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Category: Africa

Mozambique: Debt Crisis & the Panama Papers

worker | May 13, 2016 | 8:49 pm | Africa, Analysis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 13, 2016 (160513)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The loans from the Swiss bank Credit Suisse to the Mozambican state
companies EMATUM and Proindicus involved a gross conflict of
interest, since the banker who organized the loans immediately
afterwards went to work for the Lebanese businessman Iskander Safa,
who owns the ship yard that built 24 tuna fishing vessels and six
patrol boats for EMATUM. … Together these three loans amounted to
over two billion dollars, and added 20 per cent to Mozambique’s
foreign debt, making it clearly unsustainable. … As more
information is becoming available, so it is becoming clear that the
guilty parties in this saga are not to be found only in Maputo.” –
Mozambique News Agency

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The debt crisis is most directly a crisis for the economic and
political future of Mozambique, where it comes together with the
resurgence of conflict between the opposition party and former
insurgent force Renamo, which has never fully disarmed. But it is
also a dramatic illustration of the transnational interconnections
between debt, corruption, and illicit financial flows. As such, it
is no surprise that a number of the international actors involved
turn up in the Panama Papers, including companies based in
Switzerland and Abu Dhabi and nationals of Lebanon, Britain, New
Zealand, and the United States.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several recent articles on
different aspects of the debt crisis, including two from the
Mozambique News Agency (Agencia de InformaÃ§ao de MoÃ§ambique), one by
Joseph Hanlon, and one by University of Copenhagen economist Sam
Jones. As always, AfricaFocus selections are only a small selection,
and readers interested in more details and deeper analysis are
invited to dig deeper through the links provided.

See also, for additional detailed revelations, today’s new
Africa Confidential article at http://tinyurl.com/zong2oo

For regular English-language updates on this topic, see in
particular,

(1) Mozambique’s Secret Debt Triggers Economic Crisis
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00042683.html

(2) Mozambique News Reports & Clippings, 2016, Edited by Joseph
Hanlon http://tinyurl.com/hqcr8bu

(3) Mozambique News Agency AIM Reports
http://www.poptel.org.uk/mozambique-news

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Mozambique, see
http://www.africafocus.org/country/mozambique.php

For AfricaFocus coverage of illicit financial flows, debt, and
related issues, see http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Mozambique: Loans From Credit Suisse Involved Conflict of Interests

Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)

11 May 2016

http://allafrica.com/stories/201605120019.html

Maputo â€” The loans from the Swiss bank Credit Suisse to the
Mozambican state companies EMATUM and Proindicus involved a gross
conflict of interest, since the banker who organized the loans
immediately afterwards went to work for the Lebanese businessman
Iskander Safa, who owns the ship yard that built 24 tuna fishing
vessels and six patrol boats for EMATUM.

EMATUM in 2013 issued loan titles for 850 million dollars,
guaranteed by the Mozambican government, that were sold on the
European bond market by Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and the Russian
bank VTB. Credit Suisse and VTB granted a loan to Proindicus, also
in 2013, and also guaranteed by the Mozambican government, for 622
million dollars. Much of this money was also supposed to be spent on
military vessels to protect oil and gas companies working in the
Rovuma Basin, off the coast of the northern province of Cabo
Delgado.

A third loan, for 535 million dollars, went to Mozambique Assets
Management (MAM), a company virtually nobody had heard of until last
month, and which was supposedly formed to provide repair and
maintenance services for shipping in the Mozambique Channel.

Together these three loans amounted to over two billion dollars, and
added 20 per cent to Mozambique’s foreign debt, making it clearly
unsustainable.

Although the bond issue in Europe ensured that EMATUM became well
known, the Proindicus and MAM loans were not disclosed either to the
Mozambican public or to the country’s partners. The result has been
a crisis in relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the group of 14 donors and financial agencies who provide direct
support for the Mozambican state budget. All are withholding further
financial support for the Mozambican government.

As more information is becoming available, so it is becoming clear
that the guilty parties in this saga are not to be found only in
Maputo. Indeed, the loans would likely never have happened without
what looks like massive corruption and conflict of interest at
Credit Suisse.

According to an investigation by the independent agency Zitamar
News, the banker at Credit Suisse who helped structure the EMATUM
and Proindicus loans was a New Zealand national named Andrew Pearse,
who went into business with Iskander Safa, immediately after the
loans had been arranged.

Safa is managing director and CEO of Abu Dhabi Mar, a shipbuilding
group based in the United Arab Emirates, which owns 100 per cent of
Constructions Mechaniques de Normandie (CMN), the shipyard in the
French port of Cherbourg where the EMATUM vessels were built. Abu
Dhabi Mar is owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family and by Safa’s
company Privinvest Shipbuilding.

Zitamar says that, once the loan arrangements had been finalized,
Pearse took up directorships in companies owned by Safa, and trading
under the name Palomar. For example, in September 2013 (much the
same time that the EMATUM loan was becoming public knowledge in
Mozambique). Pearse established “Palomar Natural Resources”, with an
American oil and gas executive named John Buggenhagen.

The next month he was appointed director of a Zurich-based financial
advisory company, Palomar Capital Advisers. He became chairperson of
this company in November, taking over from Christopher Langford, a
British lawyer, who is a director of several other Iskander Safa
companies, including Abu Dhabi Mar Europe and Abu Dhabi Mar UK.

Among its various activities Palomar Capital Advisers advises on
debt restructuring Â including the Proindicus debt, which suggests
that Pearse still has ties, albeit indirectly, to Credit Suisse.

Pearse and Langford are also mentioned in the now notorious “Panama
Papers”, the mass of documents leaked from Panama based law firm
Mossack Fonseca. These documents show that they are directors and
shareholders of Palomar Holdings Ltd, registered in the tax haven of
the British Virgin Islands. Other shareholders include Safa’s
company Privinveste Shipbuilding, one of the owners of Abu Dhabi
Mar.

Zitamar has also seen the EMATUM accounts, which show that the vast
bulk of the 850 million dollars was speedily dispatched to Abu Dhabi
Mar in September and October 2013. Abu Dhabi Mat received 836.3
million dollars from EMATUM. The rest of the money – 13.7 million
dollars – apparently filled bankers’ pockets, being spent on bank
fees and commissions.

But these accounts are very suspicious. For when the French press
reported on EMATUM, it said that the 30 boats cost 200 million
euros, which is about 230 million dollars. But the amount paid by
EMATUM to Abu Dhabi Mat is well over three times that amount.

The Mozambican government did not query the figures given by the
French press. In December 2013, opposition deputies in the
Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, citing the
figure of 200 million euros, asked the government what had happened
to the rest of the money.

Far from disputing the figure, the then Fisheries Minister Victor
Borges said the rest of the EMATUM money (about 620 million dollars)
had been spent on such items as training, satellite communications,
radars, on-shore installations, licences and the like.

In 2015, Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane schematically divided the
EMATUM loan into 350 million dollars for fishing assets, and 500
million for the defence component. But if the figures cited by
Zitamar are correct, then most of the 850 million dollars was spent
on fishing assets.

We do not have an exact breakdown of how much each boat cost Â but
even if each of the six patrol boats cost three times as much as
each of the 24 fishing boats, the fishing assets would still cost
608 million dollars, and the defence assets 228 million.

An alternative explanation, of course, is that the EMATUM figures
given to Zitamar are fictitious, and much of the money was siphoned
off.

