“SA's Electricity crisis | An interview with Eskom CEO André De Ruyter”

https://youtu.be/BxqGNJLeunQ

“South Africa's electricity crisis continues to be front and centre of everyone's minds. Many people just want an end to the rolling blackouts. eNCA reporter Heidi Giokos had a one-on-one sit-down with Eskom's CEO, Andre De Ruyter about issues facing the power utility.”

[Electrical plants are in disrepair due to corruption and are experiencing sabotage and theft as well. The perpetrators have not been brought to book.]

Fourth International – “Supporters of the Fourth International are active in the Amandla! collective.”

https://fourth.international/en/africa/93

https://fourth.international/en/166

Defending the self-organization of the exploited and oppressed, towards the abolition of capitalism and the building of ecosocialism, the Fourth International brings together organizations convinced that this is not possible without a root and branch, revolutionary, transformation of society.

Its founding principles are those of the best classical Marxist tradition: democracy “the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves”, and internationalism, “socialism will be international, or it will not exist.” In our 1985 resolution we formulated these principles for our epoch.

The FI is present in the five continents, with organizations in more than 40 countries. Its activists participate in the class struggle, building social movements and parties in order to advance a revolutionary and emancipatory project for the 21st Century.

It functions as a democratic political current, with World Congresses every 7-8 years, and elected and accountable leadership bodies, the International Committee (political leadership) and Executive Bureau.

The FI has an international research and education institute in Amsterdam, which also sponsors sessions in Asia, providing political education with yearly intensive schools for activists of all ages. The IIRE also organizes seminars on ecology, the women's movement, economy, anti-racism, LGTBIQ struggles and others, bringing together the experiences of activists from across the globe to deepen our analysis on these questions and strengthen our collective practice.

The Fourth International holds a yearly International Revolutionary Youth Camp, self-organized by the youth organizations of its European sections, and held in a different European country every year.

Some History

The Fourth International was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and other revolutionary militants, in opposition both to the despotic Stalinist bureaucracy that had betrayed and destroyed the revolutionary dynamic unleashed by the October revolution of 1917 – both within Russia and internationally –, and to capitalism in all its variants, whether liberal-democratic, authoritarian or neo-fascist.

Due to harsh defeats and terrible militant losses (both in Stalinist USSR, in China and Indochina and in the European antifascist resistance), but also to dire isolation and the complexity of the world that emerged from World War II, the Fourth International went through several splits during the 1940s and 1950s, but was for the most part reunified in 1963 on the basis of a common understanding of the new dynamics of the three sectors of the world revolution: anti-bureaucratic upsurges in the Eastern bloc, a renewed radicalization of youth and the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, and anti-colonial and anti-imperialist uprisings in the so-called third world. The reunified current that resulted is still called “Unified Secretariat” by some after the leadership body that was formed at the time.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the FI and its sections participated in the worldwide wave of struggles, promoting the radicalization and self-organization of youth, workers and women, opposing colonial and imperialist wars, in Algeria, in Vietnam and in solidarity with the Cuban revolution. This, notably in the May-June 1968 upsurge in France, helped our current to understand the importance of youth struggles and led us to converge in many countries with the new radical vanguards of the time, to root and broaden our membership. Through that process the FI renewed itself, incorporating the new experiences of the mass movements, and understanding the need to develop the struggle against the different specific oppressions and class struggle into a shared revolutionary project.

>>16367535

“About Amandla!”

https://amandla.org.za/about/

Amandla is a left wing media project built around a magazine that publishes six editions per year. It was initiated in 2006/7 by activists coming from different political traditions on the left. Driving the project were independent left activists working together with militants from the South African Communist Party that were searching for a break with the social liberal policies of the ruling ANC and the bureaucratic politics of the SACP. Linking up with radicalising social movement activists coming out of the anti-globalisation movement it was felt that an important moment had opened up for encouraging a dialogue amongst activists on questions of perspective and strategy. The South African transition had been stalled and many of the democratic and social gains flowing from the ending of Apartheid were under threat.

That was the immediate context for the launching of Amandla. Subsequently Amandla has evolved to take into account the new reality of both the deepening of an organic crisis affecting the post-Apartheid transition and the possibilities for the development of new movements and popular alliances that can challenge an exhausted and corrupted national liberation project.

2012 was a turning point for progressive forces in South Africa. The great mineworkers strike and the Marikana massacre brought back into focus with a vengeance the power and militancy of labour as a driving force for challenging not just the mine owners but the system itself.

That this was quickly followed by the farm worker rebellion, only helped to reinforce the depth of the rupture that was taking place with the social liberal framework provided by the ‘94 settlement. The student uprisings of 2015 and the alliances forged between students and workers in the symbiotic and mutually reinforcing struggles for free education and insourcing pointed to the power of worker-student-community alliances. The potential for all of this to come together in a new movement inspired by an anti-capitalist emancipatory vision was provided by the ‘NUMSA moment’ – movement led by Africa’s biggest trade union for a political break with the ANC and the emergence of the Economic Freedom Fighters – a split from the ANC’s youth movement.

Amandla has redefined itself as a project integrally linked to these new processes seeking to build a new, open, non-dogmatic left politics which creates space to reflect on the crisis of the transition in South Africa while locating and identifying itself with similar initiatives in the Southern African region, across the African continent and globally. We see ourselves as part of a broader international project that needs to address the crisis of politics, i.e. the crisis of providing solutions when national solutions are not sufficient while at the same time recognising the weaknesses and disruptions of regional and international terrains and institutions necessary for new emancipatory processes to gain a mass resonance and power. All this means coming to terms with the questions of agency taking into account new forces and methods of struggle, the problem of the state and not least a mutating capitalism that poses new challenges and most critically threats to the very survival of our and other species.

>>16367535

>>16367553

Amandla Advisory Board

To name a few;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunus_Carrim

Yunus_Carrim

Yunus Carrim is a South African politician who served as the Minister of Communications from 2013–2014.[1][2] Carrim is a self-proclaimed Marxist and serves on the South African Communist Party Central Committee and is a Politburo member.[3]

Currently, Honorable Carrim is also a Board member of The Parliamentary Network on the World Bank & International Monetary Fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Cronin

Jeremy Cronin

Jeremy Patrick Cronin (born 12 September 1949) is a South African writer, author, and noted poet. A longtime activist in politics, Cronin is a member of the South African Communist Party and a former member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress.[1] He served as the South African Deputy Minister of Public Works from 2012 until his retirement in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregs_Govender

Pregs Govender

Pregaluxmi "Pregs" Govender (born 15 February 1960) is a South African human rights activist, author, and politician.

Brought up in a political family she was taking action against apartheid by the age of 14. She became a teacher in Durban joining unions and the ANC. In 1994 she entered the first South African Democratic parliament where she argued for women's rights including the laws permitting abortions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Achcar

Gilbert Achcar

Gilbert Achcar (Arabic: ; 5 November 1951) is a Lebanese socialist academic and writer. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London.

His research interests cover the Near East and North Africa, the foreign policy of the United States, Globalization, Islam, and Islamic fundamentalism.

>>16367535

>>16367553

>>16367561

Alternative Information and Development Centre [AIDC]

https://aidc.org.za/about-us/our-vision/

A merger with Amandla Publishers in 2008 has provided a communication focus for rebuilding the organization into an effective capacity enhancing and knowledge producing organization.

https://aidc.org.za/about-us/

Such alliances become increasingly possible in a context in which a profound reorganisation and realignment of forces underway, propelled by the significance of the Marikana massacre and highlighted by the decision of COSATU’s biggest affiliate the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) to break-away from the ruling Tripartite Alliance and establish a workers party. This process is enhanced by the emergence of the militant mineworkers union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as a mass anti-capitalist youth formation that has over 60 representatives in national and provincial parties as well as several other progressive grassroots formations that challenge government’s neoliberal policies.

AIDC has come to occupy a uniquely important role in relation to many of these major movements as well several ongoing struggles in South and Southern Africa that can and must be linked, consolidated and rallied behind an urgent call for a just transition to a just and sustainable development path. This position both enables and obligates AIDC to exert its best efforts in supportively shaping and guiding the unfolding reconfiguration of forces into a meaningful counter-force that is capable of leading the struggle for a just transition to a just and sustainable alternative development path.

Movement-Building Advocacy

Alliances and coalitions of labour, community, faith-based, environmental and women’s organisations are campaigning locally, nationally and regionally for decent work, a living wage, essential services and an environment free of pollution, and for a just transition to a low-carbon, wage-led, sustainable and equitable economy.

In pursuing these objectives we will work with beneficiaries from organisations and movements in the labour, faith-based, community and environmental justice sectors, principally in South Africa but with activities that reach across the southern Africa region – well over 100,000 people in total. In the coming period we envisage increasing work with a growing number of formations throughout southern Africa, especially Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, the DRC and Mauritius.

This plan was developed in consultation with several organisations and movements that have been intimately involved in developing and implementing AIDC programmes over the last three years.

https://aidc.org.za/programmes/united-and-just-southern-africa/

An alternative paradigm of development that secures the possibilities for living well for all the region’s peoples and overcoming environmental degradation is in reality a call for a new liberation struggle, a fight against neo-colonialism and for social, economic and environmental justice. At the heart of this struggle are the popular initiatives in the region: trade union, social movements, environmental, women’s youth and other formations that are involved in defensive struggles for jobs and decent work, agrarian reform and food sovereignty, against patriarchy, for democratic rights and against authoritarianism and corruption; and even the more transformative struggles for solidarity and low carbon economies, the rights of nature and even anti-capitalist futures. All these exist across Southern African, some initial and embryonic some bold and inspiring. It is likely these initiatives will be enhanced and emboldened by global developments as resistance grows in the heartlands of global capitalism to austerity and the global crisis. The challenge will be to build on what are mostly national responses and process and to regionalise them in a context of building an alternative regionalism.

>>16367589

Bertha Foundation funds Amandla! - Albie Sachs Connection

https://berthafoundation.org/

https://vimeo.com/230910015?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=13378586

6:54 – “Learning activism from real activists, they learning media so that how dream of having activists working with storytellers and lawyers that can become a reality.”

>>16326071 - Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a “Bertha Justice Partner”

Albie Sachs speaks on Bertha’s video at about 4:32

>>16303484 - “An attendee of the Congress of the People, Sachs began practicing law at 21, defending people in defiance of the country’s racial laws. He was subsequently raided, placed in to solitary confinement and eventually went in to exile. In exile, he lost his arm in a car bomb and was a close associate with Oliver Tambo and drafted the ANC’s Code of Conduct. Sachs would later engage in negotiations prior to the 1994 election. When the ANC came to power, Sachs became the architect of the post-apartheid constitution of 1996."

“Albie Sachs award: George and Amal Clooney honour SA judicial icon - The Clooney foundation’s new awards have been named after South African judicial icon Albie Sachs. George Clooney has sung his praises.”

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/albie-sachs-george-clooney-amal-clooney-award/

“Arthur Fraser lays criminal chargers against President Ramaphosa” – Theft and Kidnapping

https://youtu.be/edQNKL5g7e4

“The South African Police Service has confirmed that former State Security Agency Director-General Arthur Fraser, has laid criminal charges against President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Rosebank Police Station in Johannesburg.”

Arthur Fraser lays charges of R60m theft, kidnapping against Cyril Ramaphosa

https://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/news/arthur-fraser-lays-charges-of-r60m-theft-kidnapping-against-cyril-ramaphosa-a7687428-0ade-452f-a51e-e3e5e6f69b24

Pretoria - Former State Security Agency (SSA) director-general Arthur Fraser has laid criminal charges against President Cyril Ramaphosa at a Johannesburg police station, accusing him of stealing $4 million (more than R60 million) and paying people to conceal the matter.

Fraser also accuses Ramaphosa of defeating the ends of justice, kidnapping suspects who were allegedly interrogated on his property at Phala farm in the Waterberg district of Limpopo.

In a media statement seen by the Pretoria News, Fraser states that he laid formal criminal charges against Ramaphosa at Rosebank police station yesterday. He added that he gave police supporting documents including photographs, bank accounts and video footage.

“Today I have taken the unprecedented step to lay charges against his excellency of the Republic of South Africa, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa. The details of the charges and supporting evidence including photographs, bank accounts, video footage and names are contained in my statement filed at the Rosebank police station,” Fraser said in the statement.

“The charges emanate from the theft of millions of US dollars (in access of 4 million dollars) concealed within the premises of the president’s Phala farm in Waterberg, Limpopo, by criminals who were colluding with his domestic worker. They also include defeating the ends of justice, kidnapping of suspects, their interrogation on his property and bribery. The president concealed the crime from the SAPS and Sars and thereafter paid the culprits for their silence.”

“Oppenheimer family taps Asia’s wealthy”

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2021-10-20-oppenheimer-family-taps-asias-wealthy/

The Oppenheimers join a growing number of billionaires turning to Singapore as fortunes surge across Asia

The family office for Nicky Oppenheimer and his son, Jonathan, has set up an outpost in Singapore to boost its Asia exposure and partner with the region’s wealthy.

Edoardo Collevecchio, the former chief of staff for Oppenheimer Generations, is moving from London to build and lead its team in Singapore, while Yi Ling Ong joins from Temasek Holdings as head of investment for the Asia unit, the company said in a statement.

The investment firm, which represents a branch of the dynasty that founded mining giant Anglo American and turned De Beers into the world’s largest diamond producer, said it hopes a presence in the city-state will help drive investments between Asia and its home market of Africa.

“Over the next 20 or 30 years, the synergies between Africa and Asia are going to be substantial,” Collevecchio said in an interview. “We want to be here at the start of that journey.”

The Oppenheimer family has a combined net worth of $8.2bn, largely through the 2012 sale of their stake in De Beers for about $5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The Oppenheimers join a growing number of billionaires turning to Singapore as fortunes surge across Asia.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and vacuum-cleaner billionaire James Dyson have both set up investment firms to manage their wealth in the city-state, known for its high standard of living, political stability and plethora of tax treaties. Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio also signalled in 2020 he would open a family office there to run his investments and philanthropy in the region. The number of family offices in Singapore rose fivefold between 2017 and 2019, according to government data.

“We look forward to deepening relationships with like-minded partners,” Jonathan Oppenheimer, the family office’s executive chair, said in the statement.

The Oppenheimers trace their fortune to the 1917 formation of Anglo American in SA. The firm later took control of De Beers, where Nicky Oppenheimer was chair from 1998 to 2012.

Oppenheimer Generations, which was created after Anglo American bought the family’s 40% stake in the diamond firm, now has more than two dozen employees in SA, the UK and Jersey, according to LinkedIn data. Its other investments include Tana Africa Capital, a private-equity joint venture set up a decade ago with Temasek to invest in African companies.

“This is an incredibly exciting challenge,” Collevecchio said about Asia. “We see so much potential.”

“Oppenheimer family sells stake in Anglo to Chinese group – report” – dated 10th November 2006

https://www.miningweekly.com/article/oppenheimer-family-sells-stake-in-anglo-to-chinese-group-report-2006-11-10/rep_id:3650

The Oppenheimer family sold a third of its stake in Anglo American Plc, the company it founded in 1917 and which has grown into the world's second-biggest miner, to China Vision Resources, controlled by billionaire Larry Yung, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

The stake is worth 419-million pounds, some $803-million, based on Anglo's closing price of Thursday, the news service said. The Oppenheimers will retain more than 2%.

The sale underscores China's attempts to bolster its hold on mining resources and accelerates Anglo's transformation from a chiefly South African gold and platinum producer to an international industrial metals producer.

Bloomberg quoted a political analyst, from Cape Town, Nic Borain as saying that it was “extraordinary significant” for China to take over from what symbolised old colonial capital.

“It's the end of an era and beginning of new one in which China will have a much bigger role in Africa.”

The family company, E Oppenheimer & Son, would invest more of its money in African nonmining businesses and South African private equity units, Bloomberg reported.

It quoted Oppenheimer as saying on Friday that the Oppenheimer family had a “long and emotional” debate, but that the logic was quite simple. “Its all to do with asset allocation.”

The Oppenheimers and Charles Engelhard Inspired Ian Flemming’s writings

How Ian Fleming smuggled Enigma secrets into Bond’s adventures: Author was so interested in Bletchley Park he left clues in the books in a ‘wild contravention’ of the Official Secrets Act

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3818915/How-Ian-Fleming-smuggled-Enigma-secrets-Bond-s-adventures-Author-interested-Bletchley-Park-left-clues-books-wild-contravention-Official-Secrets-Act.html

Sinclair McKay, who has written a number of books on Bletchley Park, told Henley that the details would have been deliberately included because of his ‘adoration for the code breakers was enormous.’

Later, he told The Daily Telegraph: ‘Ian Fleming was involved in naval intelligence during the war.

‘He was one of the very, very few outside the Bletchley operation that knew precisely what these women and men achieved. He had to sign the Official Secrets Act because of it.’

https://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/scandals/diamonds.html

Some accounts of the breaking of the diamond smuggling network in the 1950s give Sir Percy Sillitoe the credit for MI5's success. The double-cross system had actually been run by John Masterman, an Oxford don who had been Harry Openheimer's tutor in politics at Oxford. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Sillitoe was in overall charge of the police forces in Kent during the war. Peter Wright, a former British agent who created great controversy by publishing his memoirs, Spycatcher, in 1987, claimed that Sillitoe was made boss of MI5 by the prime minister Clement Atlee in 1946 as a snub to the intelligence services which Atlee blamed for the Zinoviev letter in 1929.

In 1953, not long after Sillitoe had retired, he was approached by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer for assistance in combatting illicit traffic in diamonds.

The story of IDSO was told by Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels and himself a former officer in British naval intelligence. Fleming was approached by one of Sillitoe's agents, who used the alias "John Blaize" without, according to Fleming the blessing of De Beers, in April 1957. That was the year following the publication of the novel Diamonds are Forever - (the title was inspired by the famous advertising slogan, of which it is the plural form) - in which Bond took on diamond smugglers. What Fleming learnt from "Blaize" became the basis of a series of articles in the Sunday Times during September and October 1957, and the Diamond Smugglers a book about the IDSO.

