colony of 1.6 million people has, over the past decade or so, had to contend with the side effects of having become a key transit point for cocaine headed from Latin America to Europe: addiction and prostitution, death threats against police and journalists, and, above all, an officialdom so riddled with corruption that it's hard to know who is not on the take. It has become, as the executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime warned of a few years ago, Africa’s first “narco-state.” For all its troubles, though, the country did have one thing going for it: Its government was represented by one of Washington’s most storied and influential lobbying firms, Cassidy & Associates, which, since its 1975 founding by a couple former George McGovern aides, has grown into a behemoth with hundreds of corporate, government and higher ed clients and a reputation as the granddaddy of the modern influence industry. Despite reports that the country’s upper ranks were involved in the drug trade, Cassidy agreed last September to take on as a client the government that came into power following a military coup last April, for a contract that was reported at the time to be worth $1.2 million-per-year, to help build up the new government's legitimacy and advise it on badly-needed economic development efforts. Earlier this month, the reports of corruption became even harder to ignore, when Rear Adm. José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, the former head of Guinea-Bissau navy, was arrested on the high seas by American agents in a long-planned drug-trafficking sting. The operation included meetings with “millions in cash, guns and drugs...on the table.” And that very same day, April 2, Cassidy filed notice with the U.S. Department of Justice, which tracks lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, that it was ending its representation of Guinea-Bissau. The filing (which I came across on the handy database of the Sunlight Foundation) made no mention of the drug trafficking allegations, which expanded last week with the indictment of Gen. Antonio Injai, the country’s current military chief, by a New York grand jury on cocaine and weapons trafficking charges. Instead, Cassidy offered a more mundane explanation for cutting off its contract: Guinea-Bissau wasn’t paying up: “The Foreign Principal was unable to fund the project and as such unable to make the payments agreed to in the contract. As a result, no services were rendered…” Cassidy vice chairman Gregg Hartley, a former chief of staff to Missouri Republican House member (and now senator) Roy Blunt and one of the two lobbyists who worked on the contract, said the same when I reached him Thursday. He insisted that the drug-trafficking sting had nothing to do with the termination, much as the timing might make it look that way: “It was as much a surprise to me as anyone that our termination … was at about the same time there was other breaking news. They were totally unrelated.” Regardless of the reason, Cassidy’s engagement with Guinea-Bissau sheds a light on one of the more hidden aspects of the Washington influence industry: the work of lobbying firms on behalf of suspect foreign governments. Only occasionally does this sort of work burst into the open—as when former Clinton administration legal counsel Lanny Davis took on a $10,000 month contract with the Ivory Coast strongman who was refusing to leave office after an election loss, presiding over civil strife that claimed the lives of some 3,000 people, and was eventually indicted by the International Criminal Court. This has brought Davis considerable notoriety, but Cassidy's Guinea-Bissau filing is a reminder that Davis is hardly the only old Washington hand to court controversy overseas. The other Cassidy lobbyist on the Guinea-Bissau contract, senior vice president Mark Clack, spoke freely about Cassidy’s decision to go work for the new government, which he said wanted the firm’s help in “helping them engage the international community”—specifically gaining recognition from the United Nations and regional bodies within Africa by helping it “tell the story of how the government transition came about and moving forward.” He said the firm was aware of the rumors of high-level involvement in drug trafficking, but they were not strong enough to dissuade it from