**********************************************

Mozambique: Mozambican Public Debt Now ‘Unsustainable’

Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)

3 May 2016

http://allafrica.com/stories/201605040005.html

Maputo â€” The Mozambican Debt Group (GMD), a civil society
organization that has been working on debt issues for many years,
has denied the government’s repeated claim that the country’s public
debt is still sustainable.

On Friday, according to a report in Tuesday’s issue of the
independent newssheet “Mediafax”, the GMD held a conference on the
debt, at which the main guest was Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane,
and, using the official figures, calculated that the debt was now
way over the sustainability levels.

The government had claimed that in 2015, the debt had reachedÂ 39.9
per cent of Gross Domestic Product. The limit of sustainability is
regarded as 40 per cent, and so Mozambique was just 0.1 per cent
away from this threshold.

But those figures were calculated before the revelations last month
that the previous government, led by President Armando Guebuza, had
not disclosed government guaranteed loans contracted by two state
companies – Proindicus (622 million dollars) and Mozambique Asset
Management (MAM – 535 million dollars).

The GMD pointed out that the government’s own figure for total
public debt, of 11.64 billion dollars, given by Prime Minister
Carlos Agostinho do Rosario at a press conference last Thursday,
meant that the debt now stood at 69 per cent of GDP. The foreign
debt is over nine billion dollars, and is equivalent to 53 per cent
of GDP.

This is a conservative estimate: the ratings agency Fitch last week
put the debt at 83 per cent of GDP, and warned that, if the
Mozambican currency, the metical, continues to depreciate, the ratio
could go to over 100 per cent of GDP later in the year.

The sustainability variables are clearly out of control, warned the
GMD. Its document to the conference, cited by the paper, said “74
per cent of the debts contracted since 2012 are not concessional.
The grant element (in foreign aid) has fallen from 80 per cent in
2005, to 52 per cent in 2012, and to less than 40 per cent in 2015.
The period of grace has also fallen – from an average of 10 years in
2005, to an average of six years in 2012, and to less than five
years in 2015”.

The GMD added that the period of maturity had shrunk dramatically –
from an average of 37 years in 2005, to an average of 22 years in
2012, and to less than 20 years in 2015.

The GMD warned that this unsustainable level of public debt would
have damaging effects, particularly on the poorest strata of the
population, because the weight of debt servicing in the budget will
lead to a substantial reduction in the amount of money available for
public investment.

The GMD asked if the current government has any intention of holding
anyone responsible for the undisclosed loans and the consequent
dramatic expansion in public debt. Maleiane replied that there are
strong legal provisions to punish those responsible, if it can be
shown that they acted illegally.

It was in the interest of the government, he added, to explain as
clearly as possible the question of the public debt and, if anyone
is found guilty, he will receive “exemplary punishment”. But for
this to happen it was important to allow the institutions of the
administration of justice to do their job.

It was these institutions that must decide whether any crime had
been committed and must then sentence the guilty parties. The
Attorney-General’s Office has already announced that it is
investigating Proindicus and MAM. A separate investigation began
last year into the Mozambique Tuna Company (EMATUM), which acquired
a government guaranteed loan of 850 million dollars in 2013.

**********************************************

Frelimo under pressure on debt: parliament, party elders, US, other
donors

Mozambique News reports & Clippings by Joseph Hanlon

319, 11 May 2016

[Received by email. Archive will be available soon at
http://tinyurl.com/hqcr8bu]

Two parliamentary commissions will quiz the government on the secret
debt. The parliamentary Standing Commission agreed Monday (9 May)
that the both Plan and Budget Commission and the Defence and Public
Order Commission would question the government. The parliament
session is scheduled to resume in June, but commissions meet during
recesses so the hearings could be soon. The secret debt was taken
without parliamentary approval (thus the Budget Commission) and is
said to be for patrol boats and others arms (thus the Defence
Commission). Renamo boycotted the Standing Committee session.

This is a total reversal of the position of Frelimo in parliament,
which last month rejected a debate on the debt. More than $2
billion in secret loans and bonds were taken on in 2103-14 by a
small group around the then President Armando Guebuza. Many MPs are
seen as aligned to Guebuza, and the reversal of position is an
indication of increasing pressure on Guebuza and Frelimo.

On Saturday the politically influential Veterans Association
(Associacao dos Combatentes da Luta de Libertacao Nacional, ACLLN)
said the government should investigate possible conflicts of
interest of the still secret individual investors in the three
companies whose debts were guaranteed by the state- Ematum,
ProIndicus and MAM. It also said that the state should only accept
the military part of the debt and not that of the three companies.
Last month the Frelimo Central Committee had demanded a public
explanation of the secret debt.

In a speech to the Mozambican Bar Association on 4 May, Rui Baltazar
said the country is going through “a profound political, economic
and social crisis.” In an obvious reference to the Guebuza
government, he said Mozambique has gone through “a prolonged period
of exercise of political power with an authoritarian nature and
great opacity.” He cited “deepening corruption, misuse of state
property, nepotism, [and] an assault on public goods that should be
exploited for the benefit of the people. … Politics seems to be
only about the conquest and preservation of power as a means to
have unauthorized access to resources, promoted by a premature and
dangerous euphoria based on energy El Dorados, encouraging
wastefulness and megalomania, with all the harmful consequences
that now we will have to face.”

AIM (6 May) calls Baltazar “a moral beacon for Mozambican society”.
An anti-fascist in the late colonial period, he was one of the few
lawyers who defended Mozambican nationalists. After independence he
became Justice Minister and then Finance Minister. Eventually he
became the first chair of the Constitutional Council.

Donors and lenders tighten the screws

The United States said on Monday that it “endorsed the recent
decision by the group of 14 countries (G14) providing general
budget support to suspend such assistance until they are provided
more clarifications and accountabilities.” It also said it was
“reviewing our aid, in particular any aid to the government.” The
US has never been a budget support donor, and provides its largest
support to the health sector. “Most of this assistance directly
benefits the people of Mozambique, and the United States does not
wish to reduce this assistance.” The US says it is the largest
bilateral donor to Mozambique.
http://portuguese.maputo.usembassy.gov/dividademocambique.html

Donors and lenders met with the government last week and laid down a
hard line. They stressed that it is for the government to present a
clear roadmap or preliminary action plan, built around three key
phrases: transparency, corrective measures and accountability. The
first two of these were emphasised by the US in its statement
Monday: “the government must now act quickly to publicly account in
a full and transparent way for these loans and how the funds were
used, as well as outlining a plan to mitigate its impact on the
economy of Mozambique.”

Transparency means providing a complete list of government
guaranteed debts – it is believed that there are more which have
not been revealed – and documenting in detail what the money has
been used for. With Ematum, donors were satisfied when the IMF
forced the loan onto the government books, without actually asking
for an accounting of how the money was used. But with two new
secret loans revealed, this is no longer enough, and donors are
demanding that government at least reveal in some detail what the
money was used for.

Corrective measures mean filling the financial hole (of which more
below), and a range of measures to make public enterprises more
accountable, make sure procurement follows the rules, and ensure
that there are more public and detailed evaluations of future
investments.

Accountability is more complex. Some donors and lenders want
forensic audits, which would identify corrupt payments and where
they money went. In past corruption cases, Mozambique has only
allowed one forensic audit and it was never allowed to be used (of
which more below). Some donors want Guebuza named, shamed and
prosecuted, while others realise this is unlikely. There are
rumours that some in Frelimo want to offer former Finance Minister
Manuel Chang as the scapegoat.