By the spring of 1957 these attempts to encourage sales through official channels and the efforts of Sillitoe's agents in targetting some of the brains behind the smuggling rings had proved so successful that the IDSO was disbanded, its mission having been accomplished. Some of its men went back to intelligence or security work and others took jobs with De Beers and the Anglo-American Corporation. (Smillie, Gberie & Hazleton, 2000)

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00322.htm

In 1960 Jesselson, assisted by his friend Andre Meyer of Lazard Freres, merged the firm with Minerals & Chemicals (Minorco). A second major change occurred in 1967—about the time Rich was arriving in Madrid—when Andre Meyer convinced Jesselson to merge with Engelhard Industries, owned by “Meyer’s friend and sometime business partner Charles Engelhard, the legendary inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger.”

Virtually all the trading done at Phibro (as Philipp Brothers was called after the Minorco merger) was extremely secretive. Minorco, S.A. (Luxembourg) was then the international trading and investment arm of the Oppenheimer mining interests—trading in diamonds, gold and other precious materials. Engelhard and Harry Oppenheimer were bosom buddies, who first met in South Africa. Just as Engelhard played a vitally strategic role in maintaining a predictable level of necessary metals for the United States’ needs for coinage and national defense purposes, the Oppenheimer family had long performed the same functions for the British Empire.

>>16409418

>>16409517

>>16409519

“RICH WAS SPY FOR ISRAEL – FUGITIVE FAT CAT ALSO OFFERED AID TO CIA & OTHERS”

https://nypost.com/2001/02/05/rich-was-spy-for-israel-fugitive-fat-cat-also-offered-aid-to-cia-others/

Billionaire Marc Rich lived a double life during his 20 years as a fugitive, funneling secret data to Israeli and other intelligence services about some unsavory governments.

Sensational details about Rich’s ultimate high-wire act as a spy for Israel and other countries were provided to The Post as congressional committees prepare to hold hearings into former President Bill Clinton’s controversial decision to pardon the fugitive commodities trader.

Among the issues that will be explored by the House Oversight Committee in its probe of the hotly disputed Rich pardon, according to congressional sources, are:

• Rich’s lengthy relationship with the Israeli Mossad.

• His numerous contacts with federal prosecutors in New York, during which his lawyers offered to provide intelligence to the CIA in return for leniency.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak repeatedly cited Rich’s contributions to Israel’s “national security” in phone calls to President Clinton last month in which he lobbied for Rich’s pardon, according to Barak spokesman Gadi Baltiansky.

And a letter from former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit to Clinton confirming that Rich provided “assistance” to the Israeli spy agency that produced results “beyond the expected” was among the documents released last week by Rich’s lawyer Jack Quinn to support the Rich pardon.

Rich and partner Pincus Green fled the country in 1983 ahead of federal charges that they ripped off taxpayers for $48 million. Both were among the 140 people pardoned or given clemency on Clinton’s last day in office.

A storm of controversy has erupted over the unusual way the Rich pardon was handled, as well as over the involvement of Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, who raised $1 million for the Democratic party and gave the Clintons $7,000 in furniture for their new homes.

Accounts of Rich’s life on the lam – provided by former prosecutors, Rich’s lawyers and the Israeli government – sound like a plot from a James Bond movie [the irony >>16413778 ] as the ruthless and nimble Rich extended his empire on five continents and built up a business worth almost $30 billion.

He sold Iranian oil to Israel and Nigerian oil to South Africa.

He brokered the sale of North Korean arms to Iran and did several deals involving gold, grain, nickel and tin with the Russian Mafia and henchmen of the former Soviet Union.

Lawyers close to the case say there is no doubt that Rich had contacts with spies and security services throughout Europe and the Middle East. Those contacts not only helped him make money but may have also helped him stay one step ahead of U.S. lawmen trying to capture him, lawyers say.

Shavit, who headed the Mossad from 1989 to 1996, provided a fascinating glimpse of Rich’s role in the murky netherworld of spies. In his letter to Clinton released by Quinn’s office, Shavit said that he had a long relationship with Rich.

“We requested his assistance in looking for MIAs and his help in the rescue and evacuation of Jews from enemy countries,” Shavit wrote.

“Mr. Rich always agreed and used his extensive network of contacts in these countries to produce results that sometimes were beyond the expected.”

Murkier still were Rich’s efforts to become a superspy for the CIA.

Asked whether security and intelligence considerations involving the United States played any role in the Rich pardon, a former Clinton aide said, “I simply don’t know.”

Marc Rich, “A Citizen of the World”

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00322.htm

Craig Copetas, Marc Rich’s biographer, labels his subject one of the “Metal Men,”[1] and attempts to trace Rich’s mysterious background. The Belgian Reich family fled Europe during World War II, assisted by a Jewish placement agency, and changed their surname to Rich.

A Citizen of the World

Marc Rich fits snugly into this new world order.

For years Howard Safir, working for Rudy Giuliani as his New York City police commissioner and later as chief of operations for the U.S. Marshals Service, had been tracking Rich down from one country to another. Safir told Larry King: “He was hard to get because he had a great deal of influence in a lot of countries, and we were pretty much restricted to just a few countries where we could apprehend him. He had a Bolivian passport, he had a Spanish passport. The Israelis were very clear they weren't going to help us apprehend him. So it was very difficult to get him, plus he had a lot of money….You know, Marc Rich is one of those people who considers himself a citizen of the world, inconvenienced by the petty laws of nations. And the message that this sends is outrageous.”[11]

Such “world citizenship” makes perfect sense, of course, to those persons who make their livelihood from global trade—what can best be termed the merchant adventurer class which brought us slavery, tobacco, rum, spices, and last but not least, opium. Part of the author’s research is to explore the genealogies of various members of this class of merchant traders from one generation to another to see how their accumulated knowledge and interrelationships have been used to take control of governments throughout the world and to indoctrinate others through advertising techniques and propaganda.

“The toxic chocolatier – The case for prosecuting Glencore executives” – namely Ivan Glasenberg

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-31-the-toxic-chocolatier-the-case-for-prosecuting-glencore-executives/

31 May 2022

By pleading guilty to decades of bribery, corruption and price manipulation around the world, Glencore confirmed a poorly kept secret – criminality was a key pillar of the company’s business model.

Yet the company’s executives, including South African Ivan Glasenberg, became extraordinarily wealthy on the back of this criminal system.

As Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams commented at a media conference last week, “Bribery was built into the corporate culture.”

Who drove this culture? Not the middle management, according to US law enforcement, who went on to add that:

“The tone from the top was clear: whatever it takes.”

Glencore traders used the codeword “chocolates” for bribe payments, hardly an effort to hide the practice from their seniors.

One executive who cashed in during this period was Glencore’s CEO, Ivan Glasenberg. Born and educated in South Africa, and now an Australian citizen living in Switzerland, Glasenberg was at the helm of Glencore for nearly two decades – from 2002 to 2021 – a period in which this system of bribery was created and entrenched.

Today, Glasenberg’s wealth is estimated at R135-billion. Though he resigned in 2021, he still has a 9% stake in Glencore.

It is not yet clear which executives the US Attorney refers to when saying that Glencore’s corruption was encouraged by “top executives”.

Take Glasenberg’s mentor, Marc Rich, the commodity trader who, by hook or by crook, established the Glencore empire. Rich is perhaps the most infamous oil and commodities trader of all time, trading with autocrats and war criminals around the world.

Glasenberg is the scion of Rich, starting work as a coal trader for Marc Rich & Co just after Rich was indicted in 1983 in the US on tax evasion charges and fled to Switzerland. This also coincided with a period in which the apartheid regime’s coal exports were under a growing global embargo for gross human rights violations, just like Russia faces today.

Glasenberg and Rich’s other protégés would go on to build and lead global commodities giants such as Glencore and Trafigura. Rich was never held to account.

Rich is the rule, not the exception. High-flying CEOs become billionaires leading multinational corporations, but are rarely held to account for crimes committed by those companies with their knowledge.

A good example is the CEOs of the banks and other financial institutions responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis and the catastrophic human costs that followed.

While US authorities collected billions in fines linked to this mass fraud, only one Wall Street banker was convicted. In this context, executives know that violation of the law in pursuit of profit is a lucrative strategy with little personal risk.

It is encouraging that the US settlement agreement does not preclude criminal prosecution of any Glencore executives. Further, there are ongoing investigations by authorities in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Where there is sufficient evidence, criminal prosecutions must follow – and speedily.

Only this can change the calculus for corporate executives and ensure that economic crime doesn’t pay.

>>16303484

>“90% of all Jews in South Africa are Litvaks [Lithuanians]” - https://vilnews.com/2011-01-litvaks-in-south-africa

“Ivan Glasenberg – Biography Of South African Mining Billionaire” - Glencore

https://www.entrepreneurs.ng/ivan-glasenberg/

April 30, 2020

Ivan Glasenberg is the chief executive officer of Glencore, a successful commodity trading and mining company. Ivan is also on the board of Minara Resources Ltd. He is a citizen of South Africa, Australia as well as Swiss.

Ivan was born on 7th January, 1957 in South Africa. His parents names are Samuel Glasenberg (a former luggage manufacturer and importer born in Lithuania) and Blanche Vilensky.

While growing up, he lived in Illovo, Gauteng with his family. As a young boy, Glasenberg was an athlete and interestingly, became a national junior champion in race walking in his early 20s. He is a champion race walker for both South Africa and Israel.

His Journey To Glencore International

Glencore is an abbreviation of Global Energy Commodity Resources. It is a British multinational commodity trading and mining company founded as Marc Rich & Co. AG in 1974. The founder’s name is Marc Rich, a billionaire commodity trader. Glasenberg joined Glencore in 1984 working in the coal department in South Africa and Australia.

Also, he managed Glencore’s Hong Kong and Beijing offices from 1989 to 1990. Due to hard work and dedication to duties, he became the head of the company’s coal department in 1991. Then, in 2002, he became the CEO of Glencore.

Glencore Xstrata

On May 2nd, 2013, Glencore and Xstrata merged to create a multi-billion mining company. After the merger, Glasenberg assumed the position of the CEO.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Mick Davis (Xstrata CEO) was supposed to be the CEO while Ivan would be the President in a merger-of-equals transaction.

But during the negotiations, the commodities trader, Glencore increased its offer for Xstrata to 3.05 Glencore shares for each of Xstrata’s share. This was largely after Qatar sovereign wealth fund, Xstrata’s second-largest investor, threatened to block the deal. Glencore had previously offered 2.8 shares for each of Xstrata’s shares.

After the merger, Glasenberg became the CEO while Davis left the company in July 2013.

Boards Where Ivan Glasenberg Serves

• Xstrata Plc, Executive director, since 2002

• Minara Resources Ltd, Non-Executive director, since 2000

• Rusal Plc, since 2007 >>16408829

• Century Aluminum Co, between 2010-2011

Loss Faced By Ivan Glasenberg

Glasenberg faced his fair share of loss in August 2011. Due to economic climate, he lost GB£788 million as his share price dropped by 13.2% leaving his 15.8% of the company worth GB£4.7billion.

However, Ivan being a future-forward businessman started buying shares of Glencore with his dividends that same year. He bought additional US$54million of Glencore stock.

As of April 2012, he held more than 15% of Glencore’s stock. This made him the 20th richest mining billionaire with Forbes estimating his net worth at US$7.3billion.

“Embargo: Apartheid’s Oil Secrets Revealed” – Shipping Research Bureau (1 of 4)

http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1C09-84-Embargo_Apartheids_Oil_Secrets_Revealed%20opt.pdf

Dated 1995

Page 146

The number 2, John Deuss' Transworld Oil, follows with 108 shipments and an estimated 13 per cent.

Why then did the title of one of the Bureau's publications in 1985 not refer to Rich but instead to Deuss as 'South Africa's main oil supplier'? According to the SRB's [Shipping Research Bureau] estimate, Deuss had provided South Africa with more than 25 per cent of its oil needs between 1979 and 1983. Rich had his 17 'Minoil' shipments, but for Deuss the Advocate-General men tioned a figure of 69 'Lucina' deliveries; many of these were not identified by the Ship ping Research Bureau, yet they served to boost his percentage. It is quite likely that Rich's ranking is due to the fact that he overtook Deuss at a later stage, - ' 2 although it is also clear that the Advocate-General did not do justice to Rich's role."

The list of SRB findings in this book testifies to the role of Marc Rich as a loyal oil supplier to apartheid South Africa even more forcefully than did the Bureau's former reports. Since the last update which the SRB published of its findings, the score for Marc Rich has more than doubled.

Page 147

On 13 October 1987, an oil-trading company which the Shipping Research Bureau had ranked as 'South Africa's main supplier of crude oil' made a surprising public announcement. Transworld Oil (TWO), owned by John Deuss, issued a statement to the effect that 'the company and its affiliates are no longer engaged in the supply of oil to South Africa.

In April 1982 a Netherlands-based South African journalist planned to write an article on Deuss, who had made headlines in South Africa, not because of any connection with oil but because he had bought South African golfing idol, Gary Player's, luxury mansion in Honey dew, north-west of Johannesburg.

The Shipping Research Bureau was set up in close consultation with the London office of the ANC (2 of 4)

http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1C09-84-Embargo_Apartheids_Oil_Secrets_Revealed%20opt.pdf

Page 97

The Shipping Research Bureau was set up in close consultation with the London office of the ANC.

When the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the ANC got into trouble because of the SRB's first main report, it was the reaction of the ANC which carried the most weight with the Dutch researchers.

The SRB was an offshoot of the activist community in the Western world, with its traditional focus on the collaboration of Western companies and governments with the apartheid regime. Now facts were emerging about oil supplies originating in oil-producing countries which were regarded as belonging in the ranks of the ANC's allies and who had shown - as opposed to a number of Western powers - their support for the oil embargo.

Page 99

Cor Groenendijk, chairman of the SRB from its inception to its demise, says that at no stage were there any doubts as to the orientation on the ANC, but he recalls how 'the Bureau had to claim its independence in order to avoid becoming a bureau "of' the ANC, which produced reports "for" the ANC which ran the risk of eventually gathering dust in a drawer if they were not top priority at the time of their completion, thereby being inac cessible to others who might want to do something with their contents.'

Page 100

For a few years the ANC feared a Bureau which could possibly thwart its diplomatic efforts. During this period the SRB informed the ANC of intended steps in a manner which can broadly be described as 'seeking its approval' as opposed to later when it became a matter of keeping the ANC abreast of developments and seeking its esteemed advice. The change had not yet taken place in 1982-83, when an idea emerged which as a matter of standard practice was put before and discussed with the ANC.

“1964: A pioneering conference” (3 of 4)

http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1C09-84-Embargo_Apartheids_Oil_Secrets_Revealed%20opt.pdf

Page 11

In its first report to the General Assembly after its establishment in 1963, the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid recommended a study of the means to ensure an effective embargo on the supply of petroleum to South Africa.' 3 At that time, such a study, though not connected with the UN recommendation, was already being under taken by a group of British 'Young Fabians'.

In March 1960, following the announcement that the ANC was to be banned, the South African journalist Ronald Segal smuggled Oliver Tambo out of the country in his car. Four years later, Segal convened an International Conference on Economic Sanctions against South Africa, which was held in London from 14-17 April 1964 under the patron age of 11 heads of government from Africa and Asia. Proponents of economic sanctions and their opposite numbers had until then been involved in a debate on the issue described by Segal as 'a dialogue of pulpits, with the phrases of revelation'. The aim of the confer ence was 'to root the whole issue in reality'; it was 'essential to discover just how practical a proposition sanctions were if successful agitation for their employment against South Africa was ever to be mounted'.' 4 Segal commissioned a number of experts to cover all the main problems of sanctions in a series of papers. The collected writings, including the conclusions and recommendations, were published under the title Sanctions against South Africa and were a pioneering achievement in the field.

Ronald Segal

https://spartacus-educational.com/HISsegal.htm

Ronald Segal was born into an extremely wealthy Jewish family in South Africa on 14th July 1932.

On his return to South Africa in 1956 Segal launched Africa South. He used the magazine to campaign against the racist policies of the South African government. Over the next few years Segal became a leading figure in the anti-apartheid movement.

Segal went on a speaking tour of the United States where he argued for an economic boycott of South Africa. He also raised funds for the African National Congress and the defence fund of Nelson Mandela and others on trial for treason in Pretoria.

Marc Rich and De Beers (4 of 4)

http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1C09-84-Embargo_Apartheids_Oil_Secrets_Revealed%20opt.pdf

Page 152

Tackling Marc Rich

During the embargo years, Marc Rich's involvement with South Africa was not limited to that of oil supplier. Rich was also mentioned as one of those involved in marketing oil from the South African strategic stockpile to Europe in late 1990;2' he most likely continued to be a channel for sales from the stockpile in subsequent years. 22 When his former employer, Phibro, stopped trading with South Africa in 1985 under pressure from the anti-

Page 154

apartheid movement in the USA, Rich stepped in, replacing Phibro as the exclusive sales agent for a giant South African lead mine.2 " __Reports in the South African press in December 1990 had it that Rich was building a stake in De Beers, the diamond company within the Anglo/De Beers group.__24 A year later there were reports that Marc Rich was supplying alumina to and 'from time to time' buying aluminium from the South African Alusaf concern. In the late 1980s Rich was also involved in some new developments in the South African mining industry, providing financial support for a ferrochrome smelter and a vanadium pentoxide plant.25

But most significantly, by the end of the 1980s Rich had reputedly become the largest trader in South African coal, selling the commodity to various countries, including Chile, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey. Rich's coal division also supplied coking coal from Australia and New Zealand to South Africa in 1991. After the lifting of the French and Danish import restrictions in March 1992, Marc Rich was soon contracted to supply South African coal. 26

>>16444440

> Transworld Oil (TWO), owned by John Deuss

“Deuss: From second-hand car dealer to controversial world figure” – (1 of 2)

http://www.bermudasun.bm/Content/Default/News-Older/Article/Deuss-From-second-hand-car-dealer-to-controversial-world-figure/-3/1294/31102

October 6, 2006

Edited extracts from an article written by David Marchant that appeared in the Bermuda Sun, February 18, 1994.

Bermuda-based oil magnate John Deuss has lived a life that is remarkable even among the rich and famous. Since his first car dealership went bust in the 1960s, he has outwitted the Soviets, broken an oil embargo in South Africa, had his home fire-bombed by anti-apartheid protesters and helped clinch the world's largest oil deal. In the process, this self-made Dutchman has made billions of dollars. Here are a few things you may or may not know about him:

Born Johannes Christiaan Martinus Augustinus Maria Deuss, the son of a garage owner from Nijmegen, Holland

His petro-dollars have bought him a string of homes around the world, Gulfstream jets and a magnificent 180-foot, three-masted schooner called 'Fluertje'.