taking on the contract. “Those were some of the issues we had raised—to say, ‘Hey, look, you guys need to address this stuff. We can’t just have it out there,’” said Clack. He said the firm had done its “due diligence” with the U.S. State Department before taking the contract, determining that it had opened channels to the new government (though the U.S. has not had an embassy in Guinea-Bissau since its brutal 1998 civil war.) “We figured, look, if our government has diplomatic relations with them, let’s at least give them the benefit of the doubt,” Clack said. “When we went, there were no signs of trafficking or things like that. There were persistent rumors and reports, and we made it clear that this was something they needed to address and take very seriously.” A devastating in-depth Washington Post report from just a few years ago makes it hard to believe, though, that signs of rampant trafficking and corruption would not have been in evidence. The piece, headlined “Route of Evil,” describes hordes of addicts hooked on drugs doled out as bribes, plastic-wrapped bricks of cocaine washing ashore, and “mysterious foreigners [who] tool around Guinea-Bissau’s crumbling roads in expensive Porsche and BMW sport-utility vehicles," dining in restaurants selling plates of jumbo shrimp for $50 and buying up Johnnie Walker green label whiskey bottles for $132 while many other residents scrounge for food. Things got only worse after the coup, which brought the corruption much closer to the government itself, the New York Timesreported in November: The military brass here has long been associated with drug trafficking, but the coup last spring means soldiers now control the drug racket and the country itself, turning Guinea-Bissau in the eyes of some international counternarcotics experts into a nation where illegal drugs are sanctioned at the top. “They are probably the worst narco-state that’s out there on the continent,” said a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his work in the region. “They are a major problem.” Since the April 12 coup, more small twin-engine planes than ever are making the 1,600-mile Atlantic crossing from Latin America to the edge of Africa’s western bulge, landing in Guinea-Bissau’s fields, uninhabited islands and remote estuaries. There they unload their cargos of cocaine for transshipment north, experts say. The fact that the army has put in place a figurehead government and that military officers continue to call the shots behind the scenes only intensifies the problem. Clack said he and Hartley saw nothing of the sort when they visited the country in September, and that they met with neither the former naval commander nor the current military chief implicated in this month’s sting. “We saw some new boutique-ish hotels … but Tony Montana-types driving around in expensive cars, we didn’t see anything like that,” he said. “We heard of rumors of planes landing and people to stay in their houses so they could unload and so on and so forth, but we didn’t see any of that. We saw dilapidated buildings and poor villages.” Another sight that stood out, he said, were the 60 metric tons of cashews, one of the country’s main exports, sitting in the port with nowhere to go, a function of a national economy in disarray. After the trip, Cassidy produced a two-minute video on the firm’s ambitious plans for working with Guinea-Bissau, including converting the country from a net importer of rice to a net exporter and building up its underutilized fishing industry. “The country is at a key location in West Africa,” Hartley says in the video, with potential to be a “hub of transportation, trade and investment”—which, of course, it already is in one regard. In the end, Cassidy did carry out one key deliverable for the government—in September, it kept the U.N. General Assembly from recognizing the government in exile ousted by the coup, and made sure that the U.N. instead credentialed the new government. The firm got “pretty much nothing at all” for this work, Clack said. But Hartley said that Cassidy does not hold a grudge: “We would be pleased, should Guinea-Bissau find the funds, to continue the relationship.” In the foreign lobbying trade, business is business, even in the shadow of that other business, the kind that bobs to shore in bricks wrapped in plastic. NEW REPUBLIC