Some donors now argue that there has been such good will toward
Mozambique that the country has been allowed to get away with past
corruption scandals. One admitted: “donors have not wanted to
accept that this is not a success story. So much has been invested
that they do not want to lose face – or their own hopes.” But many
donor representatives feel personally offended – government
ministers and officials lied to them about low levels of military
spending and about investments. They say the Mozambique leadership
does not yet realise how serious has been the smashing of trust,
and how this will have in impact in their home capitals.

A full renewal of aid will be dependent on Mozambique having an IMF
programme. The previous one was based on misleading data from the
government, so the IMF will want to start from scratch, and this
could take more than a year. But the IMF will surely demand harsh
austerity measures and tight controls of both government spending
and the money supply. Investment will be frozen, wages might be
cut, and devaluation will continue, raising Maputo food prices
(which in the past has caused riots).

**********************************************

How Mozambique can contain its debt crisis and avoid long-term
damage

May 12, 2016

Sam Jones, Associate Professor in Development, Economics, University
of Copenhagen

http://theconversation.com – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/z9ubo34

[Disclosure statement: Sam Jones works for the University of
Copenhagen, which provides technical assistance in economic research
and analysis to the Ministry of Economy & Finance in Mozambique. The
present article is written in his personal capacity only.]

[Note: original version at link above includes further links to
additional sources]

Mozambique’s return to the international limelight reads like a John
le CarrÃ© novel. The elements of a bestseller are all present:
growing internal instability, unexplored natural gas deposits,
international loans to purchase weapons disguised as lending to fund
tuna boats, and hidden public loan guarantees to private companies
owned by the secret services. And, of course, there are legions of
international bankers and diplomats wringing hands in late-night
meetings.

Unfortunately, this is not fiction. The debts are real and the costs
of these decisions will hang over Mozambique for decades. This
article provides a summary of what we know about Mozambique’s
external debt situation and proposes measures to contain the current
situation and avoid longer-term damage.

The scale of the debt burden

After weeks of rumour, some clarity about Mozambique’s external debt
position recently emerged following an emergency visit of the
government to the International Monetary Fund in Washington. [table
of rough estimates by author available as image in original article]

The country’s officially reported external debt stock at the end
2014 was more than US$6.5 billion, excluding $500 million taken on
to government accounts in 2014 associated with the infamous Ematum
deal for the tuna fleet.

Even before the current crisis this was a cause for concern.
Mozambique had been a major beneficiary of various debt relief
initiatives in the late 1990s and 2000s. At the beginning of this
century the country’s debt stock was about $1 billion. In 2010 the
same stock was $3.3 billion. By 2014 it had doubled.

Then there’s what is owed on the controversial “new” debts:

Ematum, for the controversial tuna fleet;

ProIndicus, which is aimed at providing security, especially for gas
and oil operations; and

Mozambique Asset Management, which was set up for maritime
maintenance and repairs.

Due to the heavy financial burden of the Ematum deal, originally due
in 2020, it was recently restructured. The repayment period was
extended from 2020 to 2023, increasing the annual interest rate from
6.305% to 10.5%, and switching to a “bullet” repayment. This means
that the full principal amount is only repaid at the end of the
period.

The two other loans, ProIndicus and Mozambique Asset Management, are
standard private loans and must be repaid in the next five years.

Together, the immediate annual costs of these three debts are
expected to be more than $300 million per year, double the total
external debt service costs in 2014.

Another point that has been neglected in the debate around these
three controversial loans is additional public debt taken on since
2014. According to government declarations, the external debt stock
stood at $9.89 billion in May 2016. Basic arithmetic means that,
even excluding the controversial loans, a further $1.4 billion of
public external debt has been incurred since 2014. This continues a
worrying trend of rapid indebtedness.

What it all adds up to

Putting all this together, annual debt service costs are likely to
be in the region of $500 million over the next few years, of which
more than $200 million are in interest costs alone. These costs
could be higher, depending on the structure of these other more
recent debts.

A total of $500 million is equivalent to about 33% of conventional
merchandise exports â€“ excluding the contribution of mega-projects
such as aluminum and coal â€“ or 25% of net international reserves.
This will create significant pressures on public finances.

Moreover, news that a set of major donors, including the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank, are reviewing their
lending to Mozambique means that access to hard currency will become
even more scarce in the short term. Further depreciation of the
currency is likely, which would only add to the local currency cost
of the debt burden.

What action can be taken

How can Mozambique contain this situation and avoid a downward
spiral?

There are no simple solutions. But calls by donors for full
transparency and accountability around the debt situation must be
taken more seriously. The government could start by opening its
books to a credible and thorough external audit of the external
debt, as well as of its relationships with private companies through
loan guarantees and private-public partnerships.

Admittedly, a legal investigation into the controversial loans has
begun. This is welcome but needs to be more than a pro forma
exercise and must be free from political interference.

Substantive actions in these two domains would go some way to
restoring donor confidence.

A further set of immediate actions should be to deal with the
companies associated with the controversial loans. Under current
circumstances, it is difficult to envisage any plausible scenario
under which these companies become viable. A sensible option is to
avoid further losses now.

One strategy here starts by recognising that some of the rights
owned by these companies are valuable, as are the existing assets of
Ematum. An international auction to these rights or to an exclusive
management contract would serve two purposes. First, it would raise
money to pay off the loans, thereby reducing their social costs.
Second, it would provide a transparent commercial valuation of the
businesses opening the way for renegotiation with creditors.

In my view, if the private lenders to ProIndicus and Mozambique
Asset Management were excessively optimistic in their valuation of
these businesses, they should bear some losses.

Temptations to be avoided

An unavoidable consequence of the current crisis will be some form
of austerity. Here the government needs to maintain a cool head and
avoid rash decisions that undermine long-term growth and fiscal
health. It will be tempting to seek a new round of loans from
abroad, perhaps from China where Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi
will be making an official visit in May.

Of course, some short-run relief would be handy. But there is a
major risk that this is not transparent and will incur new fiscal
liabilities or high long-run opportunity costs. Moreover, this
approach could alienate other donors and therefore jeopardise
critical sources of financing for social sectors.

The general point is that a more serious and rational approach to
public debt is needed, in which loan decisions based on vanity or
political preferences are avoided. Rather, rigorous analysis of
project viability and the profile of their net benefits is needed.
It would be helpful to enact in law stricter requirements and
transparency around all new debt issues and guarantees.

Another temptation is to hand out attractive tax breaks to foreign
companies to kick-start delayed natural resource investments. Again,
this might provide temporary relief but this would be the public
finance equivalent of selling the family silver to a pawn shop. It
is critical that the long-run public value of these assets is not
squandered due to poor policy decisions by a previous government.