Started his financial life as a dealer in Citroen cars at the age of 25. His second-hand car dealership in Holland went bust in 1967, owing 5.5 million Guilders.

Mr. Deuss apparently decided to go into the oil business during the 1973 oil crisis, putting together capital of $300,000 and forming Bermuda-based JOC Oil, an acronym for 'John's Own Company'.

In 1975, he formed Transworld Oil and Transworld Energy on the island and later incorporated Hydrocarbon Industries.

In 1976, Mr. Deuss hit the big time when he signed a contract with the Soviet Union's national oil company, Soujuznefteexport (SNE), to buy 3.85 billion tons of oil for re-sale to third parties.

But Mr. Deuss allegedly fell behind with his payments and the Soviets suspended deliveries in June, 1977 after 39 shipments of 1.28 million tons of oil and oil products.

A decade of bitter legal wrangling followed and the case was heard in the Bermuda Supreme Court, the Bermuda Court of Appeal and finally the Privy Council in England. Both sides claimed victory.

The company through which Mr. Deuss allegedly owed the money to the Soviets was Netherlands Antilles-based First Curacao International Bank - the same entity that he used in 1993 to buy a controlling 32 per cent stake in Bermuda Commercial Bank.

"He had this big villa where girls in bikinis were lounging around," said Dutch finance journalist Friso Endt, of NRC Handelsblatt, on meeting Mr. Deuss at the billionaire's Harrington Sound, Smith's Parish home [many years ago]. "A girl would bring him a telex about some deal and he would say 'yes' or 'no' and she would go away to carry out his orders. It was like something out of a Harold Robbins novel."

“Deuss: From second-hand car dealer to controversial world figure” – (1 of 2)

http://www.bermudasun.bm/Content/Default/News-Older/Article/Deuss-From-second-hand-car-dealer-to-controversial-world-figure/-3/1294/31102

October 6, 2006

By the mid-1980s, Deuss was fabulously wealthy with an estimated net income of $1 million per week, according to De Telegraaf.

Started the fashion line Alexandra Christie in New York.

In 1984, the Observer newspaper in Britain revealed he had secretly delivered 60 million barrels of oil to South Africa over three years in defiance of an oil boycott against the country because of apartheid.

A week later, a terrorist group calling itself 'Pyromaniacs Against South Africa' firebombed his $6 million castle in Berg en Dal, Holland, causing extensive damage. Deuss was not at home during the attack and no-one was injured. Following the bombing, Mr. Deuss, who was already worried about possible assassination from the Soviet KGB, tightened security at all his homes around the world, including Deep Water, in Harrington Sound.

His South Africa connection - widely condemned around the world - caused barely a stir in Bermuda.

His importance to the South African economy was such that the Shipping Research Bureau, an Amsterdam-based anti-apartheid group, estimated that, in 1980, Mr. Deuss may have supplied as much as 20 per cent of the country's crude oil import requirement.

Journalist Friso Endt said of Mr. Deuss: "He never drinks or smokes, he likes women and he has very little humour. He's a complete workaholic. If the day had 48 hours in it, he would use them."

A particular non-business passion is horses - he owned the horse 'Irish', that won a bronze medal for the U.S. in the individual men's show-jumping event at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

Mr. Deuss is known for his acts of kindness to his staff - he once flew all his female workers in Bermuda to New York for the day to celebrate Mother's Day and one year sent 50 pizzas around to Bermuda Commercial Bank so the staff could eat lunch.

His contribution to the Bermuda economy has been huge: not only have his companies provided valuable employment and contribute millions of dollars in foreign currency revenues, but Mr. Deuss is also believed to be a quiet supporter of local charities. It was also widely understood that he contributed funds to the UBP and subsequently to the PLP not long before its first election victory in 1998.

Mr. Deuss also brings immense prestige to the island through the sheer enormity of his business dealings. For example, Mr. Deuss played a pivotal role in clinching the world's largest oil deal - a $230 billion agreement between U.S. giant Chevron and Kazakhstan, elevating his reputation as a brilliant businessman of great influence in the oil world. He participated in the deal as president of Bermuda-based OOC, which represents Oman's international oil interests.

Asked by U.S. magazine Newsweek in 1985 why money was so important to him, Mr. Deuss is reported to have replied: "Don't you understand that it's a question of power and money means power. It's as simple as that."

Additional reporting by Coggie Gibbons. Copyright: Bermuda Sun.

>>16444522

My apologies, this should be (2 of 2)

>>16444522

>Mr. Deuss also brings immense prestige to the island through the sheer enormity of his business dealings. For example, Mr. Deuss played a pivotal role in clinching the world's largest oil deal - a $230 billion agreement between U.S. giant Chevron and Kazakhstan, elevating his reputation as a brilliant businessman of great influence in the oil world. He participated in the deal as president of Bermuda-based OOC, which represents Oman's international oil interests.

“Kazakhgate: The Incredible Story of James Giffen” – John Deuss mentioned

https://youtu.be/HpaBewrwOw4

In March 2003, James Giffen is arrested at JFK International Airport for violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In the United States, nobody seems to know the middleman, but he reveals to be the most influential foreigner in Kazakhstan. This is the story of how James Henry Giffen came to be the right arm of the former authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev and how its work fell at the center of an international corruption scandal known as Kazakhgate.

Timestamps

00:00 The arrest of James Giffen

01:55 From middleman to Nazarbayev’s pupil

02:16 Who is James Giffen

03:35 When Chevron obtained the rights on the Tengiz oilfield

04:13 The rival: John Deuss

04:31 Investing in Kazakhstan means oil

05:22 A luxurious life

08:03 The investigation

08:46 Hidden bribes

10:05 Trial to a CIA agent?

11:02 The sentence

“Breakingviews - Review: The wild history of the commodities boys” (1 of 2)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-commodities-breakingviews-idUSKBN2AQ1YL

February 26, 2021

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Javier Blas and Jack Farchy should be awaiting the call from Hollywood. “The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources” contains at least half a dozen narrative threads that would form the basis of a good thriller. But the authors’ main achievement is to subject the biggest commodity players, and their impact on the real world, to proper critical scrutiny.

It has become a cliché to describe Glencore, Vitol, Cargill and the handful of other major companies that trade oil, metals and food as shadowy, secretive and deceptively powerful. Even so, it’s not always apparent just how large they are. The five largest oil traders handle a quarter of the world’s daily demand for petroleum while the seven top agricultural traders process nearly half of the world’s grains and oilseeds. In 2019 the five largest trading companies had a combined turnover of $865 billion.

This kind of financial heft has made them political players of serious consequence. When Jamaica ran out of cash to pay for its 300,000 barrels a month of oil in the early 1980s, Energy Minister Hugh Hart’s only option to avoid riots on the streets was to call Marc Rich. The founder of the eponymous trading firm that eventually became Glencore delivered the oil within 24 hours. When rebels in Libya ran out of fuel in 2011, and when Cuba needed oil in the early 1990s, long-term Vitol boss Ian Taylor personally negotiated a fresh supply.

The striking aspect of these stories is how much risk the traders were taking. The Libyan rebels had no money, so had to pay for refined oil with their own crude, which dried up when government forces blew up a pipeline. When Cuba struggled to make payments to Vitol in the form of sugar, the country invited the trader to help develop domestic hotels. Such bets were ultimately shrewd: delivering for desperate clients meant charging fat fees and commanding their long-term gratitude. But the deals could also have threatened Vitol’s survival.

All of which engenders some respect for trader chutzpah. There’s also an enticing, spy novel feel to some of the goings-on, amplified by the occasional need to speak about countries subject to sanctions in code. Crude Number Three, for example, referred to illicit Iranian oil. Rich handled this via a bogus middleman from Burundi called Monsieur Ndolo, who was actually one of his own traders.

Still, the beneficiaries of the go-anywhere, do-anything mentality were not just plucky rebels. In a telling comment before he died in 2013, Rich professed his dislike of South Africa’s Apartheid policy, but he supplied the racist pariah state regardless. Glencore sold oil it had mixed with cheaper variants to Romania. In 2006, Trafigura paid an inadequate middleman to dispose of toxic waste on an open pit in Ivory Coast, causing a local health emergency.

Alongside their moral shortcomings, the traders also suffered from hubris. Rich, feeling U.S. outrage over his Iran oil trades, lost $172 million betting on zinc. Bermuda-based oil trader John Deuss lost $600 million in a failed attempt to corner the North Sea market. According to Blas and Farchy’s sources, even relatively restrained American agri-trader Cargill riskily shorted oil in 2008 and 2009, making a $1 billion profit.

>>16435203

>Glasenberg is reportedly so fanatical about his privacy that, when Glencore listed, a top UK law firm Schillings was retained to try to prevent journalists from digging into the billionaire’s private life. Schillings – famous for its gagging orders – directed letters to media companies in England to warn editors to only focus on the business aspects of the listing.

“Breakingviews - Review: The wild history of the commodities boys” (2 of 2)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-commodities-breakingviews-idUSKBN2AQ1YL

February 26, 2021

The depth of the reporting by the Bloomberg journalists, who previously worked for the Financial Times, is impressive. Details of Monsieur Ndolo’s cameo come from the man himself. The authors also conducted a five-hour “combative” interview with pugnacious Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg. And they join the dots. One fascinating passage charts Glencore’s role in pushing for an export ban on Russian grain, how its surreptitious long position benefited from the subsequent jump in prices, and how those dislocations ultimately fed through to the popular risings of the 2011 Arab Spring.

The heyday of Rich and his cohorts looks to be long gone. Even if modern traders remain unconstrained by ethical considerations, practical ones loom. The banks on which they depend for credit lines are now wary of U.S. sanctions or being labelled pariahs by environmentally and socially conscious investors. The practice of paying bribes to officials and fixers in tricky jurisdictions, which in Switzerland were hilariously treated as tax-deductible expenses, is more likely to be punished. It’s also harder to carve out an information advantage when everyone is online and satellites can track oil tankers. Glasenberg long ago realised he needed to be a miner as well as a trader and snapped up cheap mines, a strategy that paid off spectacularly when China’s breakneck growth sent commodity prices soaring.

Traders remain major players in commodity markets. When U.S. oil prices briefly turned negative last April, Glencore snapped up the dirt-cheap crude, stored it in a massive tanker in the Strait of Malacca and wound up making $1.3 billion in the first half of the year. New tariffs and other trade barriers could also open up fresh opportunities. But if it becomes harder for this group of swashbucklers to nonchalantly change the course of world history, that would be no bad thing.

“How Commodity Traders Came To Run The World” (1 of 3)

https://slman.com/life/how-commodity-traders-came-run-world

06-04-2021

Together with his colleague Javier Blas, Bloomberg News journalist Jack Farchy has dug deeper into the closed world of commodity trading than anyone has gone before. Speaking to people who tend to remain tight lipped, they have uncovered a high-risk, high-reward business that explains how the global economy really works. Jack told Tobias Gourlay what they’ve found so far…

What inspired you to jump into the murky waters of commodities trading, Jack?

Javier and I were both journalists covering natural resources for the Financial Times, and we kept finding ourselves gobsmacked by the importance of a very small group of commodity trading companies, and equally surprised by how little anyone seemed to know about them. We wanted to learn more, but realised that almost no books had been written about them. That’s when we realised we’d have to go out there and get the story ourselves.

Tell us more about the importance of those companies…

Within those companies, there are a few individuals who have played a huge role in shaping our modern world. The story we discovered was one of how money and power interact in ways that most people don’t understand. Commodity traders have been growing in importance from the end of the Second World War through to the present day. They have shaped history along the way, playing a role in everything from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of China.

How much of this was uncharted territory?

So much of the world of commodity traders is secretive, so a lot of what we found hasn’t been reported before. We spoke to more than 100 traders, many of whom have rarely if ever spoken in public before. Among other things, we discovered how American teachers’ pension savings went to fund an oil war in Iraq, with a little help from the world’s largest commodity trader; and we also found that the three largest commodity traders (which, because they are private companies, don’t have to publish accounts) made more money in the first decade of the 2000s than either Apple or Coca-Cola.

What was the discovery that surprised you the most?

It was a surprise to hear people talking quite openly about bribery as if it was just another business expense. This is not just something that happened many years ago – the world’s largest oil trading company, Vitol, admitted to paying bribes in Latin America as recently as July 2020. And we were genuinely shocked to discover that in Switzerland, paying bribes to foreign companies was not only legal but also tax deductible until as recently as 2016.

What gives commodity traders their influence?

Commodities mean money, and money means power – it’s as simple as that. As the companies who can turn commodities into cash for resource-rich governments or individuals, the traders get very close to power. And sometimes they influence it. Take the example of Vitol in the Libyan civil war of 2011. The Arab Spring was sweeping through the Middle East, and in Libya there was an uprising against the dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But the rebels had a problem – they didn’t have enough fuel. Gaddafi controlled all the refineries. Then Ian Taylor, the boss of Vitol, flew in to Benghazi and agreed to supply the rebels with $1bn of fuel – and it wouldn’t need to be paid for until after the war had been won. There’s little doubt that Vitol’s intervention altered the course of the conflict.

“How Commodity Traders Came To Run The World” (2 of 3)

https://slman.com/life/how-commodity-traders-came-run-world

06-04-2021

How did the traders become so influential?

A couple of big trends have benefited them massively over the past three-quarters of a century. One is the freeing up of global markets: the oil market, for example, used to be tightly controlled by the big oil companies known as the ‘Seven Sisters’. Then as governments in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America seized control of their resources, they needed someone to help them sell them – to turn them into cash – and the commodity traders stepped in.

The other big trend that worked in their favour was globalisation and the growth of global trade. More trade means more commodities that need to be traded, and so more money to be made for the traders. The most important development here was the growth of China, which triggered an enormous commodities boom in the 2000s.

Why do you think these once secretive people were happy to talk to you?

Javier and I have been covering the commodity sector for a long time, so a big part of it was the network of contacts we’ve built up over that time. People in the commodity trading industry know us; they know we’re serious and diligent journalists – even if they might not always like what we write. And then we really squeezed our network – asking and begging contacts for introductions to the key people we wanted to speak to.

Why are there so few commodities traders?

There are actually a lot of commodity traders, but there are only a few really big commodity traders: five trading houses handle a quarter of the global oil market; seven control half of the world’s food commodities; and the metals markets are dominated by just two companies. Why? It is an industry where size matters. And there is very little regulation.

Are all commodities traders dodgy to some extent? Or does the sector have some upstanding players?

My day job still involves writing about commodity trading companies, so I probably shouldn’t answer that question…!

Does commodities trading have to be as furtive as it is?

Not entirely. We’ve seen in the past few years that a number of the traders have become a lot more transparent – most notably Glencore, which since 2011 is a publicly listed company and so publishes lots of information about itself. But because information is the traders’ edge, they’ll always be cautious about revealing too much information about their trades.

Should it be better regulated?

Without doubt, regulators ought to have a much better understanding of what the commodity traders are doing and how they operate. We’ve been shocked in the past to receive calls from some governments and regulators to ask us basic questions about the industry and the markets. And there needs to be better coordination: commodity trading is a truly global business, so one country alone can only do so much.

“How Commodity Traders Came To Run The World” (3 of 3)

https://slman.com/life/how-commodity-traders-came-run-world

06-04-2021

Why has it been so hard to regulate to this point?

Few regulators focus on the actual physical commodities – like barrels of oil or bushels of wheat – instead, they spend their time looking at derivatives like futures and options. One reason is that the physical markets are hard to regulate: the trade in commodities often takes place on the high seas, beyond the reach of any one nation’s laws. And commodity traders themselves can move relatively easily, so they tend to be found in the places with the most lax regulatory regimes. [We are ruled by pirates]

Is there any prospect of change on the horizon?

The US appears to be scrutinizing the sector very carefully, particularly when it comes to corruption. That’s already changing some behavior. But there’s little movement towards a globally coordinated system of regulation for commodity traders.

Finally, Jack, some pretty remarkable characters pop in and out of the book. Tell us about your favourite…

John Deuss was the epitome of the freewheeling trader, and one of the dominant figures in the oil market of the 1970s and 1980s. With his mop of sandy-coloured hair, carefully parted on the side, and pinstriped suits with oversized lapels, Deuss looked like a character straight out of the film Wall Street. But his lifestyle was more like that of a Bond villain. From his base in Bermuda, he entertained business contacts and friends on his 187ft-long, three-mast yacht. His typical entourage included two English sheepdogs, and a troupe of bodyguards and striking female assistants. He crisscrossed the globe on one of his two Gulfstream private jets. He was unafraid to play politics, even becoming an adviser to the Sultan of Oman, and he gambled on the price of oil with abandon, making and losing hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.

“Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big” (1 of 3)

https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

January 17, 2016

Judge Abner Mikva, a counsel in the Clinton White House and mentor to President Obama, noted that even Obama “was very, very dismayed by the Marc Rich pardon and the basis on which it appears to have been granted.”

But does the story end there? Is it possible the payoffs continued after he left office?

The stench of the scandal in early 2001 sent people scurrying. Days after it was revealed that a senior UBS executive named Pierre de Weck had written a letter to Clinton “to support his request for a pardon,” the Swiss banking giant canceled its discussions with Clinton about a lucrative post-White House speech, apparently “worried that a large speaking fee would create an appearance of impropriety.”

Even Bill Clinton eventually admitted that the pardon had been “terrible politics.” “It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation,” he said.

But while the pardon was a political mistake, it certainly was not a financial one. In the years following the scandal, the flow of funds from those connected to Marc Rich or the pardon scandal have continued to the Clintons.

Rich died in 2013. But his business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury is well known as a close ally and business associate of Rich. The Nigerian media declared in 1999 that the “Gilbert Chagoury-Marc Rich alliance remains a formidable foe.” They sold oil on international markets together. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the reign of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

As part of a plea deal, the conviction was later expunged.

Chagoury has been very generous to the Clintons in the years following the Rich pardon. He has organized an event at which Bill was paid $100,000 to speak (in 2003), donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and in 2009 pledged a cool $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. The Chagourys were also active in Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid. Michel Chaghouri, a relative in Los Angeles, was a bundler and served on her campaign staff. Numerous other relatives gave the maximum $4,600 each to her campaign.

In return, Bill has lavished praised on Chagoury over the years. In 2005, Bill was the keynote speaker when Chagoury received the “Pride of Heritage Award” from the Lebanese community.