Bissau: o tráfico arrasta-se há mais de seis anos

Os traficantes de cocaína estabeleceram uma base de operações na Guiné-Bissau, onde cidadãos colombianos criaram empresas fictícias, se deslocam em carros luxuosos e compram a protecção de pessoas bem instaladas, escreveu há uns bons seis anos o Los Angeles Times. “Todas as instituições guineenses se demoronaram. Não há controlo de fronteiras nem laboratórios da polícia”, alegou então, no princípio de 2007, Koli Kouame, da Costa do Marfim, secretário da agência das Nações Unidas para o controlo de narcóticos. Em Setembro do ano anterior um elemento da polícia local que interceptou dois colombianos a descarregar cocaína teria sido ameaçado por outros guardas. Mais de seis anos, portanto, desde que tudo isto se sabe; e só agora é que os Estados Unidos (e não a ONU ou outras entidades) começam a fazer alguma coisa para deter três ou quatro dos traficantes. Demasiada lentidão, como se não houvesse ninguém na comunidade internacional para resolver os problemaas dos países mais pequenos e menos populosos, situados a sul do Sara.

Guiné-Bissau: um narco-Estado

Qualifiée de narco-État par l’Office des Nations unies contre la drogue et le crime, la Guinée-Bissau veut malgré tout juger elle-même deux hommes dans le viseur de la justice américaine, le contre-amiral Bubo Na Tchuto et le général Antonio Indjai. Le premier, ex-chef d’état-major de la Marine, a été arrêté, le 3 avril au large du Cap-Vert, par l'agence américaine anti-drogue alors qu’il s’apprêtait à conclure une importante transaction de stupéfiants, qui était en réalité un piège tendu par ces mêmes autorités américaines. Le second, chef d’état-major des armées bissau-guinéennes, a été inculpé pour complot de narcoterrorisme avec les Forces armées révolutionnaires de Colombie (FARC), le 18 avril, par un juge new-yorkais. Le gouvernement de transition entend demander le retour des procédures dans les juridictions nationales alors que la justice bissau-guinéenne n’a pour l’instant jugé aucun gros bonnet de la drogue. Le représentant de l'ONU en Guinée-Bissau appelle les autorités et l’armée « au calme »… Lire l'article sur Jeuneafrique.com : Guinée-Bissau : poudre blanche et poudre aux yeux | (este e muitos outros artigos chegam ao meu conhecimento graças ao Professor Eduardo Costa Dias)