Finally, it is essential that the government continues to invest in
the foundations for sustained growth. This means that public
investment in infrastructure, agricultural development and human
capital (education, health) should be the main priorities. So these
budgets need to be ring-fenced in some way. This is easier said than
done, especially given ongoing internal conflict. Solving this
political standoff is vital to get out of the current economic mess.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
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Uganda: Accountability and Child Soldiers

worker | May 6, 2016 | 8:09 pm | Africa, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 5, 2016 (160505)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“After two decades spent fighting in the bush, Dominic Ongwen, a
senior commander in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),
faces trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on seventy
counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. … the first time
that a former child soldier will be prosecuted at the ICC and the
first time that an accused faces charges for the same crimes
perpetrated against him. As such, the Ongwen trial raises myriad
questions and poses difficult dilemmas regarding the prosecution of
child soldiers.” – Justice in Conflict symposium

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/uga1605.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/uga1605.php

The demands of justice, accountability, and healing after any
conflict are all imperative. But satisfying any of these demands,
much less all three, is far from easy, particularly in the case of
child soldiers. The role of the International Criminal Court is
controversial in many ways. But the issues raised in this symposium
would remain difficult, regardless of whether the decisions were being made
by any other international or national court, governmental body, or truth
commission.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the introduction and excerpts
from three of the commentaries in an on-line symposium on the
Dominic Ongwen Trial and the Prosecution of Child Soldiers.
Commentaries included are by Ledio Cakaj, Rosebell Kagumire, and
Mark A. Drumbl. Additional commentaries in the symposium are
available at http://tinyurl.com/havs44v

For additional background, analysis, and sources on the Lord’s
Resistance Army and the conflict in Northern Uganda, widely
publicized in the “Kony 2012” on-line campaign, see in particular:
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/kon1203a.php and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/kon1203b.php

For other previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Uganda, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/uganda.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

The Dominic Ongwen Trial and the Prosecution of Child Soldiers – A
Justice in Conflict Symposium

by Mark Kersten

Justice in Conflict, April 11, 2016

http://justiceinconflict.org – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/havs44v

After two decades spent fighting in the bush, Dominic Ongwen, a
senior commander in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),
faces trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on seventy
counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In early 2015,
Ongwen was surrendered to the ICC via another rebel army, the SÃ©lÃ©ka
rebel coalition and US forces ‘hunting’ for LRA combatants in the
Central African Republic. To date, Ongwen is the only alleged
perpetrator from northern Uganda to find himself facing judges at
the ICC. Ongwen’s trial is momentous for many reasons. It marks the
first time that a former child soldier will be prosecuted at the ICC
and the first time that an accused faces charges for the same crimes
perpetrated against him. As such, the Ongwen trial raises myriad
questions and poses difficult dilemmas regarding the prosecution of
child soldiers.

To examine these issues, Justice in Conflict is honoured to host an
online symposium on The Dominic Ongwen Trial and the Prosecution of
Child Soldiers. …

Symposium contributions include:

The Life and Times of Dominic Ongwen, Child Soldier and LRA
Commander, by Ledio Cakaj

Rupturing Official Histories in the Trial of Dominic Ongwen, by Adam
Branch

The Ongwen Trial and the Struggle for Justice in Northern Uganda, by
Rosebell Kagumire

What Counts against Ongwen – Effectiveness at the Price of
Efficiency?, by Danya Chaikel

There is Nothing Extraordinary about the Prosecution of Dominic
Ongwen, by Alex Whiting

We Need to Talk About Ongwen: The Plight of Victim-Perpetrators at
the ICC, by Barrie Sander

Shifting Narratives: Ongwen and Lubanga on the Effects of Child
Soldiering, by Mark A. Drumbl

Press Release: Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Speaks
on the Trial of Dominic Ongwen, by Mark Kersten

**************************************************************

The Life and Times of Dominic Ongwen, Child Soldier and LRA
Commander

by Ledio Cakaj

April 12, 2016

[Ledio Cakaj is a researcher working on conflict in East and Central
Africa. His book, When the Walking Defeats You; One Man’s Journey as
Joseph Kony’s Bodyguard, will be published in November 2016 by Zed
Books.]

It must be strange being in Dominic Ongwen’s shoes. Suited up in a
large room in a foreign country with fancy lawyers and judges
staring him down, accusing him of unspeakable crimes. No wonder he
seems amused, bewildered and confused. The legal proceedings must be
particularly outlandish to a man, who, snatched from his family as a
child, tried to excel at whatever life threw at him, only for life
to change the script over and over again. And it must be
particularly frustrating for him to be compared to Joseph Kony, a
man whose clutches Ongwen has tried to escape for at least the last
decade.

At ten or so, Ongwen excelled at school and was expected to go far,
become a teacher like his parents, a lawyer or a doctor. When
fighters from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted him in the
early 1990s, he was too small to walk long distances or fight, even
though children already fought in the LRA ranks. It was Ongwen’s
perseverance and his desire to do well and make the adults proud
that saw him not only survive the hostile environment but also
become a noted fighter. Had the country of its birth provided him
with basic security, he might have become a noted lawyer or perhaps
a doctor.

At fifteen Ongwen was exposed to – and allegedly forced to
participate in – the massacre of over 300 people in the village of
Atiak, masterminded by Vincent Otti, Ongwen’s mentor in the LRA.
Under Otti’s guidance, Ongwen had to punish civilians who did not
help the LRA, fight Ugandan soldiers, and abduct more youths to fill
the ranks. Refusal brought beatings and death.

While in the first years of his life as a rebel Ongwen might have
acted under duress, he was taught, and likely convinced, that the
LRA’s struggle was just. Kony addressed assemblies of LRA members in
true Sunday Mass style saying that the LRA fought for the rights of
the Acholi people, who were abused by the Ugandan army. He swore
that the Holy Spirit had forced him to save the Acholi. Kony was
fond of a line from the Old Testament: “If you are led by the
Spirit, you are not under the law.”

Apart from fighting for his people, Ongwen was also told he was
lamony â€” a soldier. The world that Ongwen-the-soldier inhabited was
different to the one Ongwen-the-child left behind. Being alive was
contingent on killing others. To take their food, clothes, or their
ability to shoot back. Survival chances increased with promotion
into officer ranks as low-level fighters were the first to die from
bullets or pervasive shortages of food. Ongwen obeyed orders, fought
hard, and excelled in the way of the rebels. By his late teens he
was a commander with bodyguards, ‘wives’ and young servants.

Ongwen was good at fighting and killing. But he never was a top
commander, certainly not on par with those who had joined Kony from
the start, like Kenneth Banya, Vincent Otti or Okot Odhiambo. Sadly,
there were many others like Ongwen in the LRA, young men abducted as
children who were eager to please the Lapwony Madit (Big Teacher)
Kony. Many of them like, Ochan Bunia, Vincent ‘Binany,’ or Otim
‘Ferry,’ have died fighting for Kony. Others, like Patrick Agweng or
Jon Bosco Kibwola were killed on Kony’s orders, mostly as sacrifices
to appease his ego. Of the surviving ones, Okot George ‘Odek,’ who
left the LRA in February 2016, told me, he worried he would be
charged by the ‘World Court (a reference to the International
Criminal Court (ICC)),’ like Ongwen. Similarly, Opiyo Sam, another
LRA commander who returned to Uganda two years ago, claimed he does
not know or understand why Ongwen was singled out by the ICC.

Growing older made Ongwen wiser to Kony’s ways, which in turn made
him lose his commander status and its associated benefits handed out
by Kony as he saw fit. Ongwen became openly critical with Kony and
was demoted. In his mid-20s Ongwen seemed interested in leaving the
LRA but he was too scared to do so, feeling trapped. He was
terrified of the bad spirits he had unleashed and worried that they
would haunt him if he left the rebels – and the protection of the
Holy Spirit – to become a civilian once again. He was also concerned
with being thrown in prison or being killed by the Ugandan
authorities – a common fear for many LRA members.