In 2009, CGI gave Chagoury’s company an award for sustainable development. In 2013, Bill showed up in Nigeria for a public ceremony involving one of Chagoury’s projects. When Bill Clinton had his 60th birthday party, Chagoury was an invited guest. Chagoury also attended the wedding of Bill’s longtime aide, Doug Band.

“Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big” (2 of 3)

https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

January 17, 2016

Then there’s Russian investor Sergei Kurzin. He worked for Marc Rich in the 1990s, traveling around Russia looking for suitable investment opportunities in the crumbled former Soviet Union.

An engineer by training, Kurzin has been involved in lucrative deals in Kazakhstan and other countries, including the lucrative Uranium One deal that involved Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra.

Russia bought 20 percent of all uranium production capacity in the US, a deal that needed to be signed off on by the State Department when it was headed by Hillary Clinton. While the deal was going through, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow, paid for by a Russian investment bank promoting the uranium deal.

Kurzin, meanwhile, donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The London-based Reuben Brothers have made a fortune thanks in part to their commodities firm Trans World Metals. According to the World Bank, they founded that firm with money from Marc Rich.

And they have confirmed that they had business dealings with Rich. The Reuben Brothers, through their own Reuben Foundation, have been enthusiastic supporters of the Clintons. They co-hosted a star-studded gala with the Clinton Foundation in London dubbed the Millennium Network. They have also directly donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Beth Dozoretz, a longtime Democratic Party donor, was a friend to Denise Rich, and according to congressional investigations, played a “key role” in helping secure the Marc Rich pardon. On Jan. 10, 2001, Dozoretz received a phone call from President Bill Clinton informing her that he was planning to pardon international fugitive Marc Rich. Dozoretz informed her ski partner on that trip, Denise Rich, of the great news.

In the years since the pardon was granted, Dozoretz has served the Clintons closely: as the finance co-chair of Hillary’s 2008 campaign and as a senior State Department official during Hillary’s tenure. She has supported the super PAC Ready for Hillary and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her husband, Ronald, has sent $25,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Even the smaller phantoms of the Marc Rich scandal have popped up, opening their wallets for the Clintons. Gershon Kekst, who was Marc Rich’s longtime p.r. man in the United States, has contributed more than $10,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since the pardon. Clyde Meltzer was named in the original 1983 DOJ indictment against Marc Rich and Pincus Green. Meltzer pleaded guilty rather than flee the country like Rich and Green. In the 1990s he rejoined Rich, working for the fugitive’s new firm, Glencore.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Meltzer has a slim history of giving money to candidates, giving only $1,000 to a congressional candidate. But in 2007 he gave the maximum allowed to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Three of Marc Rich’s attorneys, Peter Kadzik, Robert Fink and Jack Quinn, also a former counsel at the Clinton White House, have donated to Hillary’s campaigns. Quinn has given between $25,000 and $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

“Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big” (3 of 3)

https://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

January 17, 2016

These Rich connections are, of course, based on disclosed donations. But we now know that the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose more than 1,000 donors, despite its written agreement with the Obama transition team that it would maintain complete transparency.

Many of those donations came through a Clinton Foundation project in Canada, which is heavily laden with donations from the natural resources and commodities industries. Kurzin, for example, has given via this route. Are there more Marc Rich-connected dollars that have flowed to the Clintons? Will they ever provide the full disclosure they have so often promised?

It cannot be mere coincidence that in the years of fundraising for the Clinton Foundation, one of the industries that has emerged as a big backer of the Clintons is the mining and commodities industry, where Marc Rich made his fortune.

When it comes to Washington scandals, news usually sends political figures scurrying for cover — leading them to avoid those connected to the scandal. Apparently not so with the Clintons. Are you connected to the disgraced Marc Rich and the terrible pardon? It’s OK, as long as the check clears.

>>16472648

>Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury is well known as a close ally and business associate of Rich. The Nigerian media declared in 1999 that the “Gilbert Chagoury-Marc Rich alliance remains a formidable foe.”

“Lebanese-Nigerian Billionaire [Gilbert Chagoury] and Two Associates Resolve Federal Probe into Alleged Violations of Campaign Finance Laws”

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/lebanese-nigerian-billionaire-and-two-associates-resolve-federal-probe-alleged

March 31, 2021

LOS ANGELES – A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire has resolved and two of his associates have agreed to resolve a federal investigation that they conspired to violate federal election laws by scheming to make illegal campaign contributions to U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, the Department of Justice announced today.

Gilbert Chagoury, 75, who presently resides in Paris, France, paid $1.8 million to resolve allegations that he, with the assistance of others, provided approximately $180,000 to individuals in the United States that was used to make contributions to four different federal political candidates in U.S. elections.

Chagoury, a foreign national prohibited by federal law from contributing to any U.S. elections, admitted he intended these funds to be used to make contributions to these candidates. He further admitted to making illegal conduit contributions – causing campaign contributions to be made in the name of another individual.

According to a deferred prosecution agreement with the government, Chagoury accepted responsibility for his role and conduct that resulted in violations of federal election contribution laws between June 2012 and March 2016 and agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation. Chagoury entered into the agreement on October 19, 2019, and he paid the fine in December 2019.

Federal prosecutors entered into the deferred prosecution agreement considering, among other factors, Chagoury’s unique assistance to the U.S. government, his payment of a fine, Chagoury’s acceptance of responsibility for his actions, and his residence outside the United States.

Relatedly, two Chagoury associates – Joseph Arsan, 68, also of Paris, and Toufic Joseph Baaklini, 58, of Washington, D.C. – agreed to resolve allegations that they violated campaign contribution laws by assisting Chagoury in his illegal contributions. Arsan, a physician who worked as an assistant to Chagoury, admitted helping Chagoury reimburse others for contributions to political candidates. In 2014, Arsan – at Chagoury’s direction – wired $30,000 to a third party and indicated on the wire information form that the funds were for a “wedding gift,” when he knew or should have known that the funds were reimbursement for making a political contribution to a campaign fund for a federal elected official.

Arsan’s deferred prosecution agreement, which took effect in November 2020, also resolves a criminal investigation into his alleged tax violations in the years 2012 to 2016 stemming from his failure to report money he held in foreign bank accounts. Arsan agreed to pay $1.7 million in penalties to resolve the tax probe and to cooperate in the government’s investigation.

In his deferred prosecution agreement signed on March 1, 2021, Baaklini admitted to giving $30,000 in cash provided by Chagoury to an individual at a restaurant in Los Angeles who, along with others, later made campaign contributions to the 2016 campaign of a U.S. congressman. Baaklini also agreed to pay a $90,000 fine as part of his agreement and agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation.

In a separate and unrelated matter, Ray LaHood, 75, who served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation from 2009 to 2013, paid a $40,000 fine to resolve a federal criminal investigation into LaHood’s conduct related to a $50,000 financial transaction between LaHood and Baaklini in June 2012.

LaHood, who at the time was suffering financial difficulties, admitted that in 2012 he accepted a $50,000 personal check from Baaklini – with the word “Loan” written in the check’s memo portion – and understood at the time that the money came from Chagoury. LaHood failed to disclose the $50,000 check on two government ethics forms as required because LaHood did not want to be associated with Chagoury. Later, LaHood also made misleading statements to FBI agents investigating Chagoury about the check and its source. As part of his non-prosecution agreement signed in December 2019, LaHood also agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation and repaid the $50,000 to Baaklini.

This matter was investigated by the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General.

>>16472656

>Then there’s Russian investor Sergei Kurzin. He worked for Marc Rich in the 1990s, traveling around Russia looking for suitable investment opportunities in the crumbled former Soviet Union.

>>16425138

>“Applying the lessons they learned from Marc Rich, they bankrupted Russia,” Klebnikov alleges. “As a result, you have a ruined economy, bankrupt government, and an impoverished population.”

“An Interview With Sergei Kurzin” (1 of 5)

https://www.forbes.com [Unable to post full link. Board message; "Your post contains a spam link that has been filtered. Please remove the link and try again."]

April 20, 2009

Dmitry Sidorov

"I don't remember exactly how many times I met President Clinton," Kurzin told me as we sat in the London Mayfair offices of his mining companies, Orsus Metal and Oriel Resources. The 47-year-old mini oligarch, who made a fortune in the mining business, blames age for the occasional memory lapses. "I am getting old," he said. After a short pause accompanied by a wrinkled forehead and furrowed eyebrows, Kurzin fondly recalled three encounters with Clinton.

As I found out 40 minutes later, two meetings took place in Canada, and one occurred in London. Another one Kurzin may have forgotten could have taken place in Kazakhstan in early September 2005, when Kurzin's partner, Canadian mining mogul Frank Giustra, and Bill Clinton flew out to meet with the country's president, Nursultan Nazarbaev.

With a doctorate in nuclear physics, Kurzin is hardly a household name in the U.K., where he has lived for almost 20 years, or in Kazakhstan or Russia, where he conducts business, or in the U.S. and Canada, where some of his friends and partners reside. His name means almost nothing to a mining industry outsider, except for the fact that he was a partner of Frank Giustra in a successful and lucrative deal to purchase uranium mines in Kazakhstan in 2005.

I became interested in Kurzin after a friend pointed out some Russian names on the Clinton Foundation donors list. It was made public by the former president last December to clear the path for his wife's nomination as Secretary of State. Kurzin provided between $50,000 and $100,000 to the charity. Giustra, on another hand, donated $31.3 million via one of his foundations.

Kurzin also donated funds to the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative Foundation, which works to eliminate poverty in areas of the developing world affected by mining. "I wrote a check for a million dollars. I don't think you can call it a small amount," he said. Kurzin was clearly indicating how proud he is, at the same time taking offense at my comment. I had been careless enough to say that his gift to the Clinton Foundation was insubstantial compared to the kindness of his Canadian partner or certain Arab businessmen.

Kurzin has dual British-Russian citizenship and lives in the picturesque seaside resort of Rye (beloved by American writer Henry James) with his wife, Jennifer, and two sons. The Kurzin family also has a nice piece of property in Italy and excellent connections in Kazakhstan and Russia.

"I started working in Kazakhstan immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union," Kurzin told me. He began as a London-based consultant to a number of Western oil and mining companies a few years after moving to the U.K. from Russia in 1990. But before that, Kurzin was a mail courier in London when he first arrived. "I didn't want my wife to support me," he explained.

>>16472758

>>16436536

>Roman Abramovich’s journey from an impoverished, orphaned childhood to Chelsea-owning billionaire was forged in the chaotic transformation of Russia itself, in the years after the iron curtain fell.

“An Interview With Sergei Kurzin” (2 of 5)

https://www.forbes.com [Unable to post full link. Board message; "Your post contains a spam link that has been filtered. Please remove the link and try again."]

April 20, 2009

Dmitry Sidorov

The breakthrough in his career came in the late '90s when he started a consulting business. Kurzin claimed credit for helping Canada's Bema Gold Corporation to develop the Kupol gold mine in Russia's Chukotka province. The deal brought Kurzin into contact with the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who was governor of the region at the time. "I started negotiations with the previous governor and got a deal, but when Abramovich was appointed, I asked for a meeting to seek his blessing," Kurzin told me and smiled.

It was a smart move to close the Kupol deal without leaving an unpleasant aftertaste with the powerful Roman Abramovich. "In 2006, I joined Abramovich in his private box at London's Chelsea stadium to watch the soccer team he owns play against some German club," Kurzin told me.

According to Kurzin, his success with Bema brought him into contact with Frank Giustra in the early '90s. But it was another Canadian mining promoter who would change Kurzin's life in 2003. Stephen Dattels, a former executive at Barrick Gold (one of the world's largest gold producers), teamed up with Kurzin to float a company called Oriel Resources on London's junior AIM stock exchange. Oriel got hold of a nickel project in Kazakhstan called Shevchenko.

Kurzin was transformed from a behind-the-scenes consultant to the CEO of Oriel. As a source involved in the Oriel float put it, "Steve (Dattels) was selling Sergey to the investors." Kurzin, fully bilingual and with extensive contacts in the former USSR, made a strong impression. It was the dawn of the mining boom, and investors were eager. Oriel IPO-ed in London on March 11, 2004, at 0.65 pounds per share, raising 40 million pounds. At the time, it was the largest mining IPO in the history of London's AIM exchange, according to the London Stock Exchange Web site.

But Kurzin and Dattels didn't stop there. Even before the Oriel IPO, in January 2004, they created Everfor Diamonds Plc. to explore diamonds in Russia's far north Murmansk region. Everfor would eventually IPO in London in April 2006.

By the spring of 2004 Kurzin was feeling good. He was earning 84,000 pounds per year as the CEO of Oriel, together with 96,000 pounds per annum from Fernview Finance Limited, the Oriel subsidiary; 54,000 pounds as the CEO of Everfor, according to Oriel and Everfor prospectuses; and another 36,000 pounds from Edlin Finance Limited–totaling 270,000 pounds per year.

>>16472758

>>16472775

“An Interview With Sergei Kurzin” (3 of 5)

https://www.forbes.com [Unable to post full link. Board message; "Your post contains a spam link that has been filtered. Please remove the link and try again."]

April 20, 2009

Dmitry Sidorov

Studying documents from Kurzin-promoted mining companies, I found patterns worth noting. In each case, the London arm of the Canadian brokerage Canaccord Adams handled the float. In each case, many of the early stage investors were the same.

According to the documents made available to me, these investors included Aran Asset Management, Barham Investment Group and various offshore trusts managed by Pinnacle Trustees in the Channel Island of Guernsey. Among others, there was one with the name Vnukam. "No investor was able to understand what it means," a source close to the Oriel float told me. Which is understandable, because Vnukam in Russian means "for the grandsons."

In each case, the companies promoted by Kurzin came by their mining projects in the former USSR through complicated deals involving offshore trusts and opaque Russian- and Kazakh-registered entities. Oriel purchased the Kazakh nickel mine by agreeing to buy all the shares of a British company called Brook Audley Resources from offshore trusts managed by Pinnacle Trustees, including a Kurzin-linked Malta trust, which in turn bought 90% of the shares of a Kazakh partnership called Luckstone LLP, which was the sole owner of another Kazakh partnership, Muzbell LLP, which held the license for the nickel mine, according to the Oriel prospectus. The total of $8 million in cash would pass from Oriel to undisclosed sellers of the nickel mine. According to a source it "included one individual close to Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev."

On July 17, 2005, the British tabloid Mail on Sunday reported that Aran Asset Management and Barham Investment Group sold their shares in Oriel within a week of its IPO for "windfall" profits. The Mail on Sunday speculated that the two companies were linked to senior Canaccord executives. The British publication also stated that one of the trusts managed by Pinnacle Trustees also sold Oriel shares soon after its IPO.

According to the documents obtained, these trusts are Pamir, Malta and Vnukam. The price of Oriel shares jumped to above 80 pence after its IPO but then languished well below its IPO price of 65 pence for many months thereafter. But it didn't matter to the inside investors who had sold quickly after the float. Aran, Barham and the Kurzin-linked trusts had gotten shares for one penny, according to a shareholders list.

Now back to the uranium deal in Kazakhstan and Giustra, Clinton, Kurzin and Dattels. This time Steve Dattels, Kurzin's partner in the Oriel and Everfor deals, would be cut out. "It wasn't only my decision but Giustra's as well, I told him," Kurzin responded to my question about Dattels' exclusion from the deal. "What, am I married to him? He had other partners as well," Kurzin added. According to him, any dispute with Dattels was taken care of. "We settled the score," Kurzin insisted without explaining how.

>>16472758

>>16472775

>>16472786

“An Interview With Sergei Kurzin” (4 of 5)

https://www.forbes.com [Unable to post full link. Board message; "Your post contains a spam link that has been filtered. Please remove the link and try again."]

April 20, 2009

Dmitry Sidorov

It was 2005, and the uranium deal was moving along. On Sept. 6, Giustra and Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan on a millionaire's private jet to meet with the president of the country, Nursultan Nazarbaev. "I was not on that plane," Kurzin almost shouted as the smile vanished from his face. The Giustra-Clinton voyage to Kazakhstan fueled speculation that the former U.S. president added weight to the Giustra-Kurzin efforts to nail down the uranium deal. Kurzin fiercely denied it but admits that he was the one who made the deal possible with his extensive connections in Kazakhstan.

Pictures of Giustra and Clinton, Kurzin and Clinton, Clinton and Nazarbaev, and Giustra and Putin stared out at me from the wall of Kurzin's office. Kurzin became extremely alert and suspicious moments before confirming his partnership with Giustra in the Kazakh uranium deal. "Why are you asking whether I was a consultant or a partner," Kurzin questioned me. "What's the difference?"

A consultant to a company is paid for his services, I explained, while a partner has a stake in a company. "I see, but a consultant can also be a shareholder. In any case, I was a partner, and not a consultant," Kurzin responded. Furthermore, Kurzin was not shy about admitting that his connections in Kazakhstan were instrumental when UrAsia Energy, a company Kurzin and Giustra started, purchased the title to uranium projects. UrAsia paid close to $450 million to Kazatom, Kazakhstan's state uranium company.

Funds raised privately by Kurzin and Giustra before UrAsia's IPO also went to the sellers of additional shares of an unknown private Kazakh-owned partnership. Two years later, in February 2007, UrAsia Energy was purchased by Uranium One for $3.1 billion.

"Clinton had nothing to do with the project," argues Kurzin, a tall man in an expensive dark navy suit. He became tense and could barely contain his anger when the former president's name came out of my mouth. "You're trying to nail Clinton because his wife became the Secretary of State, but there's nothing about the trip to Kazakhstan that will help you do it. The business I'm in doesn't work this way," he added shaking his head.

The anger was aimed not only at me but at the New York Times journalist who called Kurzin some time ago and quoted him in a story on Giustra and Clinton. "I was misquoted, and the journalist deceived me," he added with disgust. "How were you deceived?" I asked. "The journalist told me that the interview would be about the mining business, and it came down to the Clinton in Kazakhstan issue at the end," Kurzin replied.

Kurzin told me that Giustra was very unhappy with his quote in The New York Times. "Giustra yelled like hell at me over the phone after he saw the piece. He was furious that I talked to a journalist," Kurzin told me. He didn't explain what exactly was wrong with his quote but agreed to continue talking about Bill Clinton after I assured him that I was interested in his impression of the former U.S. president.

"There were four people present at that meeting in Kazakhstan," Kurzin told me. They were Frank Giustra, Bill Clinton, Nursultan Nazarbaev and billionaire Lakshmi Mitall, the head of ArcelorMittal. "Frank (Giustra) was just explaining to President Nazarbaev what he's doing in Kazakhstan, and Nazarbaev showed an interest in developing the stainless steel industry in his country," Kurzin candidly told me.