Mali: a situação ainda está por estabilizar

Jean-Marie Fardeau, directeur France Human Rights Watch Voilà plus de trois mois que des groupes djihadistes ont mené une offensive vers Sévaré et Mopti. La France et le Mali, soutenus par des bataillons d'Afrique de l'Ouest, ont immédiatement riposté. Je me suis rendu sur place pour dresser un premier bilan de cette guerre en matière de respect des droits humains et j'ai pu constater que, dans ce domaine, la situation est loin d'être stabilisée. Depuis la contre-offensive vers le nord, un no man's land s'est créé en matière d'Etat de droit et de protection des civils, entre le sud du Mali, où sont déployées les forces ouest-africaines, et le nord-est du pays où les armées françaises et tchadiennes ont pourchassé les groupes djihadistes. Dans les régions reconquises, l'armée malienne occupe d'immenses espaces dont elle avait perdu le contrôle début 2012. Les forces de police et de gendarmerie sont, elles, encore peu présentes, sauf dans les villes de Tombouctou, Gao ou Douentza. La justice est absente : le procureur de la République le plus au nord du pays ne se trouve qu'à Mopti. Dans toutes les petites villes, villages et campements, notamment le long du fleuve Niger, les forces censées garantir l'Etat de droit sont absentes et des éléments indisciplinés et violents de l'armée malienne se sont déjà livrés à de graves exactions. Un premier bilan est déjà très préoccupant : une vingtaine d'exécutions extrajudiciaires et à peu près le même nombre de disparus (pour ne parler que de celles qui sont confirmées), une trentaine d'arrestations arbitraires, plusieurs cas avérés d'actes de torture et de mauvais traitements par des militaires sur des prisonniers. Des esprits "réalistes" diront sans doute que les proportions de ces exactions restent limitées. Et, de fait, nous n'avons pas conclu à des violations systématiques ou planifiées par la hiérarchie. Sans doute le travail d'organisations comme la nôtre a-t-il contribué à faire connaître très rapidement la gravité des exactions commises. Des messages clairs des autorités maliennes et de leurs partenaires internationaux, dont la France, ont probablement permis d'éviter des dérapages plus importants. Pour la première fois dans l'histoire du pays, six militaires, dont un capitaine, sont visés par une enquête à la suite de la disparition de cinq civils à Tombouctou. Ils ont été rappelés à Bamako. Ils devraient ainsi être les premiers à passer devant le tribunal militaire du Mali, qui existe sur le papier mais n'a jamais siégé ! Pour encourager ces progrès, la gendarmerie doit être fortement appuyée sans quoi elle ne pourra tenir tête à des éléments de l'armée mieux équipés et habitués à sévir en toute impunité. Toutes les exactions commises par des membres de l'armée malienne doivent rapidement faire l'objet d'enquêtes. Les défis à relever en matière de droits humains sont considérables. Qu'il s'agisse de la formation de l'armée malienne au droit de la guerre (une dimension présente dans le programme de formation que l'Union européenne a commencé à dispenser à quatre bataillons de l'armée de terre), ou de la lutte contre la corruption (qui a pesé lourd dans l'origine de la crise et prive le pays des ressources nécessaires au respect des droits sociaux), ou encore de la mise en place d'un processus "vérité, justice et réconciliation", le Mali a du chemin à faire pour que le cycle rébellion-répression-impunité soit enfin brisé. Une Commission dialogue et réconciliation a récemment été créée par décret mais son mandat est trop large et son mode de désignation "par le haut" risque de la priver du soutien dont elle aurait besoin. Le Mali ne devrait pas faire l'économie d'une vraie Commission vérité et réconciliation, formée de personnes respectées, issues des différents secteurs de la société et qui s'inspirerait des exemples les plus aboutis, comme la Sierra Leone. Cette commission devra faire des recommandations à la société malienne pour que celle-ci s'attaque aux causes de la crise actuelle. Le Mali dispose de ressources humaines et d'une histoire exceptionnelles. En 1991, des centaines de jeunes étudiants ont payé de leur vie leur désir de liberté et de démocratie après une trop longue dictature militaire. Ces dernières années, cette démocratie a été gangrenée par les trafics et la corruption, précipitant l'effondrement de l'armée, la perte de contrôle du nord du pays et une crise politique majeure. Des rebelles touareg du MNLA puis des groupes djihadistes, AQMI, Mujao et Ansar Dine, ont profité de ce contexte pour tenter d'imposer leur agenda, certains de leurs membres se rendant coupables de crimes qui pourraient relever de la Cour pénale internationale. Mais la possible victoire militaire à court terme sur les groupes djihadistes ne doit pas faire oublier que la crise malienne est bien plus profonde. Le respect des droits de chaque Malienne et de chaque Malien devrait être l'objectif central de la mise en place d'un véritable Etat de droit que ce peuple mérite amplement. La mission de "stabilisation" des Nations unies qui prendra la suite de l'intervention actuelle devra placer cet objectif en tête de ses priorités.