Ongwen tried more than once to find a way out of the LRA, discussing
defection with local clergy, fellow fighters and his ‘wives.’ In
early 2006 as he contemplated surrender once more, Otti called from
Congo’s Garamba Park. The LRA leaders prepared for peace talks -the
Juba Talks – and Kony wanted to show full strength. He wanted all
the fighters to assemble in Congo but openly suspected Ongwen, who
led one of the last remaining small groups in Northern Uganda, of
wanting to quit. Otti said that a new World Court – a reference to
the ICC – wanted to capture and kill Ongwen but that the peace talks
offered a way out. Ongwen agreed, reluctantly leaving Uganda in
August 2006, the last LRA commander to make it to Congo.

As the peace talks stalled, Ongwen became reportedly depressed and
resorted to alcohol, particularly after Kony allowed its consumption
in the spring of 2007. In November 2007 Kony had Otti killed,
effectively ending the peace process and any possibility of making
the ICC arrest warrants go away, as Otti had promised Ongwen.

At the end of 2008, after the Ugandan army launched Operation
Lightning Thunder against LRA bases in Garamba Park, LRA groups
carried out retaliatory attacks against Congolese civilians, leaving
more than a thousand dead in a few weeks. Ongwen was reportedly in
charge of a group that attacked Doruma, killing many as they
celebrated Christmas. Throughout 2009 and until 2014, he operated in
northeastern Congo, often following river Duru into South Sudan
where his troops attacked civilians, mostly to secure food. He
continued to lead his own group, often refusing to liaise with
Kony’s messengers or respond to Kony’s radio messages. Kony remained
suspicious and critical of Ongwen. On three different occasions, he
threatened to have Ongwen killed, including in October 2007 when
Ongwen was the only commander to protest Otti’s execution.

In late 2014, a Kony bodyguard stumbled upon Ongwen’s group -at that
point acting independently of Kony – near the Congo – Central
African Republic (CAR) border. Ongwen was somehow convinced to join
Kony in Kafia Kingi, a Sudanese Army controlled area in Southern
Darfur, where Kony had him tortured and put under house arrest. As
in previous instances, Kony said he did not want to kill him because
his sister, also abducted at a young age, was one of Kony’s favorite
wives. With the help of a fighter who was supposed to guard him,
Ongwen managed to escape before Kony could do much worse.

Ongwen reportedly left the LRA camp barefoot and barely clothed and
walked for days towards the CAR border where he was helped by cattle
keepers, who took him to a Seleka group, near the town of Sam
Ouandja, CAR. Not understanding Ongwen’s importance, the Seleka
commander reached out, via a local merchant and an NGO worker, to
the American Special Forces in Obo, CAR. A US helicopter was
dispatched to transport Ongwen from Sam Ouandja to Obo where he was
later handed over to the Ugandan army. After a few days in Obo at
the Ugandan army base, Ongwen was flown to Bangui and then to The
Hague.

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The Ongwen Trial and the Struggle for Justice in Northern Uganda

by Rosebell Kagumire

April 14, 2016

[Rosebell Kagumire is a Ugandan journalist, communications
specialist, public speaker and award-winning blogger. She has over
10 years experience working at the intersection between media and
rights in crisis, women’s rights, peace and security.] For previous
posts in the symposium, click here.

My first trip to northern Uganda was in 2005. I was working at a
newspaper in Kampala and went on an assignment. The air was still
and tense, our hosts warned us not to stay late at the bar in Gulu
town, the biggest town in the province of Acholiland. I had many
interviews, comprising of countless horror stories from children as
young as five on what they had gone through during the war. They
were still ‘night commuters’ – children would leave their homes in
the rural areas to spend a night in the relative safety of Gulu town
where the army could protect them from being abducted. I was one of
the Ugandans privileged enough not to have any direct experience
with war. My parents weren’t. Post-independence Uganda saw many
turbulences and the struggle for power continued. In the vacuum and
absence of national consolidation, resistance and rebel movements
mushroomed.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) were one of the last rebel
movements to emerge and put up the longest rebellion, well known for
their horrendous tactics and the terrible crimes they committed
against the populations of Northern and North Eastern Uganda. The
children I spoke with on that 2005 trip lived in a totally different
world than me, even though we were from the same country. Besides
the LRA’s violence, they also witnessed other children, as well as
their siblings, parents and relatives either mutilated or die of
preventable disease in internally displaced peoples camps set up by
the Government of Uganda to ‘protect’ them. You didn’t have to know
international criminal law to know these were crimes against
humanity.

One of the teenage boys I interviewed was Simon. Simon had been
recently released after a few months at a rehabilitation centre. But
it wasn’t really rehabilitation, as the sheer volume of children
either rescued or escaped from the LRA was too high for the
available centres to provide adequate psychosocial support.

Simon had passed through one of those centres and so we sat down to
hear his story. As with the heinous acts many children recounted to
me, it was hard not to feel pressure rise in your chest listening to
these stories. Simon was forced to kill his parents with a machete
before he was abducted. The rebels threatened to kill the whole
family if he wouldn’t do it. Forcing Simon to kill his parents began
the process of mutating him into a child soldier. Simon spent many
years with the LRA, during which he knew he couldn’t return. How
could he come back to a community that knew he had killed his own
parents? And what was home? His siblings, his relatives, could he
ever be forgiven? These were questions that Simon couldn’t move
past.

Like many child soldiers, Simon would go on to kill many more people
during his time in the LRA. Finally, after five years in the bush at
the age of 20 he was returned to his surviving relatives in the camp
after a rescue by the Ugandan army in 2005. But the family didn’t
want anything to do with him and, in the absence of proper
government run shelters and psychosocial services, Simon still
battled trauma and nightmares when I visited him again in 2008.

Simon’s life comes to mind when considering the proceedings against
Dominic Ongwen. Ongwen was abducted by the LRA as a child and rose
through the ranks of the rebel group. When he was surrendered to the
ICC in early 2015, my thought was that any of the children I had
interviewed could have become an Ongwen. If they hadn’t been
rescued, some could have gone on with their fear of return replaced
with the power that the gun and rebel hierarchy bring.

We are told that Ongwen’s trial is about justice. But what does that
mean for the local communities who have to heal? This includes those
families whose children were abducted just like Ongwen and families
whose children were abducted by Ongwen. The calls for forgiveness
from some victims are not a surprise. Many know their own children
are still struggling to overcome the trauma and cope with the crimes
they were forced to carry out.

While some believe Ongwen’s trial will go a long way to holding LRA
accountable and bring some form of justice to victims (evidenced by
the more 2,000 victims who have agreed to support the trial), other
victims have called for local justice measures and reconciliation.
This has precedence, they claim, as top former LRA commanders were
granted amnesty by the Government even though they could easily be
charged with hundreds of counts of war crimes themselves. The
commanders live freely in northern Uganda and many argue that, given
that he was abducted, Ongwen, deserves the same pardon.

On the other hand, the ICC trial will be important for both victims
and the country as a means to understand and confront what really
happened in northern Uganda. Ongwen faces 70 counts of war crimes
and crimes against humanity include murder, persecution, torture,
pillaging, conscription of child soldiers, and sexual and gender-
based crimes, which he allegedly committed between 2003 and 2005 in
the internally displaced camps of Lukodi, Pajule, Abok and Odek in
the north. But in Uganda, while many condemn the LRA and the crimes
committed, missing is the role of government which many in the north
would have wanted to see interrogated â€” and investigated.