Whether he was in Kazakhstan at the time of the meeting or Giustra told him what it was about remained to be confirmed. I was unable to find anyone willing to talk about it either on or off the record.

>>16472758

>>16472775

>>16472786

>>16472790

“An Interview With Sergei Kurzin” (5 of 5)

https://www.forbes.com [Unable to post full link. Board message; "Your post contains a spam link that has been filtered. Please remove the link and try again."]

April 20, 2009

Dmitry Sidorov

But the three meetings between Kurzin and Clinton were confirmed by Kurzin himself. The encounter at a private dinner at the Dorchester, one of London's finest hotels, is fascinating. Despite the fact that Kurzin once again was unable to recall exact dates, I figured it out. The event took place on Dec. 3, 2005, more than three months after Clinton's trip to Kazakhstan and close to one month after the deal to purchase the title for uranium mines was wrapped up. "I sat as close to Clinton as I am sitting to you," Kurzin emphasized. We were a few feet away from each other, separated by a round table located close to his desk.

During this meeting, Kurzin and Clinton had a half-hour of almost uninterrupted conversation. "The other guests complained that I hijacked the president," Kurzin stated proudly. "We talked about Russia and (President) Yeltsin," he recalled. Did you discuss Putin, I asked. "Yes,” he replied, "but I don't remember what was said. I don't know Putin personally and don't want to talk about him," Kurzin added.

The other two encounters occurred in Canada. The second meeting with Clinton took place in Vancouver, on April 23, 2006, at a charity event to raise funds for blood-related cancer research that took place at the Fairmont Hotel. Giustra's Radcliffe Foundation sponsored it. This time Kurzin was not so lucky. "I saw the president, and we had a brief conversation, but I was not seated at the same table as Giustra," he said. It was a private, invitation-only, black-tie dinner where Elvis Costello, Elton John and James Taylor performed.

The third encounter happened on Sept. 9, 2006, in Toronto's Royal York Hotel, where Giustra organized a celebration for Clinton's 60th birthday (actually on Aug. 19) combined with a fundraiser for the former president's HIV/AIDS initiative. "I donated $100,000 for this event," Kurzin told me.

Before I left we exchanged business cards, but I have a feeling we won't be seeing each other again. Kurzin probably won't like this story. Which is a shame, since I still have questions. One of them: "Why did President Clinton decide to spend almost half an hour with a person he presumably had never met before?"

Remove the spacing below to access the article.

https://www.forbes.com /2009/04/17/ clinton-sergei-kurzin-opinions-contributors-sidorov. html

>>16472656

>The London-based Reuben Brothers have made a fortune thanks in part to their commodities firm Trans World Metals. According to the World Bank, they founded that firm with money from Marc Rich.

>And they have confirmed that they had business dealings with Rich. The Reuben Brothers, through their own Reuben Foundation, have been enthusiastic supporters of the Clintons.

>>16425138

>“Applying the lessons they learned from Marc Rich, they bankrupted Russia,” Klebnikov alleges. “As a result, you have a ruined economy, bankrupt government, and an impoverished population.”

“Reuben Brothers Who Pillaged Russia in the 1990s Top List of UK’s Richest People” – Also “Sir” Leonard Blavatnik, Alisher Usmanov”

https://www.eutimes.net/2020/05/reuben-brothers-who-pillaged-russia-in-the-1990s-top-list-of-u-k-s-richest-people/

May 21, 2020

While the Sunday Times “Rich List” has taken a hit thanks to the Covid pandemic, reducing the overall wealth of the top 1,000 richest people in Britain by 3.7 per cent, the Jewish brothers David and Simon Reuben – Russia’s biggest foreign investors in the metal industry in the 1990s – remain in joint second place, with a fortune worth £16bn:

Born in Mumbai, they grew up in north London and attended state schools. They made savvy business choices, eventually joining forces to control 5 per cent of the world’s aluminium output through their company Trans-World Metals.

They have also invested in prime London property such as Millbank Tower, Connaught House in Berkeley Square and the former Naval and Military Club in Piccadilly.

Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born Jewish mogul who made his multi-billion-dollar fortune in the aluminium industry in the former Soviet Union, has held on to fourth place with a net worth of £15.78bn.

His other investments include a property empire including hotels in Hollywood, Miami Beach and Cap-Ferra and has a stake in Russian oil company TNK-BP. Blavatnik is based in London, and lives in a £41m home in Kensington Palace Gardens with his American wife Emily.

Born in Uzbekistan Alisher Usmanov built his fortune from steel and mining. His largest investment is in Russian metals giant Metalloinvest and he has also funded MegaFon, the country’s second-biggest mobile phone operator. His wife, Irina Viner-Usmanova is Jewish, and he crept up to seventh place with a net worth of £11.68bn.

After the so-called fall of communism, “Russian” organized crime figures, who just happened to be largely Jewish, ransacked the country with the help of Jewish economic “experts” from Harvard, buying up its industrial infrastructure for pennies on the pound.

Over 25 years later, these organized crime figures have now worked their way into “legitimate” business, social, and “philanthropic” circles in the West.

And some of them, like “Sir” Leonard Blavatnik, have even been knighted — now that’s a funny-sounding name for English aristocracy.

Of course, the Reuben brothers are literal paupers compared to the Rothschild dynasty, the defacto rulers of the U.K., but somehow they never make this celebrated “Rich List”, which should be renamed “Jewish Nouveau Riche List”.

The English aristocracy is no longer English — it has been replaced by this literal mob in three piece suits.

>>16472656

>Even the smaller phantoms of the Marc Rich scandal have popped up, opening their wallets for the Clintons. Gershon Kekst, who was Marc Rich’s longtime p.r. man in the United States, has contributed more than $10,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since the pardon.

“”Gershon Kekst, leader in Wall Street public relations, dies”

https://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Gershon-Kekst-leader-in-Wall-Street-public-11027189.php

March 24, 2017

Gershon Kekst, a corporate adviser who counseled many of the biggest deal makers during the merger boom of the 1980s and helped form the modern financial public relations industry, died March 17 in New York. He was 82.

For more than five decades in public relations, Mr. Kekst forged relationships with business moguls such as Sanford I. Weill of Citigroup and Henry R. Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, as well as the bankers and lawyers who advised them on takeovers and other financial matters.

Such was the dominance of Mr. Kekst and his firm that Kekst & Co. advised both Time and Warner Communications in their 1989 union, as well as both Walt Disney Co. and Capital Cities in theirs in 1995.

What was once a public relations niche that he pioneered has become a huge and profitable industry in its own right, with dozens of competitors vying to advise on mergers and financial crises.

Mr. Kekst sat with McGraw-Hill in the late 1970s as it sought to fend off a takeover by American Express, advised Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in the late 1980s in its successful bid to buy RJR Nabisco in the frenzied merger contest made famous by the book “Barbarians at the Gate,” and counseled Chrysler as it rebuffed unwanted bids by billionaire Kirk Kerkorian in the 1990s.

And it was Mr. Kekst who oversaw the public relations side of Citicorp’s merger with Travelers in the late ’90s, giving birth to the financial colossus Citigroup. Mr. Kekst had been a longtime public relations adviser to the deal’s maestro, Weill.

Gershon Kekst was born on Oct. 12, 1934, in Salem, Mass., to Hannah, an immigrant from Palestinian territory, and Joseph Jacob, an immigrant from Lithuania. Both his parents taught in Hebrew school; his father died when he was 4.

“Image-Makers In Takeover Land” - Gershon Kekst and others (1 of 5)

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html

September 24, 1989

Below are excerpts

Although the $14 billion Time-Warner deal captured its share of headlines and made substantial demands on the resources of the Kekst organization, it was far from being the most difficult assignment the firm had undertaken. In the often ruthless and invariably complex world of corporate mergers and acquisitions, Kekst is widely regarded as the public relations firm of choice - a major player in such celebrated struggles as T. Boone Pickens vs. Gulf Oil and Philip Morris vs. Kraft.

It is a specialty whose practitioners are remarkably few, given the size of the financial rewards and the enormous growth in the number of takeovers during the past decade. Only a handful of public relations firms are both able and willing to undertake the work, and it usually generates considerably less than half of their revenues - in the case of Kekst, about 35 percent. You're dealing with high-profile crisis situations, and many people have no experience and no stomach for it, says Walter G. Montgomery, a partner in Robinson, Lake, Lerer & Montgomery. We've had job candidates who say this is an exciting firm, but M. & A. is too unpredictable and demanding.

To devise the best strategy for presenting the client's case to the press, the P. R.specialist must master the financial status of his client and the opposition, not to mention the intricacies of the particular buyout offer. There's a lot of nerdy stuff, says Montgomery. You spend a lot of time reading. But other, more subtle skills are required. The specialist must capitalize on the opponent's weaknesses, professional and personal - what's known in the trade as attack or combat public relations. He must know how to rein in the other players on his team, the executives, lawyers and investment bankers, each firmly in possession of a healthy ego and his own media contacts, so that the client speaks to the press with one voice - what Kekst calls damage control.

Perhaps the most surprising recent addition to the field is Howard Rubenstein, heretofore renowned for his publicity stunts (it was Rubenstein who put a King Kong balloon atop the Empire State Building to promote the observatory), his connections with the city's Democratic establishment and his unparalleled client list among New York's most powerful real estate developers. Rubenstein's M. & A. boutique, as he calls it, cannot match the Kekst operation, which handles dozens of takeovers a year. On the other hand, with such M. & A. clients as Robert Maxwell, Britain's acquisitive publisher, and Canada's equally acquisitive Reichmann family, Rubenstein will not be idle. WHEN RICHARD E. Cheney, now the chairman of Hill & Knowlton, rejoined the firm in 1960 after a stint with Mobil Oil as investor relations director, he found himself peculiarly well-equipped to shine in the arena of takeover P. R. As he puts it, I was the only guy around here who knew a debenture from an equity. In those days, a hostile raider typically offered the stockholders not cash but securities and other financial instruments. The target company's P. R. adviser would scour the takeover prospectus for the presence of Chinese money - inflated paper that was unlikely to fulfill the raider's promises in the market -and then share his findings with the press. Forewarned, stockholders would shy away from the offer.

“Image-Makers In Takeover Land” - Gershon Kekst and others (2 of 5)

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html

September 24, 1989

Below are excerpts

But with the coming of Michael R. Milken and the financing of corporate raiders with junk bonds, all that changed. The shareholders were offered cash, not securities. Today, Cheney says, money is the only thing that matters. Management is protected by its golden parachutes, the stockholders will tender their shares to Ho Chi Minh if the price is right and a lot of the P.R. function centers on the price tag, not the quality of the offer. There have been times in the last five years when I've said to myself, 'Gee, this isn't my country any more. Something's happened.'

It was in this strange, new, still-forming world of all-cash deals, junk bonds and increasingly inventive raiders that Gershon Kekst would make his mark.

The goal was to convince investors in general, and the brokerage community in particular, that the client company was prospering. It was a mission that would assume ever-larger significance in the takeover era as raiders pursued corporations with undervalued stock.

In the narrow world of the takeover, P. R. practitioners are particularly dependent upon powerful patrons - the investment bankers, lawyers and takeover artists who are at the core of the big deals. Kekst's closeness to Flom, who single-handedly invented many now-commonplace features of the hostile takeover, is the prime example. Over the years, Gershon Kekst has gotten more referrals from Skadden than anybody, says Stan Sauerhaft of Burson-Marsteller. Kekst's other patrons have included Bruce Wasserstein, of Wasserstein, Perella & Company, and the veteran raider Saul P. Steinberg.

In the case of Adams & Rinehart, the firm was brought into the business by the Seagram Company's Edgar M. Bronfman Sr., a longtime client. Robinson, Lake has well-known ties to Shearson Lehman Hutton, the brokerage house owned by the American Express Company: Linda Gosden Robinson, the C.E.O., is the wife of James D. Robinson 3d, the Amex chairman, and Walter Montgomery was once head of Amex's public relations department. The man who introduced Howard Rubenstein to the high-stakes takeover wars was Rupert Murdoch, who engaged Rubenstein's services - Murdoch's first choice, Adams & Rinehart, was not available - during his abortive raid on Warner Communications in 1983.

Lawyers represent another kind of problem. As one veteran insider puts it, They tend to be obsessed with secrecy, confidentiality and silence - a tendency that runs exactly counter to the P.R. adviser's function.

In gathering ammunition for the battle, takeover teams frequently hire private detectives, most often the Wall Street firm of Kroll Associates, to winkle out personal or financial dirt on the opposition. Such information can be dynamite, but it may also be too hot to handle. Maybe you find that you don't use the dirt, says Walter Montgomery of Robinson, Lake, because your own client is vulnerable, and if you start that game, you're going to wind up losing it.

“Image-Makers In Takeover Land” - Gershon Kekst and others (3 of 5)

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html

September 24, 1989

Below are excerpts

In 1978, Occidental Petroleum sought to take over the Mead Corporation, the giant paper company, and Gershon Kekst was hired for the defense. The raw materials for a classic exercise in attack P. R. were in abundant supply. And Kekst spread the news, bringing the financial community's attention to the fact that Occidental owned the Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Company, which was responsible for the environmental disaster at the Love Canal. Mead shareholders were also forcefully reminded that Occidental was tainted by illegal campaign contributions and questionable overseas payments. All of which seemed to shed doubt on the quality of Occidental's offering, which was soon withdrawn.

In years past, Hill & Knowlton's Cheney recalls, not a few financial re-(Continued on Page 46) porters were burned-out refugees from their paper's police beat. They covered the infrequent big takeover as just another business story. But over the last decade, as business news has won greater coverage and takeovers have multiplied, papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have assigned reporters to specialize in M. & A. During a takeover, the P. R. specialist spends much of his time dueling with these reporters, trying to get across his client's views without yielding information that might be damaging, or viewed as damaging back in the board room.

In takeovers, says an investment banker who has seen his share, The guy who gets in the first good body shot has the advantage, because you have to respond on his terms. He cites two examples, both of them involving American Express.

In 1979, responding to an American Express takeover bid, the chairman of McGraw-Hill, Harold W. McGraw Jr., went on the offensive. Advised by Kekst, McGraw charged that American Express betrayed a lack of corporate morality and sensitivity, portraying the bid as an attack on the editorial integrity of his publishing house. The strategy carried the day.

In March 1988, the Koppers Company, a Pittsburgh-based building materials manufacturer, took a similar tack. Advised by Hill & Knowlton, Koppers warned that a takeover by Beazer, the British construction company, and its partner, Shearson Lehman Hutton, an arm of American Express, would lead to major layoffs at Koppers. Koppers employees destroyed their American Express cards. It definitely set things back, the investment banker says. American Express is very image-conscious. Their franchise took a tremendous amount of time and money to build, and burning their cards was not a good thing in their eyes. They ended up winning because the finances were on their side and the P. R. barricade is ultimately stormable, but at some great personal cost.

In virtually any takeover situation today, the bulk of the shares of the target company are in the hands, not of individual stockholders, but of institutions and arbitrageurs, who have direct lines into the warring parties. Under those circumstances, how vital is the press, and by extension, the public relations counsel? Flom has his doubts. There's no case in American corporate history that I'm aware of where any major corporation was or was not taken over because the stockholders were told it was a good or bad idea, he says. P.R. can't change the dynamics of the marketplace.

“Image-Makers In Takeover Land” - Gershon Kekst and others (4 of 5)

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html

September 24, 1989

Below are excerpts

Then, in 1975, voters approved the Uniform Land Use Review Procedures, which made the task of building virtually anything in New York intensely political. It led the city's major developers directly to the politically well-connected Rubenstein. Says Jack O'Dwyer, publisher of a P.R. newsletter, Howard Rubenstein is not a public relations man. Howard Rubenstein is a power broker.

Still, the Rubenstein organization performs many of the functions of an old-fashioned press agent. It has created a chopped-liver Statue of Liberty for the Carnegie Delicatessen and drummed up business for a plastic surgeon with a traveling Nosemobile. His business has grown so complex that, on the same day, he found himself representing clients on both sides of the smoking issue. Howard, says John Scanlon, an executive vice president with the Chicago-based P.R. firm of Daniel J. Edelman Worldwide, has more conflicts than downtown Beirut.

At the heart of his client list, though, are the developers, including Leonard N. Stern of Hartz Mountain Industries and Donald J. Trump. As such clients moved into M. & A., Rubenstein says, We found that the skills were trans-(Continued on Page 48) ferable. He made Peter Rosenthal his point man: ''Peter read every financial publication he could lay hands on. And Murdoch is a genius. I learned a lot from him.'

Howard Rubenstein's particular skills and connections were most prominently displayed when Rupert Murdoch sold The New York Post to developer Peter S. Kalikow in 1988. The sticking point, as the relevant parties met in a midtown hotel, was $3 million in union demands. Murdoch refused to pay and gave the unions 15 minutes to capitulate before he shut the paper down forever.

Over the next few hours, Rubenstein persuaded New York Governor Mario Cuomo to reason with Murdoch and Kalikow, arranged for the union leaders to take a call from Cuomo and convinced Murdoch and Kalikow to meet privately in the absence of their lawyers. Murdoch agreed to come up with the $3 million. When the Post's drivers' union remained recalcitrant, and Murdoch again promised to fold the paper, this time in half an hour, it was Rubenstein who won over the drivers and clinched the deal.

“Image-Makers In Takeover Land” - Gershon Kekst and others (5 of 5)

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html

September 24, 1989

Below are excerpts

Among reporters, M. & A. public relations specialists get mixed reviews. By and large, I find them obstructionists, says Dan Dorfman of USA Today. They're there to ward you off. I get a lot of 'no comment,' and it's gotten progressively worse with the fear of conveying inside information. Says Alan Abelson, the editor of Barron's: You're dealing with a situation where the value of a company is being determined, and their task, by fair means or foul, is to present one side of the picture. Truth isn't particularly the highest impulse here.

Some members of the press are troubled that the flow of information about major takeovers is controlled by a handful of public relations specialists, providing rich opportunities for news management and favoritism. A public relations firm is often in a position to grant exclusive stories to one reporter or another, depending on the firm's sense of how hard or soft the reporter will be on the client. In return, the firm may at some later date expect to extract a quid pro quo - a piece of information or an article on another client.