A Itália perante o impasse político

Nulle intention ici de sous-estimer en politique les mérites de l'expérience et de la maturité – bref, de l'âge. Surtout en ces temps où la maladie du "jeunisme" se porte si bien. Mais, tout de même, la réélection, samedi 20 avril, de Giorgio Napolitano à la présidence de l'Italie n'est pas un signe de bonne santé de la démocratie transalpine. M. Napolitano aura 88 ans au moins de juin. Son mandat est de sept ans, ce qui l'amènera à quitter le palais du Quirinal à l'âge de 94 ans. Est-ce bien raisonnable ? Durant son premier mandat, M. Napolitano a eu souvent l'occasion de montrer qu'il était un homme d'Etat, responsable et clairvoyant. On lui doit, notamment, d'avoir été l'un de ceux qui ont chassé de la tête du gouvernement un Silvio Berlusconi qui n'aurait jamais dû y accéder. Il est respecté à droite et à gauche. Mais le succès de Georgio Napolitano, samedi, doit moins à ses qualités qu'à une déroute du système politique. Moins que jamais, il n'a semblé capable ces derniers mois de donner à l'Italie un gouvernement à la mesure des problèmes qu'elle affronte. En février, les électeurs ont envoyé une majorité de gauche (Parti démocrate) à la Chambre des députés, mais pas au Sénat. Cela a empêché la formation d'un gouvernement. Désigné par un collège de grands électeurs, le chef de l'Etat, s'il ne gouverne pas, exerce une influence importante dans le système. Mais cinq tours de scrutin en une semaine n'ont pas permis aux partis de s'accorder sur un autre nom que celui de M. Napolitano – faute de mieux. Le système est doublement grippé : institutions inadéquates, notamment un bicamérisme paralysant ; classe politique incapable de sortir de petits jeux de pouvoir indignes. Ce ne serait pas trop grave s'il ne s'agissait pas de la troisième économie de la zone euro, d'un pays-clé pour l'avenir de l'Europe, d'une des locomotives du bien-être sur le Vieux Continent. L'Italie est au coeur du redressement de l'union monétaire européenne. Or l'Italie est fragile. Si ses finances publiques et sa balance commerciale sont plutôt en meilleur état que celles de la France, sa dette publique approche un taux insupportable : 120 % du produit intérieur brut. A la moindre secousse, financière ou politique, le Trésor italien voit s'envoler les taux qu'il lui faut pratiquer pour vendre ses emprunts obligataires. Par effet de contagion, le risque italien pèse sur l'ensemble de la zone euro. La gauche pouvait installer un homme solide et compétent au Quirinal, en la personne de Romano Prodi. C'eût été un signe positif, pour toute l'Europe. La gauche a échoué, victime de ses divisions. Elle rouvre ainsi la porte du gouvernement au parti de M. Berlusconi, perspective atterrante. La grande sagesse du président Napolitano ne suffira pas à sortir Rome de cette mauvaise passe. Éditorial du "Monde"

Beppe Grillo: em luta por uma nova Itália

Una domenica di aprile triste, un silenzio strano. Quella poca gente che si vede in giro nelle città la mattina non sorride e tira dritto. Ti senti come il giorno dopo la scomparsa di una persona cara. Quella indefinibile mancanza che provi dentro, che non riesci ad accettare e che sai ti accompagnerà troppo a lungo. La Repubblica, quella che si dice democratica e fondata sul lavoro, ieri è morta. Pensi al sorriso raggiante di Berlusconi in Parlamento, risplendente come il sole di mezzogiorno, dopo la nomina di Napolitano, e ti domandi come è possibile tutto questo, pensi ai processi di Berlusconi, a MPS, alle telefonate di Mancino, ai saggi e alle loro indicazioni per proteggere la casta. Sai che alcuni di loro diventeranno ministri. Ti viene lo sconforto. Tutto era stato predisposto con cura. Un governissimo, le sue "agende" Monti e Napolitano, persino il nome del primo ministro, Enrico Letta o Giuliano Amato, e un presidente Lord protettore dei partiti. Uno tra Amato, D'Alema o Marini avrebbe dovuto essere l'eletto. Rodotà ha rovinato i giochi. Ed ecco il piano B con il rientro di Napolitano che fino al giorno prima aveva strenuamente affermato che non si sarebbe ricandidato. E di notte, in poche ore (minuti?) si è deciso (ratificato?) il presidente della Repubblica e la squadra di governo. Chiamala, se vuoi, democrazia. L'Italia ha perso e, non so perché, mi viene in mente il pianto disperato di Baresi dopo la finale persa ai rigori con il Brasile nel 1994. Il MoVimento 5 Stellle è diventato l'unica opposizione, l'unico possibile cambiamento. Il Partito Unico si è mostrato nella sua vera luce. Noi o loro, ora la scelta è semplice. Coloro che oggi sono designati al comando della Nazione sono i responsabili della sua distruzione. Governano da vent'anni. Per dignità dovrebbero andarsene, come avviene negli altri Stati. Chi sbaglia paga. E chi persevera paga doppiamente. Entro alcuni mesi l'economia presenterà il conto finale e sarà amarissimo. Dopo, però, ci aspetta una nuova Italia.