For the people of northern Uganda, the charge of forced marriage
will be of particular significance. The Rome Statute doesn’t cover
it as a crime but the prosecutor has charged it as cruel inhuman
treatment. Through the prosecution of forced marriage, the sexual
crimes against many women who were abducted and given as rewards for
men fighting will uniquely bring out the plight of women during this
war. The trial will also have to dig deeper into how one transitions
from victim to perpetrator and how capable one can be, if abducted,
in forming the necessary intent to commit the crimes Ongwen is
charged with. The trial in general will hopefully highlight the
complexity of the 20-plus year war where the lines between victim
and perpetrator are sometimes blurred.

Many also hope that Ongwen’s ICC appearance and his possible trial
will move the Government and other actors to finally tend to the
real needs of the communities on the ground who still have no
reparations programs nor reconciliation and truth-seeking processes.
The communities are still in need psycho-social support and it is
largely wanting. If the proceedings against Ongwen at the ICC can
help increase the chances that the people of northern Uganda receive
the attention and services they deserve, it holds out the
possibility of being a success.

***********************************************************

Shifting Narratives: Ongwen and Lubanga on the Effects of Child
Soldiering

by Mark A. Drumbl

April 20, 2016

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law &
Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington & Lee School of
Law.]

On March 23, 2016, ICC Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) II issued its
decision confirming charges against Dominic Ongwen. PTC II confirmed
many charges, including for sexual and gender-based crimes. Ongwen
will be tried for some crimes that he had himself endured. These
include the war crime of cruel treatment, conscription and use as a
child soldier, and the crime against humanity of enslavement.

Ongwen was abducted into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) at the age
of 9 while walking home from school. He was bullied, brutalized, and
indoctrinated as a child soldier. He rose through the ranks. He
ascended to the upper echelons of power, although these remained
tightly controlled by LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Irrespective of how high he ascended, however, Ongwen’s point of
entry remains fixed as a young, kidnapped, orphaned, and abused
child. Ongwen’s defense team invoked this point of entry in its
submissions. Defense counsel did so to make two specific legal
points. First, that the ongoing and continuous nature of the crime
of child soldiering means that Ongwen left the LRA – nearly thirty
years later – still as a child soldier and, thereby, that he should
be entitled to the evacuation of individual criminal responsibility
that hortatorily inheres in the international legal regime that
protects child soldiers. Second, the defense team submitted that
coming of age in the LRA amounts to a kind of institutionalized
duress that excludes criminal responsibility under Rome Statute
article 31(1)(d) rather than just mitigating sentence. According to
the defense, Ongwen “lived most of his life under duress (i.e. from
the age of 9.5 years old)” and his “so-called rank was demonstrative
of one thing: that he was surviving better than others while under
duress”.

When making both arguments, the Ongwen defense team extensively (yet
unsuccessfully) invoked the findings of Dr. Elisabeth Schauer, a
court-appointed expert whose testimony on the dissociation and
trauma arising out of the child soldiering experience had been
dispositive to the Lubanga case. In Lubanga, child soldiers were the
victims and Lubanga the adult perpetrator; in Ongwen, the accused is
a former child soldier and many of his alleged victims were children
at the time.

PTC II perfunctorily dismissed Ongwen’s first argument without
providing any reasons. PTC II also dismissed the second argument,
although not quite as perfunctorily. One judge, moreover, will
append in due course a separate, concurring opinion.

Reasonable minds can disagree as to whether the defense arguments
have merit. The point of my commentary is not to revisit these
arguments. …

Instead, my point is to emphasize that international criminal law
should proceed in consistent and predictable ways. Here, PTC II
slipped. Its understanding of the agency of actual and former child
soldiers in Ongwen departs from the understanding previously
deployed by the Lubanga Trial and Appeals Chambers, in particular in
the sentencing judgments.

Lubanga cast the linkage between the past as a child soldier and the
present as a former child soldier as linear and continuous. The
child soldiering experience was constructed as ongoing and assured:
it rendered the children as victims damaged for life, with their
reality today as derivative of their previous suffering. Once a
child soldier in fact, always a child soldier in mind, body, and
soul. In Ongwen, however, the linkage between the accused’s past as
a child soldier and his present as a former child soldier was seen
as discontinuous and contingent.

In his opening statement in the Lubanga trial, then Chief Prosecutor
Luis Moreno-Ocampo portrayed the former child soldiers as indelibly
wounded and recurrently traumatized.

“They cannot forget the beatings they suffered; they cannot forget
the terror they felt and the terror they inflicted; they cannot
forget the sounds of their machine guns; they cannot forget that
they killed; they cannot forget that they raped and that they were
raped.”

The 2012 Lubanga sentencing judgment (confirmed on appeal in
December 2014) had prioritized and excerpted from Dr. Schauer’s
expert submissions that the Ongwen defense team sought
unsuccessfully to invoke. Elements of Dr. Schauer’s work pertinent
to the Lubanga sentencing analysis include her submissions that
“children of war and child soldiers [â€¦] often suffer from
devastating long-term consequences of experienced or witnesses acts
of violence” and that conflict experiences “can hamper children’s
healthy development and their ability to function fully even once
the violence has ceased.” …

In Ongwen, however, a different narrative emerges. This narrative
contemplates agency, choice, and action. In response to the
defense’s emphasis on Ongwen’s entry into the LRA as an abducted
child, PTC II held that “the circumstances of Ongwen’s stay in the
LRA [â€¦] cannot be said to be beyond his controlâ€¦ [.]” PTC II
concluded that “escapes from the LRA were not rare.” It underscored
that Ongwen “could have chosen not to rise in hierarchy and expose
himself to increasingly higher responsibility to implement
policies.” It added that the evidence demonstrates that Dominic
Ongwen “shared the ideology of the LRA, including its brutal and
perverted policy with respect to civilians”. PTC II noted that
Ongwen could “have avoided raping” forced wives, “or, at the very
least, he could have reduced the brutality of the sexual abuse”.

PTC II thereby shied away from the Lubanga narrative of the
pernicious, ongoing effect of being compelled as a child into a
violent armed group and socialized therein. Whereas the defense
sought to link Ongwen’s conduct as an adult to his horrid
experiences as a child, PTC II only examined his agency as an adult
– as if he had never been a child, let alone a child in the LRA. In
rejecting the duress submissions in Ongwen, PTC II elides Ongwen’s
status as a former child soldier. It’s as if he lost that status, or
ceded it. Hence, there is a proper way to be a victim. Victimhood is
contingent, so to speak, even aleatory.

In truth, the Ongwen narrative reflects the diverse experiences of
actual and former child soldiers and the complexities of survival
and social navigation in invidious circumstances. After all,
problematic essentialisms abound in the Lubanga criminal judgments.

That said, in the push to confirm charges against Ongwen, PTC II
invokes language that should perturb child rights activists. The
Ongwen confirmation of charges decision conflicts with a tenet of
post-conflict rehabilitation and reintegration. This tenet
approaches all persons (regardless of age) who had become associated
with armed groups and armed forces while under the age of 18 as
former child soldiers and accords them entitlements and treatment
that hinge upon this status.

The contrast between Ongwen and Lubanga vivifies how narratives of
agency, choice, and constraint may become instrumentalized by judges
to suit the prosecutorial impulse. This contrast additionally
reflects the clumsiness of the criminal law in conceptualizing child
soldiering specifically and, in Ongwen’s case, victim-perpetrator
circularity generally.