>>16472656

>Even the smaller phantoms of the Marc Rich scandal have popped up, opening their wallets for the Clintons. Gershon Kekst, who was Marc Rich’s longtime p.r. man in the United States, has contributed more than $10,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since the pardon.

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>>16473135

“The Kekst family legacy” – Weizmann; “lectures by representatives of pharmaceutical companies Merck, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Roche“

https://www.weizmann.ac.il/WeizmannCompass/sections/people-behind-the-science/the-kekst-family-legacy-0

March 20, 2019

Below are excerpts

The new Gershon Kekst International Office opened its doors in the fall to offer a bevy of essential services to visiting faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students from overseas, responding to a dramatic rise in the number of international guests at the Weizmann Institute in recent years. The Kekst Office was inaugurated in a special ceremony at the 2018 International Board.

It is a fitting tribute to the late Gershon Kekst, the New York public relations executive and philanthropist who dedicated himself to globalizing the Weizmann Institute name and reputation until he passed away in 2017 at age 82.

The new Kekst Office is located in the former home of the late Prof. Ephraim Katzir, a renowned biophysicist at the Weizmann Institute who served as the fourth President of Israel.

Gershon Kekst was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and founded the public relations firm Kekst & Company, a corporate and financial communications firm. His Jewish identity, and in particular the Jewish directive of repairing the world—tikkun olam—was a driving force in his life, and it became the backbone of his philanthropic activity. It led him to become a board member of Brandeis University and a Chairman of the Board of the Jewish Theological Seminary. It also led him to Weizmann.

For both Carol and Gershon, philanthropy was naturally at the center of their lives. Carol Schapiro Kekst was born and raised in Baltimore by parents who were deeply involved in Jewish communal life. She lived in Jerusalem for a time, working at the Guttman Israel Institute of Applied Social Research and the Jewish Agency.

Back in New York in the 1970s, she was active in the movement to free Soviet Jewry. She received a masters degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College. She went on to serve on the boards of various Jewish schools and community foundations, and is a longtime Board member of the Jewish Museum of New York. She has been recognized for her leadership and philanthropy by JTS and Brandeis, and she followed Sara Lee Schupf as the chair of the Women in Science lecture series, a program sponsored by the New York region of the American Committee of the Weizmann Institute and held at Rockefeller University.

Then, in the 1990s, together with then-President Prof. Haim Harari, he [Gershon] helped the Institute strategically navigate its way back to financial security after a period of instability. Gershon saw the imperative from the point of view of the State of Israel—that a financially healthy and strong Weizmann Institute was essential to the country.

This year’s Winter School drew more than 120 students and seasoned scientists from around the world, including 25 participants from the Czech Republic. The program also included lectures by representatives of pharmaceutical companies Merck, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Roche.

“Weizmann Institute research activities in the field of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery can benefit from such interactions, and we are looking forward to continuing this tradition of winter and summer schools,” says Prof. Sagi.

“Trafigura investigated for alleged corruption, market manipulation”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/trafigura-investigated-for-alleged-corruption-market-manipulation

31 May 2020

Global commodities trader Trafigura is under investigation by US authorities for alleged corruption and market manipulation relating to oil trading, the Guardian has learned.

The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is leading a far-reaching probe into the activities of the oil and metals trading house, including its operations in South America.

The Washington-based financial markets regulator has issued subpoenas to a large pool of people, ordering them to hand over all information they hold relating to the company’s activities.

The subpoenas demand information going back at least four years relating to “manipulation and corruption involving oil products and trading”.

Recipients of the subpoena have been set a strict deadline to hand over documents and data to the CFTC, the Guardian understands.

The investigation is understood to relate to Trafigura’s oil trading division, which is based in Singapore but also has offices in London and Geneva.

The unit’s traders negotiate with other companies and state-backed entities to buy and sell large quantities of oil and petroleum products in resource-rich regions such as South America and Africa.

The US probe comes nearly 18 months after the Guardian revealed that Trafigura had been named in Brazil’s vast “Car Wash” corruption probe, alongside rival commodities traders Glencore and Vitol. It is unclear whether the CFTC’s investigation is related.

The firm’s involvement emerged after campaign group Global Witness unearthed documents relating to Brazilian prosecutors’ pursuit of members of a group of businessmen called Brasil Trade.

The papers alleged links between Trafigura and Brasil Trade member Jorge Luz, who became known as the Deacon of Bribes in Brazil and was sentenced in October 2017 to 13 years and eight months for his part in orchestrating bribes worth $20m (£15.8m).

According to the documents, Luz discussed “a proposal from Trafigura” with state oil firm Petrobras, under which the trading firm would lend Petrobras money in exchange for discounted oil.

Petrobras executives rejected the plan according to the same document.

Trafigura told Global Witness in 2018 that the proposal did not result in any agreement and that Luz was not retained to lobby for them.

Rival commodities trading firm Glencore, which was also named in connection with the Car Wash probe, last year became the focus of a CFTC investigation into alleged corrupt practices.

In a statement issued when it disclosed the CFTC’s investigation, Glencore said it “understands that the CFTC’s investigations are at an early stage and have a similar scope in terms of subject matter as the current ongoing investigation by the US Department of Justice”.

It added that it would cooperate with the CFTC.

The CFTC and the Department of Justice both declined to say whether they were investigating Trafigura.

Trafigura also declined to comment.

The commodities trading firm is not a household name but it has global reach, operating in 41 countries and trading vast quantities of oil products, metals and minerals.

The company is legally registered in Singapore but is owned by Farringford NV, a firm registered on the island of Curacao, in the Caribbean about 40 miles (65km) north of Venezuela.

Farringford’s ultimate controlling parties are not known, although Trafigura says that it is owned by its employees.

French billionaire Claude Dauphin set up Trafigura in 1993 and the company has since grown into one of the world’s largest commodities trading firms, alongside rivals such as Vitol and Glencore.

It also shares some of its roots with Glencore.

Before starting Trafigura, Dauphin worked for Marc Rich, a legendary commodities trader who was indicted in the US for tax evasion and for striking sanctions-busting oil deals with Iran. Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day as president.

Rich’s company was bought out by senior employees and became Glencore, while Dauphin went on to set up Trafigura with other former Marc Rich employees.

In its 26-year history, the company has been implicated in several high-profile scandals, including involvement in smuggling oil out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In 2009, the Guardian fought a landmark legal battle to reveal Trafigura’s links to the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, causing a public health crisis that affected more than 100,000 people. Effects included breathing difficulties, nausea, stinging eyes and burning skin. Trafigura eventually paid more than £32m to claimants affected by the waste.

“UPDATE 2-Trafigura has bought out founder's family [Dauphin] stake in full – CFO” - "after record earnings in 2020"

https://www.reuters.com/article/trafigura-shareholders-idUSL1N2IP0S3

December 9, 2020

LONDON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Commodities trader Trafigura has fully bought out the family stake of its late founder Claude Dauphin after record earnings in 2020, boosted by pandemic-related volatility and a consolidating sector, its chief financial officer told Reuters.

“The Dauphin family stake has been fully reimbursed,” CFO Christophe Salmon said. As Ivan Glasenberg, in an unrelated move, prepares to step down as Glencore CEO, the buyout marks the end of the trading world’s ties to the Marc Rich era. [However the legacy continues]

Dauphin, who founded Trafigura with partners in 1993, had been one of Rich’s key lieutenants, along with Glasenberg, who has led Glencore for nearly 20 years.

Rich, a pioneer of modern oil trading, was a controversial figure, famously pardoned by former U.S. President Bill Clinton on charges of tax evasion.

With the reimbursement complete, Trafigura has increased the number of its senior employee shareholders to 850 from 700.

Dividends this year rose to $586 million compared with a lower-than-usual $337 million in 2019. Last year, the firm decided to cut payouts to boost equity and reduce its adjusted debt to equity ratio.

On top of the extreme market volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Trafigura’s results were further boosted by falling competition from other firms. Sector consolidation accelerated in the shipping fuels market, known as bunkering.

“Small and mid-sized traders left the sector due to bankruptcy or a lack of access to financing,” Salmon said.

“The bunker market in Singapore, the world’s largest… is very different from a year ago. The main players are Trafigura, Vitol and Mercuria, and not the regional ones any more.”

The sector has seen major defaults this year, particularly in Asia, as a sharp economic downturn due to coronavirus hit vulnerable companies and laid bare fraud.

Salmon said an initial public offering of part of the firm was not on the cards. He said the company would sell some assets next year, and was working towards completing the purchase of a stake in Russia’s Vostok Oil project in the Arctic.

Last month, Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft approved the sale of 10% of capital in the project.

Salmon said the reserves were comparable to the United States’ prolific Permian basin.

In Congo Republic, Salmon said negotiations to restructure a major oil prepayment deal, key to the country’s bid to unlock more cash from the International Monetary Fund, were “progressing very well”.

Salmon said the firm was last month allocated its first repayment cargo by the Congolese state oil firm since early this year.

The sale of Angolan state oil firm Sonangol’s 30% stake in Puma Energy, Trafigura’s midstream and retail arm, was ongoing, he added, after it hired Jefferies bank to run the deal. Puma has hired ING to look at further divestments.

Puma has been loss-making since 2018 and was a sizeable impairment for the trader in 2020.

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“Former Mining Exec Details Suitcase Full of Cash He Used to Seal Deals” – Glencore, Vitol, Trafigura, Gunvor, Cargill

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-24/former-glencore-director-says-he-flew-the-world-with-bag-of-cash

February 24, 2021

A former Glencore director said he used to fly the world carrying a bag full of cash to secure deals for the commodity trader, evidence of the industry’s longstanding history of corruption, a problem it’s still grappling with today.

“I used to go with 500,000 pounds to London,” Paul Wyler who was one of Glencore’s most senior executives and a board director until 2002, said in an interview for The World for Sale, a book on the history of the commodity trading industry.

In those days paying so-called “commissions” was both legal and even tax-deductible for a Swiss company, Wyler said, adding that Glencore’s past as a private company it went public in 2011 had been helpful. “We had advantages if we wanted to pay commissions. So if we wanted to pay certain things, we didn’t have to declare it in our annual report.”

“Unfortunately this is something that has plagued the commodity industry,” Torbjorn Tornqvist, the co-founder of oil trader Gunvor Group Ltd., said of bribery and corruption. “There’s a lot of skeletons and many of them, most of them, will never be surfaced.”

The current range of investigations echoes the early 1980s, when Marc Rich, founder of the company that became Glencore, was indicted for tax evasion and buying oil from Iran in defiance of sanctions. The saga, which brought Rich infamy, has long haunted public perception of the industry.

Trafigura Group, the second-largest metals and oil trader, faces charges in Brazil that it paid kickbacks to win business with the state oil company. Trafigura has denied the allegations. Vitol Group, the largest oil trader, in December admitted to bribing government officials in Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico – in some instances as recently as July 2020.

Although largely unknown beyond the world of commodity trading, companies like Glencore, Vitol, Trafigura and Cargill Inc. have become crucial cogs in the global economy, making billions of dollars of profit every year and supplying a large share of the essential goods of modern life, from crude oil to wheat and copper.

Other traders spoke of an industry where conflict has been seen as an opportunity for profit.

Igor Vishnevskiy, the former head of Glencore’s Moscow office, described the company’s successful trades in Tajikistan in the midst of the bloodiest conflict of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s: “It was a stunning business, actually, because it was a civil war.”

Tornqvist, the Gunvor CEO whose company was forced to pay $95 million by Swiss prosecutors in 2019 after one of its employees bribed officials in the Republic of the Congo and Ivory Coast to secure oil deals, said: “The old-style traders, the Marc Rich diehard breed, some of them don’t quite get it. Until they’re sitting and talking with the FBI. Then they get it.”

(This story is based on extracts from Blas and Farchy’s book, The World for Sale, to be published tomorrow in the U.K. by Random House Business and by Oxford University Press in the U.S. on March 1.)

>>16538743

>Business deserves thanks for role in averting SA civil war

Business deserves thanks for the demise of South Africa. This article explains it well.

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (1 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

The below piece is the work of Khaya S Sithole (@CoruscaKhaya )

FB link: https://www.facebook.com/khaya.sithole/posts/10154656211142103

The report threatened to cover issues relating to multiple companies, but somehow we end up with a detailed focus on the Eskom contracts. Key to the problem is the history of the Optimum Coal Mine and how it ended up in the control of the Guptas. The short version of the story is as follows. Back in 1993, Eskom signed a contract with Optimum for the supply of coal from 1993 to 2018. The basis of this contract is the coal supply agreement (CSA) which has 2 interesting aspects. One refers to the hardships clause which means that the parties can engage within the 25-year period and renegotiate aspects of the deal if necessary. The other aspect relates to the penalty provisions – which allows Eskom to penalise Optimum in the event that the coal delivered is not useful to Eskom. In this penalty clause, Optimum is obliged to keep delivering coal but only gets paid a nominal amount of R1 per tonne until Eskom recovers its losses. Sometime in the late 2000s, the Optimum Coal entity fell into the hands of Glencore – who presumably conducted proper diligence before they decided to acquire the mine. And then things started going wrong.

At some point in time Optimum started supplying substandard coal to Eskom. In some consignments, up to 45% of the coal was useless to Eskom and had to be rejected. This means that Eskom was stuck with useless coal and had to adjust its electricity generation schedule to cater for the fact that it didn’t have enough useful coal. The 1993 agreement allowed for Eskom to actually penalise Optimum when this happened – but Eskom decided not to implement the penalty clause. Instead, South Africa suffered through load shedding. The nature of the agreement signed in 1993 had escalations – as expected. Due to its location, Optimum was responsible for supplying coal to the Hendrina Power Station which is based in Mpumalanga and has a capacity of 2 000 megawatts. The consequence of receiving useless coal means that the power generation is compromised and load shedding results. Rather than penalise the company and drive it to bankruptcy, Eskom decided it was in their interests to keep the mine operational by ignoring the penalty clause – and the penalty fee kept rising.

Somewhere along the line, Optimum became aware that Eskom had a deal with Exxaro for the supply of coal which was economically much better than the deal that Optimum had. In the Exxaro contract, Eskom paid R1 132 per tonne. In the Optimum contract, Eskom paid only R150 per tonne. The Exxaro contract expired on 31 December 2015; the Optimum contract was due to only expire in December 2018. In light of this information, Optimum then activated the hardship clause which simply means they went to Eskom and said ‘we can no longer keep supplying coal at R150 per tonne; we want to charge you R530 per tonne, can we negotiate?’. In this conversation, Optimum was asked to prove that their cost structure was indeed too high and they could only remain alive if Eskom paid them more. They struggled to prove this and kept insisting that they were losing R100 million per month from the Eskom contract. Eskom remained unconvinced.

>>16566250

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (2 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

Optimum came back with a revised offering saying they could suddenly survive if Eskom paid them R442 per tonne. Unfortunately, a certain Brian Molefe was now in the building. As part of his strategy to turn around the entity, poor old Brian engaged his mind in evaluating such contracts. And then – Wits University’s most successful graduate – Ivan Glasenberg who owns Glencore – indicated to Brian that if Eskom wasn’t willing to pay more than the current price then Optimum would stop supplying Eskom and load shedding would be a permanent problem. Brian then viewed this as a form of bullying and then decided to tell Glasenberg that he will activate the penalty clause on Optimum. At that stage, the money that Optimum owed Eskom in terms of the penalty clause was R2,15 billion. So we had a company that had a liability of R2,15 billion to Eskom threatening to cut coal supplies unless Eskom paid them R442 per tonne – even though the agreement said Eskom needed to pay R150 per tonne. This was a standoff of electric proportions.

The scary thing about this penalty clause is that it is actually part of a strategic move by Optimum. Power stations are very specific about the size and density of the coal they can burn. If a supplier brings the wrong coal it simply cannot be used without damaging the power station. So suddenly, Optimum started delivering coal that was wrong. Firstly, 20% of the delivery would be wrong. And then 30%. And then 40%. And this peaked at 45%. The problem here is that you cannot possibly know that the coal is unusable until it arrives at the power station. And when you need to generate 2 000 megawatts of power then you are in trouble. Eskom could have activated the penalty clause and refuse to pay Optimum – but this would have bankrupted Optimum immediately so Eskom didn’t levy the penalty – but kept calculating it. And this is how the penalty kept growing until it reached R2,15 billion.

Once Molefe refused to be bullied into paying this increased price and decided to activate the penalty clause, Optimum then put itself into business rescue. When it went to business rescue, it owed R2,9 billion to Investec, Nedbank and RMB. These were the secured creditors that needed to be paid first before any change of ownership could take place.

A key feature of the Optimum structure is that Eskom needs to approve any transaction that results in a change in ownership of Optimum. The Optimum Coal Mine is one of 3 entities that make up Optimum Coal Holdings – the others are Optimum Coal Terminal (OCT) and the Koornfontein Mine. OCT is part of the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) which is a consortium of coal suppliers. Optimum Coal (OCT) is a 7,5% member of RBCT which means that they can provide up to 7,5% of RBCT’s annual exports. The value of this right is $360 million per year – that is R4,85 billion per year.

Once Optimum was under business rescue, Pembani attempted to make an offer to buy the mine. The deal collapsed because Eskom said they would still demand payment of the R2,15 billion penalty from the new owner. Pembani was informed that Eskom would not approve a deal unless Pembani agreed to pay the penalty. So Pembani walked away.

A key part of the deal is the question of whether only Optimum Coal Mine was for sale or if all 3 companies were for sale. The 2 other entities were still profitable – only Optimum Coal Mine was making losses due to the Eskom contract. Ideally, if one could buy all 3 then you could use the profits from the other 2 to balance out the losses on the Eskom contract. After Pembani walked away, our favourite audit firm – KPMG – then informed Optimum and Glencore that a new buyer had emerged – and this buyer wanted all 3 entities. This buyer was Tegeta which is owned by Oakbay and the Guptas.

>>16566250

>>16566261

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (3 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

What was curious about the Tegeta/Oakbay conversation is that Eskom suddenly changed 2 things. Firstly, Eskom was no longer insisting on charging the R2,15 billion penalty to the new owner – this is different to what Pembani had been told. Secondly Eskom was now happy to approve the sale of all 3 entities – this is not what Pembani had been told. In other words, once Tegeta joined the conversation, Eskom deleted the 2 clauses that had made the deal impossible for Pembani. This was curious.

The banks also got involved in the conversation. By the time Nhlanhla Nene was fired on 9 December, the banks were owed R2,95 billion. In reality, the company now belonged to the banks and Eskom which was owed R2,15 billion. You would therefore need over R5 billion to buy the company – unless Eskom wrote off its R2,15 billion claim – which it surprisingly did by deferring it. Once Eskom had indicated that the R2,15 billion could be deferred it meant that all one needed to do was to pay off the banks and Optimum could be transferred. For all practical purposes, this deal made economic sense. Only 1 leg of it was odd – the Optimum Coal Terminal (OCT) leg. As part of its drive to reduce costs, Optimum had stopped supplying coal to the export market. This is odd because the coal is sold on the export market for $65 (R875) per tonne – which is much higher than the R150 Eskom was paying and still higher than the R530 Optimum wanted Eskom to pay under a revised contract. Once all these issues had been sorted and Eskom was willing to ignore the R2,15 billion penalty, Tegeta made an offer that was acceptable to all parties (the banks and Glencore). The final purchase price was R2,55 billion. Glencore would pay R400 million and Tegeta – don’t laugh – would pay R2,15 billion. But there’s more…

In any mining operation, there is a legal requirement to set up an ‘environmental/rehabilitation fund’ which will deal with fixing the environment once the minerals have been successfully stolen by capitalists. Such funds are supposed to benefit the communities in the affected area and established in terms of the National Environmental Management Act. Naturally, Optimum Coal and Koornfontein had created such funds. The Optimum Fund had R1,47 billion and the Koornfontein Fund had R280 million. The funds are ring-fenced for community activities only and cannot be used for any other purpose. If an entity uses the funds for any other purpose then the owners of the fund are guilty in terms of the Income Tax Act (section 37) and need to pay taxes up to 2 times the value of the Fund.

The Guptas got clever here. As part of the purchase agreement, the control of the rehabilitation funds would pass on to the new owner. Tegeta then classified this as ‘cash available to them’ which would be transferable once the sale had been finalised. (Just like your fixed deposit which you plan on withdrawing after a specific date). The Bank of Baroda then treated the cash in the funds as money available to Tegeta and counted it as Tegeta’s asset. After April, South Africa’s ‘ethical’ banks – Standard Bank and Nedbank, transferred the funds to the Bank of Baroda branch in Durban. Apparently at that stage the 2 banks had not located their conscience and didn’t question why the money was being moved.

So you’d think these illegal transfers would have set alarm bells everywhere. But the Guptas are much smarter than we think. The Guptas have a friend called Mosebenzi Zwane – who sounds like a hard worker. He is the rather energetic Minister of Mineral Resources. The official custodian of the mining rehabilitation funds is the Department of Mineral Resources. Such funds that are created for community benefit purposes are only allowed to make transfers after obtaining approval from the Minister of Mineral Resources – and that would be Mosebenzi Zwane. Once such a transfer happens; SARS is responsible for charging taxes on this fund – unless the Commissioner decides not to charge the tax. That would be Mr Tom Moyane.

In order to facilitate this hoax, the Bank of Baroda prepared a letter to indicate that Tegeta had money. That made it easier for the South African banks to believe they would get their money. But this was not enough to cover the purchase price.

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>>16566261

>>16566273

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (4 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

Tegeta then went on a drive to raise the money which involved multiple entities including Trillian Capital, Oakbay, Regiments and Shiva Uranium. Unfortunately, after all this was done, Tegeta was still short of R600 million in order to finalise the transaction – yes, that sounds like the R600 million offered to Mr Jonas. The period of 11 to 13 April is the biggest problem for Brian Molefe. I am tempted to say that Brian Molefe reacted to the bullying antics of Glasenberg in a way that he thought was prudent. I am also tempted to think that by the time Brian arrived at Eskom with the promise of ending load shedding his most important discovery was that load shedding is the type of thing that had been manufactured by entities like Glencore through their immoral actions. Somehow Brian inherited this superhero complex where he needed to defeat Glasenberg at this game and also fix a national crisis. Whether his steps in executing such a mandate were appropriate is the philosophical dilemma that led us to this point. It is quite possible that Brian stepped into a vortex where the steps towards resolving this fiasco had been set in place long before he arrived. Unfortunately, he decided to assimilate with what he believed was the lesser evil and that is the realisation that brought him to tears today.

On the 11th of April, Tegeta realised that they were R600 million short. As a first step, they tried to find out if the banks would accept a deal without the R600 million. The banks said no. Then they asked Glencore for help. Glencore said no. Then Eskom stepped into the fray. On the night of the 11th of April, the Board Tender Committee of Eskom met and approved a R659 million ‘pre-payment’ at 9:00 pm. The pre-payment was apparently made to Tegeta in order to enable Optimum Coal to continue operating and revive its export contract. The problem here is that at that stage Tegeta did not own Optimum as the purchase had not been finalised. It is also odd that the Eskom Committee did not question why a payment for Optimum was going through Tegeta who had no legal relationship with Eskom at that stage. This is really Brian’s problem. Had the transfer gone straight to Optimum instead of Tegeta, Brian’s explanation would make sense. But this did not happen. Another reason advanced by Eskom is that the pre-payment was necessary in order to fix prices that might increase – this is simple nonsense. Eskom employs an entire treasury division whose core expertise is hedging. A contract of 3-months that requires them to pay R659 million simply does not exist.

On the 13th of April, Eskom paid Tegeta and suddenly, Tegeta had enough money to buy Optimum and the deal was closed. Earlier yesterday, Brian was clear that the pre-payment has been settled already – but that is not the point. Brian’s key weakness is that he cannot explain why the payment went to Tegeta if the intention was to assist Optimum. It also doesn’t help that the administrators of Optimum found out from Carte Blanche that Eskom approved a payment of R659 million on 11 April – and they never saw a single cent. This is the fundamental problem with Brian’s version of events.

It also does not help Brian’s argument that the Guptas found a way to say that the deal would only be feasible if all 3 entities were sold – and then betrayed Brian. Remember that the R659 million pre-payment was apparently meant to assist in the revival of the coal exports through RBCT? Well it turns out the Guptas then decided they were not interested in exports after all – and sold their RBCT right. The selling price – $250 million (R3.6 billion) which means that after all these transactions, the Guptas have a profit of R1,5 billion already. So, you can imagine being a Brian Molefe being parachuted right into the heart of this fiasco and having to pick one devil over another… What would you have done?

Brian remains one of the most arrogant human beings I have ever encountered – and there is nothing wrong with that. He also gets paid ridiculously well for the job he does – so he can definitely defend himself. My point of convergence with Brian is that I see him as an interesting exhibit of the Icarus complex. Such a complex exists when an individual’s spiritual ambition exceeds their given limits – leading to a backlash.

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>>16566316

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (5 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

In Brian’s view, his quest to end load shedding at all costs was the driving ambition. Unfortunately, it was limited by the reality of the economic structure that Eskom was stuck with. Brian’s main error was in seeking to bypass such a problem by engaging the Gupta contract – and he will regret this forever. The thing about the Icarus complex is that you are allowed to fly high and soar as close to the sun as you can. And those who need you will cheer you on. But as soon as you get close to the sun and start burning, your support base evaporates and you take the fall on your own. South Africans were very happy that Brian ended load shedding. It is the true mechanics of how he did it that we are now uncomfortable with – and we are letting him burn. I understand this phenomenon very well – ask anyone who has ever heard of the FNB Building in Wits University. They will let you fly and soar as high as you can – for as long as it makes them look good. And then when they have to acknowledge the sacrifices you need to make in order to get there and make them look good – they let you burn, just like Icarus. This is life.

My issue with this entire exercise is just how clumsy the Guptas have been in facilitating all of this. You would think that the involvement of Glasenberg and Glencore would have been enough for them to understand how states are supposed to be captured, right? Dololo strategy!

In corporate life, there is nothing more delightful than any transaction that screws over a certain Ivan Glasenberg. Trust me – there isn’t.

The roots of the story date back to 1974 – when a certain Marc Rich came into international prominence. Marc Rich is the godfather of the international commodities business – and actually mastered state capture long before the Guptas landed in South Africa. His modus operandi included ignoring all sorts of international sanctions and selling oil to the apartheid government – at remarkably inflated prices. The good thing for him is that he had the National Party in his pocket – just like the Guptas have parts of this current administration. Being an orthodox Jew, Marc Rich captured a young South African Wits graduate – Ivan Glasenberg, and added him to his empire in 1983. At that stage, the National Party was in trouble with the rest of the world – so Marc Rich found a way to help them out. His main task was to embezzle oil from obscure places like that discredited regime of Iran and ship it to South Africa. In order to achieve this, a company called Minoil was set up as a front. Its role was to bypass all forms of sanctions and transparency in exchange for a profit.

In exile, Frene Ginwala was in charge of the ANC’s energy team which was responsible for promoting an international embargo on oil exports to South Africa. Her role was to convince international oil producers to stop supplying oil to South Africa. A key part of hitting the apartheid government using oil was the 1980 attack on Sasol – which was masterminded by Joe Slovo and a man called Jacob Zuma. In September 1983, the International Herald Tribune (New York Times) carried an article which first exposed the fact that Marc Rich was secretly selling oil to the apartheid government. On 1 October 1983, Frene Ginwala wrote a note to the ANC operatives exposing that Marc Rich and Minoil were infact in breach of the international oil embargo. Nothing appears to have been done about this revelation.

Having positioned himself as the only man who could provide oil to South Africa, Marc Rich then went deep. Over a 10-year period, he delivered oil worth $2 billion – and charged $24 billion – which was paid by the government. This $22 billion that was stolen from the South African government has never been recovered – even though Marc Rich’s companies still exist and operate in South Africa. Surprisingly, Glasenberg – who was a South African citizen working for Marc Rich claimed that he was unaware that there was an international oil embargo on South Africa and therefore saw nothing wrong with selling oil to the apartheid government. One of the individuals who dedicated herself to exposing the real crimes of Marc Rich and his company was Dulcie September who was an ANC operative based in Paris. As soon as her research got her close to the truth – she was assassinated in Paris in March 1988. Her killers have never been found. http://opensecrets.org.za/marc-rich-open-secret/

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>>16566342

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (6 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

By the time apartheid reached its overdue demise, Marc Rich was wanted for his crimes in the USA and had exiled himself to Switzerland. The FBI had a price tag of $750 000 on his head. He then decided to rebrand himself and split his company into Trafigura and Glencore in 1993 – the year Eskom signed the Optimum Coal contract. In that split, Marc Rich kept Trafigura and Ivan Glasenberg headed Glencore. In 1994, things took a twist when Marc Rich was kicked out of Trafigura after squandering a zinc deal. Glencore took over Trafigura and then operated as an obscure private entity run by Glasenberg and his Rich boys (they really actually call themselves that).

In 2005, Glencore embarked on a mission of consolidating the coal supply chain in South Africa through a series of mergers. This included the acquisition of Optimum in 2008. 25 coal mergers were completed from 2005 to 2012 – 14 of them were classified as large mergers. Of the 14, Glencore was the party in 10 of them with Xstrata featuring in the rest. In 2011/12, Glencore initiated a merger with Xstrata which was run by Mick Davis, another South African. [Marc Rich also owned Xstrata >>16435203]

That 2008 transaction with Optimum had left Glasenberg in control of 31% of South Africa’s coal exports. However, Glasenberg had much larger ambitions for capturing the coal supply of South Africa. The Xstrata merger itself would be the last step in a journey that started in 2005 and was designed to give Glencore absolute control of the South African coal market. Eskom was the only witness that objected to the merger. In its submissions to the Competition Commission, Eskom indicated that the Glencore strategy would destroy South Africa’s ability to generate electricity. And Eskom had real reasons for fighting this deal.

From the period of 2000 to 2012, something disturbing had happened in the South African coal market. The coal produced in South Africa is graded according to density. So we produce export grade coal and the local coal that Eskom uses. Historically, most of the exported coal went to European markets which require low-density coal and pay a premium (it is priced in dollars). The Asian markets on the other hand, use coal that is similar to the Eskom coal (local variety). Up until 2007, Europe was our chief export market (80%), Asia was at 15% and the rest of the world was the remainder. Because the main export market (Europe) needed coal that Eskom didn’t use anyway it meant that we had no problems finding coal for our power stations. Around 2007 however, the exports to Asia suddenly spiked and the exports to Europe fell dramatically. Our export point – the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, increased its capacity from 66 million tonnes per year to 91 million tonnes per year. The problem with that is that the Asians were using the local version of the coal – which is what Eskom needs to keep the lights on. But then the mines did not change their capacity to produce local coal and hence Eskom started competing with the Asian market – and predictably started running out of coal. Welcome to the 2008 load shedding crisis South Africa – thank you Glencore.

In reality the Glencore strategy had been to create an Asian market for Eskom’s coal which could be billed at international prices. In relation to Eskom itself, Glencore figured out that once the prices were increased to international standards, Eskom would have to pay anyway as they had no alternative sources for coal. By the time Glencore applied for the merger with Xstrata, the export balance had completely switched to Asia and hence the pricing was different and local coal was now scarce – even for Eskom. The more expensive it became for Eskom to get the coal in its own market, the higher the tariffs they passed on to you and I. Eskom then objected to the merger and listed their reasons. Extracts from the hearings in 2012 included the following comments by Eskom:-

__“the merger will add considerable critical mass to Glencore’s production activities and

access to the RBCT, which will enhance Glencore’s ability to influence the market in a way that is

detrimental to Eskom.”__

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>>16566402

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (7 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

The possible negative consequences were listed as follows –

“[3.1] possible shortages in coal supply to Eskom occasioned by the transaction;

__[3.2] a reduction in the quality of coal supplied to Eskom (with resultant detrimental

effects on the stability of Eskom’s generation equipment and the increased possibility of

unplanned outages and load shedding); and,__

__[3.3] a likely increase in the exporting of coal with the concomitant consequences for

domestic prices of coal to Eskom (in order to prevent increased coal exports, Eskom

would be required to match the economic return gained from exporting the relevant

quality of coal by subjecting itself to export parity pricing.)”__

Unfortunately, the Competition Commission ignored Eskom’s pleas and the merger was approved – with disastrous consequences for South Africa.

The great thing about Glasenberg is that he is very comfortable with being unpopular, and betraying friends and enemies does not stress him too much. In the merger with Xstrata, he and Mick Davis were supposed to be equal partners; and they were – for a day or 2. As soon as the merger was finalised, Glasenberg booted out Mick Davis during the first week of the merger. Davis swallowed his pride and walked away – but never forgot. Glencore became one of the biggest companies in the world and Glasenberg was one of the richest men in the world – until 2015.

Mick Davis himself is friends with that other icon of leadership – Stephen Koseff of Investec. On 13 May 2015, Mick Davis and Stephen Koseff shared a stage at Investec in Sandton and addressed a forum of young entrepreneurs. Davis did not dwell on his exit from Glencore but rather on the appropriateness of business leaders commenting on politics. A month later, Glencore – as part of its strategy of getting Eskom to pay higher prices – then threatened to dismiss 380 employees from Optimum as part of the process of shutting down the mine. In response, the Minister of Mineral Resources – Ngoako Ramathlodi – suspended Glencore’s operating licence. And then the king of state capture himself – Glasenberg – called the Minister directly and essentially told him to fuck off. The Minister lifted the suspension within moments of Glasenberg’s call. Glencore then carried on trying to bully Eskom into paying higher prices. President Jacob Zuma fired Ramathlodi 6 weeks after this scandalous incident. This was in September 2015.

And then it all started falling apart for Glasenberg.

In the same week that Zwane was appointed, a blow struck at the heart of the Glasenberg empire. On a Monday morning in September 28th – 5 days after President Zuma’s appointment of Zwane – a bank in London published a note indicating that the Glencore business was in trouble. In true Glasenberg style, Glencore responded by saying the note was rubbish. But the market thought otherwise. Glencore lost 22% of its value in 1 day. Glasenberg himself lost $500 million – that is R7 billion – in that one day, and kept losing more money which eventually led him to agree to selling off Optimum Coal. The issuer of the note that started all the drama – Stephen Koseff’s Investec Bank…

And if that wasn’t enough – the Guptas decided to sell off their export licence to another company. Glencore essentially had one competitor after swallowing Xstrata. That competitor is called Vitol. 2 months ago, Tegeta sold this right that once belonged to Glasenberg to – you guessed it – Vitol. And they gave them a discount of R1,25 billion on the sale…

The curious thing about this state capture saga is that Thuli’s report did not unpack the entire journey of the Glencore story – which is sad. Given the fact that the report is so centred around the Eskom-Glencore-Gupta alliance, I honestly expected it to unpack the true mechanics of the transaction; but it only focuses on the small window of shenanigans. This report is due to be given a second phase – which must be welcomed.

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>>16566437

“Icarus has fallen – politics and the tragedy of Brian Molefe” – State Capture, Eskom, Optimum Coal Mine, Glencore, KPMG, Guptas, murder of Dulcie September, Marc Rich, Ivan Glasenberg, Mick Davis, Xstrata, Vitol, etc. - (8 of 8)

https://what-is-a-blogg.blogspot.com/2016/11/icarus-has-fallen-politics-and-tragedy_4.html

4 November 2016

It is in this second phase that we can actually ask a simple question of how we ever allowed Glasenberg to hijack our coal supply and give us the idea of load shedding – and we said nothing about it. This next phase should allow us to interrogate how we could be aware of Marc Rich stealing $22 billion through tainted oil deals with the National Party – and we then allowed his company to take over the country’s coal supply chain. This next phase should really consider how the banks and KPMG saw nothing wrong with all these shenanigans – until the colour of the capturer became darker. This report should allow Brian Molefe to finally tell his version of the story. How he found himself swept into the tornado of a story that was so much bigger than himself. How he found himself having to answer to the Saxonwold mafia only because the Swiss mafia were the bigger bullies. Brian has a fatal flaw – the initiation of the pre-payment to Tegeta. Beyond that, his is a tragic tale of the man who set out to fix a national crisis – and found himself captured by a crisis of conscience, the politics of patronage and the tragic hysteria of his own ambition. Marc Rich got lucky – Bill Clinton’s last act in office was to issue a presidential pardon to the scoundrel. It appears that Presidents have an awkward habit of getting involved with such characters – everywhere you go.

According to Fin24, the cost of load shedding in South Africa – at its peak – was R80 billion per month. Apparently, the cost of Shaun Abrahams losing his mind 3 weeks ago was R50 billion to the economy. Molefe staked his reputation on saving South Africa R80 billion per month – and lost so much more. It is indeed a melancholy truth - that even great men have poor relations.