*****************************************************

Nigeria: Shapes of Violence, 2

worker | May 4, 2016 | 8:18 pm | Africa, political struggle | Comments closed

Nigeria: Shapes of Violence, 2

AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 27, 2016 (160427)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“It has been two years since the world’s deadliest terrorist
organization â€“ Boko Haram â€“ abducted 271 girls from their high
school in the town of Chibok â€“ a tragedy that would shine much
needed international attention on conflict in northeastern Nigeria.
Sadly, the Chibok girls are only one part of a much larger story of
violence against women and girls in the northeast. … the needs of
all those whom the Chibok girls symbolize â€“ thousands upon thousands
who have suffered gender-based violence at Boko Haram’s hands â€“ are
being unaddressed.” – Refugees International

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/nig1604b.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/nig1604b.php

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from a new report by
Refugees International, documenting the failures of humanitarian
assistance to address gender-based violence in northeastern Nigeria,
both by Boko Haram and among those who have been displaced by the
violence. Also included is an Amnesty International report on an
entirely separate case of violence, in which Nigerian security
forces in December last year perpetrated “mass slaughter of hundreds
of men, women and children …and the attempted cover-up of this
crime,” against followers of a Shiite Muslim group in Zaria in
north-central Nigeria.

As these examples show, the realities of violence, whether in
Nigeria, other African countries, or indeed in rich countries such
as the United States as well, are often far more complicated than
the stereotypes that often prevail among those observing them from a
distance. Thus, violence in Nigeria is often simplistically
characterized as “religious conflict” between Muslims and
Christians. A new collection of empirical studies released this year
by Nigeria Watch, based in Ibadan, Nigeria, provides a more complex
perspective, documenting, for instance, that intra-Muslim conflict
is more common that conflicts between Muslims and Christians, and
that much of the conflict involving both Muslims and Christians is
based on secular rather than religious motives.

Another AfricaFocus Bulletin, available on the web but not sent out
by email, contains excerpts from one of the chapters in this new
report, focused specifically on violence involving Christians and
Muslims in Nigeria. The full 216-page report is available at
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/37759

Other recent articles with relevant background on Boko Haram in
particular include the following from the Washington Post and the
New York Times.

“Here’s why so many people join Boko Haram, despite its notorious
violence,” by Hilary Matfess, Washington Post, April 26, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/hqw6og4

“Failure to Share Data Hampers War on Boko Haram in Africa,” by Eric
Schmitt and Dionne Searcey, New York Times, April 23, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/jzsmla7

“Women Who Fled Boko Haram Tell of Devastation and, Rarely, Hope,”
by Helene Cooper, New York Times, April 22, 2106
http://tinyurl.com/z48hplw

“Abducted Nigerian Girls Have Not Been Abandoned, U.S. Says,” by
Helene Cooper, April 20, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/z4bj6md

“Boko Haram still a threat months after ‘technical victory,’ by
Bradley Klapper|AP, Washington Post, April 19, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/h3dfy48

“What’s Worse Than a Girl Being Kidnapped?,” by Adaobi Tricia
Nwaubani, New York Times, April 15, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/hcak5ch

“Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls two years ago. What happened to
them?,” by Kevin Sieff, Washington Post, April 14, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/zj57sxg

“Boko Haram Turns Female Captives Into Terrorists,” by Dionne
Searcey, New York Times, April 7, 2016 http://tinyurl.com/jqyxw2d

“They were freed from Boko Haram’s rape camps. But their nightmare
isn’t over,” by Kevin Sieff, Washington Post, April 3, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/zxcpob3

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Nigeria, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/nigeria.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Nigeria’s Displaced Women and Girls: Humanitarian Community at Odds,
Boko Haram Survivors Forsaken

Refugees International, April 21, 2016

http://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2016/nigeria

It has been two years since the world’s deadliest terrorist
organization â€“ Boko Haram â€“ abducted 271 girls from their high
school in the town of Chibok â€“ a tragedy that would shine much
needed international attention on conflict in northeastern Nigeria.
Sadly, the Chibok girls are only one part of a much larger story of
violence against women and girls in the northeast. But the attention
on this remote corner of the Sahel has not translated into sustained
humanitarian assistance for all those that have been affected.
Humanitarian stakeholders are under tremendous strain due to the
enormity of the emergency, conflicts between aid agencies, limited
resources, and an ineffective partner in the Nigerian state. As a
result, the needs of all those whom the Chibok girls symbolize â€“
thousands upon thousands who have suffered gender-based violence at
Boko Haram’s hands â€“ are being unaddressed. Moreover, the lackluster
humanitarian response is placing women and girls affected by Boko
Haram at further risk of gender-based violence.

Background

Northeast Nigeria has been the primary theater for the militant
group Boko Haram’s insurgency since 2009. Violence has ebbed and
flowed over the years as the insurgents evolved from a homegrown
uprising against the police in three states to a more sophisticated
and ruthless extremist Islamist group, which pledged allegiance to
ISIS in 2015. The sheer brutality of Boko Haram, marked by mass
abductions, indiscriminate killings, suicide bombings, sexual
violence, and slavery, has earned it the unsavory designation as the
world’s deadliest terrorist group. The toll is not certain, but
reportedly 20,000 have been killed as a result of the insurgency. In
2014, Boko Haram intensified its attacks, resulting in a sudden
growth in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) arriving
in Maiduguri, the capital city of the northeastern state of Borno.

Much criticism, both domestic and international, has been leveled at
the Nigerian government for its perceived failure to deploy a more
robust strategy to eliminate the scourge of Boko Haram. Muhammadu
Buhari made the defeat of Boko Haram a central pillar of his
successful campaign for the 2015 presidential elections. He assumed
power in May 2015, and in December announced that Nigeria had
technically defeated Boko Haram â€“ a declaration found to be
outlandish by many Nigeria watchers, as violence continues. Although
the validity of this statement is arguable, the Nigerian Army (NA)
did intensify its campaign against Boko Haram in 2015, “liberating”
â€“ in their words â€“ areas that were under the militants’ control.
This campaign resulted in further displacement in Borno, including
into Maiduguri.

Multiple reports document the horrors that women and girls have
experienced under Boko Haram. Further, a recent report documents the
difficulties that abducted women and girls have reintegrating back
into their families and communities, particularly for those labeled
as “Boko Haram wives.” Yet there is a dearth of information on what
and how humanitarian assistance is serving the very specific needs
of these women and girls.

In February 2016, Refugees International (RI) conducted a mission to
Nigeria to assess the needs of those displaced in Borno State, and
how the humanitarian community can best serve women and girls. The
RI team met with federal and state authorities, the UN,
international non-governmental organizations (INGO) and community-
based organizations, human rights defenders, local volunteers,
members of the donor and diplomatic communities in Abuja and
Maiduguri, and IDPs and host community members in Maiduguri. The
humanitarian crisis facing the aid community in the northeast is
nothing short of daunting.

The Humanitarian Panorama

The humanitarian crisis facing the aid community in the northeast is
nothing short of daunting. According to the 2016 Humanitarian Needs
Overview (HNO), 14.8 million people are affected in four states of
the northeast. 7 The UN estimates that of this number, seven million
are in need, three million of whom are estimated to be entirely
inaccessible. It is worthwhile to note, however, that precise
numbers are difficult to attain due to the humanitarian access
constraints. This is especially the case for Borno, where nearly 70
percent of the territory was inaccessible at the time of the HNO.
Consequently, most humanitarians believe that the numbers of people
in need are much higher.