Perhaps ours is a country so damaged we have resorted to finding the bottom of the barrel when it comes to finding leaders – and we need to fix this. Brian will pay the price – as he should. Whether we have the moral authority to determine such a price is a mystery to me. I simply do not know.

The Gupta saga is not just that they are corrupt and arrogant – it is a tragedy of how they sought out to topple the king of state capture – and did such a shockingly bad job of it all. Somebody please get them the Johann Rupert manual next time.

>>16569329

I agree!

>>16409517

>Where others feared to do business with South Africa directly, Marc Rich was happy to step in as a middleman ¬– along with characters such as Marino Chiavelli of Italy, John Deuss of the Netherlands, and the Greek shipping merchant Tony Georgiadis (who continued to find ways to do business with a democratic South Africa).

>>16462506

>“The ANC’s Oilgate” – Glencore, Iraq ties

“Mbeki, Chippy and the Greek lobbyist” – Imvume, Oilgate, Tony Georgiadis and his wife, FW de Klerk, Jacob Zuma, National Pary, etc. – (1 of 4)

https://mg.co.za/article/2007-02-09-mbeki-chippy-and-the-greek-lobbyist/

9 February 2007

Details emerging from the German corruption probe into defence and steel conglomerate ThyssenKrupp have thrown dramatic new light on two men named in the very first allegations concerning the South African arms deal.

One is Shamin ”Chippy” Shaik, former chief of acquisitions for the Defence Department, who came under suspicion almost from the start because of his brother Schabir’s involvement in the arms deal.

The other is Tony Georgiadis, who has remained largely in the shadows despite being mentioned in the infamous ”De Lille dossier”, a memorandum drawn up by concerned African National Congress (ANC) intelligence operatives and released through Patricia de Lille in September 1999.

Shaik was at the centre of special defence procurement and reported directly to former defence minister Joe Modise, whose death in 2001 stifled a Scorpions probe into Modise’s own controversial role in the arms deal.

Georgiades, a Greek shipping tycoon and alleged key sanctions-buster under apartheid, reportedly had the ear of President Thabo Mbeki while acting as a lobbyist for Thyssen, lead partner in the German frigate consortium (GFC), and Ferrostaal, which led the German submarine consortium.

Two sources in touch with the German investigators told the Mail & Guardian that Georgiadis is a focus of the investigation of at least $22-million in commission payments made on the warship deal.

Georgiadis was travelling this week and could not be contacted.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Monday that, in raids on Thyssen and related companies last year, the Dusseldorf prosecutor’s office obtained internal company memos allegedly referring to a meeting between executives of the GFC and Chippy Shaik in July 1998.

Shaik allegedly demanded payment of $3-million to ensure the success of the German bid. He supposedly proposed a middleman: accountant Ian Pierce, a friend from his student days at the University of Durban-Westville.

This week, Pierce refused to take media calls. Mo Shaik, speaking for his brother, dismissed the claims against Chippy.

Der Spiegel wrote that later in 1998 a lobby agreement for $3-million was signed with Merian Limited, in London, with Pierce acting as Merian’s representative. The magazine said the first payments for the warships were made to the GFC in April 2000 and Merian received $3-million from the Germans in the same month.

>>16574546

“Mbeki, Chippy and the Greek lobbyist” – – Imvume, Oilgate, Tony Georgiadis and his wife, FW de Klerk, Jacob Zuma, National Pary, etc. – (2 of 4)

https://mg.co.za/article/2007-02-09-mbeki-chippy-and-the-greek-lobbyist/

9 February 2007

Payments

The M&G has traced five payments from Merian to a South African bank account held by Pierce.

The payments, roughly monthly, began in August 2000 and appear to correspond to interest payments that might be received on such a sum. The five payments extend until March 2001 — when the arms deal probe was already hotting up — and total about R470Â 000. These were probably only interest payments.

Der Spiegel did not name the GFC executives who allegedly met Shaik, but the key figure is understood to be Christoff Hoenings, then manager of Thyssen subsidiary Thyssen Rheinstahl.

Hoenings revealed in 1995, during earlier bidding for the corvette contract, that Mbeki intervened to restore the German bid after Armscor had announced a shortlist that included only Spain’s Bazan and Britain’s Yarrow shipyards.

Hoenings said Mbeki had, on a state visit to Germany, personally told him ”the race is still open to all contenders”.

A well-placed intelligence source identified Hoenings as one of the Thyssen executives close to Georgiadis.

Georgiadis keeps a low profile: his only media exposure was when his wife, Elita, left him for former president FW de Klerk. But the De Lille dossier identified Georgiadis as a lobbyist for the German arms companies.

The 1999 memo states: ”Thyssen is the preferred bidder for the corvettes — Ferrostaal is the preferred bidder for the submarines. Both companies is [sic] supported by Tony Georgiades who is facilitating the success of their bid. FW de Klerk is married to Elita who was married to Tony Georgiades. We know that Tony was bankrolling the Nationalist Party and its leaders.”

Several sources said Georgiades was close to Mbeki. Last year, the aborted corruption trial of former deputy president Jacob Zuma confirmed his relationship with former justice minister Penuell Maduna and former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka.

Der Spiegel revealed that the German authorities were looking at payments made to several other people, firms and foundations linked to the South African deal, including a Monrovia-registered company that had received a total of $22-million by October 2001.

The M&G understands that it has been identified as Mallar Incorporated, an offshore company registered in 1978 with the Liberian International Shipping and Company Register.

The register is extremely opaque, providing neither the names of directors and shareholders, nor contact addresses for the underlying entity. However, two sources in touch with German investigators confirm that the investigators believe Georgiadis is behind Mallar.

Answering questions about Merian, Mallar and Georgiadis, a spokesperson for ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems said: ”At this stage we have nothing further to say.”

Questions to the Presidency about Mbeki’s relationship with Georgiadis were unanswered at the time of going to press.

>>16574546

>>16574556

“Mbeki, Chippy and the Greek lobbyist” – – Imvume, Oilgate, Tony Georgiadis and his wife, FW de Klerk, Jacob Zuma, National Pary, etc. – (3 of 4)

https://mg.co.za/article/2007-02-09-mbeki-chippy-and-the-greek-lobbyist/

9 February 2007

Tony Georgiadis: ‘A kingmaker’

”At home, he has photographs of every damn president in the world — He was a political player,” is how a former senior official in South Africa remembers Georgiadis.

Georgiadis’s home, the historic Stud House in the grounds of Hampton Court palace outside London, has hosted more than pictures. While president, De Klerk stayed there, and in his autobiography, De Klerk called Georgiadis a ”good friend” — but that was before the affair.

De Klerk admitted in 1998 to ”having fallen in love” with Elita, whom he later married. The affair was said to have begun in 1994 during one of a number of Mediterranean holidays aboard Georgiadis’s yacht.

According to Beeld, ”a connection developed with the NP [National Party] during the Eighties through oil matters — Mr Georgiades [sic] was a campaigner against sanctions abroad and was regarded as a ‘friend of South Africa’.”

Georgiadis did more than campaign. Alandis, headed by him and his brother, Alexander, was one of the main shippers of crude oil to apartheid South Africa, breaching international sanctions.

The Shipping Research Bureau, which monitored compliance with the embargo, said in 1995: ”In 1989 rumours that a company named Alandis (London) Ltd was the main shipper of oil to South Africa reached the Shipping Research Bureau.

”Only much later, hard evidence surfaced which showed that the rumours had been rather close to the truth. A long list of shipments — as many as 43 in the short period from March 1988 until October 1989, plus a few in the previous years — could be linked to Alandis.”

The M&G understands that apart from organising third-party shipments, Alandis also managed the Pacificos, a crude tanker then owned by the Strategic Fuel Fund Association (SFF), set up by the apartheid government to beat the embargo.

African roots

The Georgiadis brothers, though Greek citizens based in England, have African roots. Their mother, Clio Colocotronis, married their father, Vassos Georgiadis, when she was a teenager and he was two decades her senior. She was the daughter of a banker living in Egypt; he an East African tobacco baron. Alexander and Antony were born in Kampala.

”A kingmaker”, is how one source in the oil industry describes Antony Georgiades. ”He’s extremely influential. He doesn’t do it for the money only — a lot of it is for the prestige.”

In 1994, when De Klerk started romancing his wife and the ANC replaced the NP as ruling party, Georgiadis became as close to members of the new elite as he had been to their predecessors.

The names most often mentioned as Georgiadis’s new local connections include Mbeki, Maduna (former minister of minerals and energy and of justice), his wife, Nompumelelo Maduna (in the oil trade herself), Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (who succeeded Maduna at minerals and energy), and her husband, Bulelani Ngcuka, the former prosecutions head.

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“Mbeki, Chippy and the Greek lobbyist” – – Imvume, Oilgate, Tony Georgiadis and his wife, FW de Klerk, Jacob Zuma, National Pary, etc. – (4 of 4)

https://mg.co.za/article/2007-02-09-mbeki-chippy-and-the-greek-lobbyist/

9 February 2007

Deals

A source close to Imvume, the subject of the Oilgate scandal, has claimed that when its principal, Sandi Majali, first wanted to enter the Iraqi oil trade, he was bankrolled by Georgiadis. He has also been drawn into the succession battle.

Affidavits, filed last year in Zuma’s successful application to have his prosecution for corruption struck from the roll, suggest that Georgiadis attempted to broker a deal that would let French arms company Thales off the hook in return for giving evidence against Zuma.

Both Maduna and Ngcuka’s affidavits describe being contacted by someone ”purporting to be an intermediary” for Thales while they were on official business in London in 2003. The intermediary, whom they do not name, told them Thales was willing to cooperate. At the time, Maduna was still justice minister and Ngcuka the prosecutions head.

In a replying affidavit, Thales official Pierre Moynot reveals Georgiadis as the intermediary, although he denies the initiative was from Thales.

Moynot states that Thales International CEO Jean-Paul Perrier was contacted by Georgiadis, who asked to meet in Paris. ”At the meeting Georgiades [sic] introduced himself as a good friend of Maduna and Ngcuka and wanted to know whether Perrier was prepared to meet with Ngcuka in connection with the investigations that were being conducted in South Africa.

”When Perrier expressed misgivings about Georgiades’s claim concerning his friendship with Ngcuka and Maduna, he called Ngcuka on his mobile phone and passed it to Perrier to talk. Ngcuka confirmed his friendship with Georgiades.”

Georgiadis was not available for comment.

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>De Klerk admitted in 1998 to ”having fallen in love” with Elita, whom he later married. The affair was said to have begun in 1994 during one of a number of Mediterranean holidays aboard Georgiadis’s yacht.

If someone makes a movie about South Africa, it will beat a James Bond movie.

“The Murder Of South Africa’s Former First Lady [Marike De Klerk]” – FW De Klerk’s former wife

https://flatnote.co.za/marike-de-klerk/

Thirteen years after Marike De Klerk met her violent, lonely end

The former first lady lost her right to state protection when she and former President FW de Klerk divorced in 1998 after 39 years of marriage.

“I knew Mrs De Klerk very well”, says the man who stabbed her so violently that the knife’s blade broke off, before he strangled her to death. “She was always very polite and friendly with me”, he adds.

SPECULATION

At first, almost everyone presumed that Marike de Klerk – former wife of South Africa’s last white president – had killed herself. She did not hide her deep melancholy after FW de Klerk took off with another woman. South Africa’s former first lady told close friends that she wished she were dead.

Mystery surrounded the death of Marike De Klerk. Although earlier reports suggested De Klerk took her own life, the police refused to confirm this rumour. Other rumours had De Klerk dying of a bullet wound through the chest. Again, the police would not comment. Police were not prepared to give any information on the cause of death, saying they were waiting for pathologists to complete their investigation.

Unnamed police detectives were quoted as saying that South Africa’s former first lady might have been murdered to silence her, because she might have threatened to inform police about a diamond smuggling network which involved someone close to her.

The flat was tidy and did not appear to have been been ransacked, although her cellphone still seemed to be missing. When the news that she had in fact been murdered first filtered out radio station phone lines were pounded with angry callers venting their spleens about crime. If even the wife of a former president can be murdered, what hope is there for everyone else?

An autopsy revealed that she was strangled to death at about 9am on Monday. Professor Deon Knobel, who carried out the autopsy, said that the killer gripped his victim’s neck with such force that he broke several bones in her throat and burst a blood vessel in her eye. She was probably on her knees when she died.

https://flatnote.co.za/marike-de-klerk/2/

Mboniswa pleaded not guilty, but did not testify in his own defence. Earlier he had made a confession but said the killing had been masterminded by de Klerk’s dance teacher, John Thebus, – a contention rejected by the prosecution. “The defence counsel tried to show, then illustrate, another person may have been involved. There was no such evidence.” Finding Mboniswa guilty of murder and housebreaking with aggravating circumstances, Justice Hlope said the prosecution’s evidence had been clear and undisputed.

Hlophe said the fact that Mboniswa had gone to De Klerk’s home armed with the knife that he had used to stab her in the back, and had travelled a vast distance by taxi to Dolphin Beach luxury apartment, was an indication that he had planned the robbery and murder. “It was also clear that at times Mboniswa was being economical with the truth,” Hlope said.

Luyanda Mboniswa was convicted by the Cape High Court of housebreaking and murder, but acquitted of rape. The court accepted that Mrs De Klerk, 64, was stabbed in the back with a steak knife and then strangled at her high-security Cape Town apartment in December 2001. Pathologists suspected she had also been raped, but Judge John Hlope said that could not be proved beyond doubt.

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>Pathologists suspected she had also been raped, but Judge John Hlope said that could not be proved beyond doubt.

“Latest Hlophe scandal puts JSC under scrutiny” - Judge John Hlophe

https://legalbrief.co.za/story/latest-hlophe-scandal-puts-jsc-under-scrutiny/

3 February 2020

The publishing of a leaked complaint to the JSC about Judge John Hlophe is a godsend – because it means that the JSC will now face public scrutiny about how it handles the issue. The time is overdue for greater transparency when it comes to mechanisms for holding judges and magistrates accountable. So says Rebecca Davis in a Daily Maverick analysis. A complaint laid by Western Cape Deputy Judge President Patricia Goliath with the JSC in mid-January has detonated like a hand grenade in the legal profession, accusing Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe of a litany of offences – ranging from the attempt to influence judicial appointments to a physical assault on a fellow judge. However, notes Davis, the charge sheet against Hlophe had been building steadily for over a decade. In addition to the well-known allegation that Hlophe attempted to influence the Constitutional Court’s judgment in favour of President Jacob Zuma in a matter related to arms deal corruption in 2008, Hlophe has also been accused of:

• Calling attorney Joshua Greeff a 'piece of white shit' who should 'go back to Holland' (2004/5).

• Accepting a R10 000 monthly retainer from fund management company The Oasis Group, which frequently litigated in his court (2006).

• Operating under a conflict of interest by permitting his son to accept a bursary from a Cape Town attorney firm (2006).

• Allocating himself a case which he should not have heard as one of the acting attorneys was Hlophe’s personal lawyer (2014).

We know very little about the first three cases, notes Davis. That’s because, as Judges Matter researchers Zikhona Ndlebe and Alison Tilley report: 'The JSC decided by an undisclosed majority that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a public inquiry into any of these allegations of misconduct.' The 2014 conflict of interest case went to the Supreme Court, meanwhile, which concluded that Hlophe could not have brought 'an impartial mind to bear on the adjudication of a matter brought before him by his attorney'. Said Ndlebe and Tilley: 'Whether or not the JSC will act on this is not known, since the JSC does not report to the public on complaints received or on its findings.' In other words, writes Davis, what the JSC does or does not do when it comes to allegations of misconduct against judges is largely shrouded in secrecy. 'The leaking of Goliath’s affidavit has blown this modus operandi out of the water in a welcome fashion.'

Full Daily Maverick report - https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-01-31-hlophe-crisis-may-force-greater-transparency-in-dealing-with-errant-judges/

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“Judge President John Hlophe ‘vindicated’ by leave to appeal possible impeachment”

https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/judge-president-john-hlophe-vindicated-by-leave-to-appeal-possible-impeachment-191ba78b-e995-4eb5-a503-a143a0273de3

June 24, 2022

Cape Town - Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe’s legal team said they were vindicated by the ruling of the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, which has granted him leave to appeal against his potential impeachment.

Barnabus Xulu SC, said they were confident the Supreme Court of Appeal would come to a different ruling, but that they also intended taking the Minister of Justice to court for prejudicial treatment relating to costs not being awarded.

“We are vindicated by this ruling. We truly believe for the reasons advanced in our application that the Supreme Court of Appeal will come to a different decision, which eventually will clear our client and give clarity to this long outstanding matter.

“The shocking thing is that our client legal team have been refused their fees, whereas the Concourt judges legal team and the judicial service commission is being favoured.

“This act is very prejudicial and has been raised by our client Judge President Hlophe to Chief Justice Zondo and no response has been received therein following months of correspondence to the Department in this regard, and it has now necessitated that our legal team take inter alia the Minister of Justice to court for the same reason,” said Xulu.

The impeachment recommendation follows the Judicial Conduct Tribunal’s finding that Hlophe was found guilty of trying to influence the outcome of former president Jacob Zuma’s corruption charges in 2008.

The tribunal’s report stated that Hlophe breached sections of the Constitution when he tried to influence two justices of the Constitutional Court, where he had attempted to influence Justice Chris Jafta and Justice Bess Nkabinde to rule in a particular manner in a pending judgment between Zuma and the National Prosecuting Authority.

Full bench of the Gauteng High Court - Aubrey Ledwaba, Roland Sutherland and Margie Victor - in ruling, said that while Judge Hlophe’s application lacked merit, it did hold matters of ‘’significant public importance’.

“The controversy embraces both the obvious and several nuanced issues of critical significance to the administration of justice,” their judgment read.

“These include the integrity of the judiciary as a whole, and the norms by which it falls to be held accountable and the proper functioning of the Judicial Service Commission. Indeed the matter also has implications for the parliamentary process. These aspects of the case go beyond the personal predicament of Hlophe JP and merits and demerits of his personal case.

“The disciplining of a Judge of the high court for impugning a court’s integrity is unprecedented. The removal of a Judge of the high court by the National Assembly upon a finding of gross misconduct by the Judicial Service Commission is unprecedented… In our view, the case raises discrete issues of ‘public importance that will have an effect on future matters.”

On these grounds the court ruled that the application for leave to appeal was sound and was granted.