Overall, there are an estimated 2.2 million displaced in the
northeast, according to the International Organization for
Migration’s most recent displacement tracking exercise. 9 This is a
sharp increase from the much more modest figure of 261,000 in
December 2014, as per the HNO. The vast majority of the displaced â€“
1.3 million â€“ are in Maiduguri and its environs. Their arrival more
than doubled the population of the city in a single year. Only
approximately eight percent of the IDPs are in government-run IDP
camps or settlements. The Nigerian authorities only deliver
humanitarian assistance to those in camps, which are managed by the
National and State Emergency Management Agencies (NEMA and SEMA,
respectively). The remainder must fend for themselves, depending on
the kindness of relatives and hosts among the local population â€“
hosts that are increasingly exhausting their limited resources â€“ as
well as local faith-based institutions that have neither the
resources nor the expertise to deliver humanitarian aid. A very
small percentage of IDPs are being served by the small INGO
community.

Access to food â€“ both in and out of the camps â€“ was the primary
concern cited by IDPs with whom RI spoke. According to figures
released in March 2016 by the UN Office for Affairs (OCHA), an
estimated 2.5 million children are malnourished. Within the
government-run camps, the number of displaced far outstrips the
number of water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities that
international standards call for in camp settings, forcing women and
girls to wait for hours in lines, with many ultimately opting for
open urination and defecation. One INGO working in the host
communities in Maiduguri asserts that nearly every household is
housing IDPs, in some cases multiple families, and host families are
now selling their assets to be able to feed displaced people under
their care. Livelihood opportunities are grossly limited for those
living both inside and outside of camps. Finally, several
displacement sites have been targeted by Boko Haram suicide bombers,
leading to restrictive policies involving basic human rights such as
freedom of movement, which impact both IDPs’ protection and their
ability to participate in income-generating activities.

Against this backdrop, at the time of RI’s visit, there were only a
handful of UN agencies, with very limited personnel, and less than
ten international organizations operating in Maiduguri. At time of
writing, the 2016 UN humanitarian appeal for Nigeria is dangerously
underfunded. As of April, only $33.7 million of the $248 million
proposed for the UN humanitarian response planâ€”just 14 percentâ€”has
been met.

Boko Haram’s survivors, in the shadow of humanitarian action

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Alert,
UNICEF, and several journalists have all reported on the horrors of
life under Boko Haram and the very specific needs of women they have
interviewed â€“ medical, psychological, livelihood, and community
reconciliation opportunities. Yet it is RI’s assessment that there
has been minimal effort to identify and/or address these women and
girls’ needs, much less target them as priority beneficiaries for
any programming. The humanitarian crisis in Borno State has led to
infinite protection risks for women and girls. Boko Haram has
abducted countless women and girls throughout its campaign in the
northeast. No one is entirely certain how many women and girls have
been abducted to date, in part because the Nigerian authorities have
yet to respond to civil society’s desperate calls for a survey in
the northeast, by which families could register the data of their
missing. Whatever the figure, it is surely dwarfed by the number
that have been exposed to Boko Haram’s brutality during its campaign
to overrun and control territory, of which gender-based violence
(GBV) has been a feature. Definitive counts of those who have been
subjected to Boko Haram’s rule in this manner are difficult to come
by, but it is reasonable to believe that it figures in the
thousands. As IDP numbers swell in Maiduguri, so do the number of
women and girl survivors of Boko Haram’s horrifying GBV tactics. As
the NA clears Boko Haram from territory, it rescues people who had
been trapped, the majority of them women and girls, and takes many
of them to displacement sites. In the month of March 2016 alone,
troops had rescued 11,595 hostages from Boko Haram, according to NA
Spokesman, Colonel Sanu Usman.

According to humanitarians with whom RI spoke, Nigerian authorities
share little to no information on its process for vetting women and
girls and releasing them. Some humanitarians, however, believe that
it is quite simply because there is no formal process. Further,
there is no process for identifying women and girls that have
escaped and fled to Maiduguri without the assistance of the
military. And there is no mechanism by which the military and
humanitarians can coordinate to identify women and girls so they can
benefit from much-needed services. RI interviewed one 14-year-old 14
who exemplified the protection risks this situation creates. She was
abducted during an attack on her village of Baga and taken as a wife
by a Boko Haram IDP women and children living in a host community in
Maiduguri.

…

During RI’s mission, only one humanitarian agency told the RI team
that procedures were in place to identify and provide services to
women and girls associated with Boko Haram, or for the women and
girls that are brought to Maiduguri on a near-daily basis by the
military. …

However, life for a woman or girl in the host communities is not
necessarily more secure. All of the displaced women living in host
communities whom RI interviewed spoke of the risks of violence. IMC
carried out a safety audit in the seven host communities where they
implement programs, and the three top concerns women expressed, in
order of priority, were domestic violence, rape, and denial of
resources. According to the women IMC serves, domestic violence has
become a serious issue due to food insecurity. Women suffer beatings
when they cannot provide food or when they ask for money to buy
food. On the third month of IMC programming, volunteers were
recording as many as twenty rapes per week in the seven communities.
Women are also reporting that they are often denied resources to
purchase medicines or food. When asking a group of women in a focus
group what self-care they practice to alleviate their trauma, RI
learned that women and girls are reportedly purchasing and drinking
bottles of cough syrup to “go to sleep and forget.”

There is no meaningful integrated GBV-prevention and response
programming in Maiduguri. …Â To RI’s knowledge, at the time of
RI’s visit, only one INGO â€“ International Medical Corps (IMC) â€“ had
a holistic GBV prevention and response program that included
sensitization, referrals for medical care, and psychosocial
counseling, but the reach was limited to only seven host communities
and three IDP camps. However, this short-term U.S. government-
funded program is coming to a close, pending the acquisition of
alternative funding sources. Several other organizations were doing
psychosocial counseling for women and children, but they did not
specifically fall under the rubric of GBV.

…

Further, medical interventions designed specifically for survivors
of sexual violence across the board are limited due to an
unanticipated reason: the global displacement crisis. The pressures
on the global humanitarian system are reverberating in northeast
Nigeria: the agency mandated with procuring Inter-Agency
Reproductive Health kits, the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), has been unable to secure a shipment of Kit 5, the medical
kit designed to treat STIs. UNFPA’s suppliers in Denmark, China, and
the Netherlands informed the country office that they were unable to
fulfill the purchase order due to the overwhelming global demand;
their supplies are exhausted. Kits are currently under production
and should be made available to UNFPA Nigeria at the end of April
2016.

…

RI is also concerned that traditional humanitarian psychosocial
support programming may not be of the caliber that the context
warrants. The trauma endured by the Boko Haram-affected populations
cannot be underestimated. Community based organizations told RI that
apart from the suffering resulting from abduction, sexual violence,
the loss of partners and children, the violence of war, and loss of
all assets, Nigerian women in the northeast are also facing a
profound gender identity crisis. It is not the woman’s traditional
role to “bury one’s husband” or to be the head of a household, and
the rapidly shifting role is compounding the trauma they have
endured and imperiling their resilience capabilities.

According to service providers and some IDP women who chose to speak
about their mental health, women feel helpless, fear men, feel they
have lost all self-worth, and are hopeless when facing the
uncertainty of the future. When asking a group of women in a focus
group what self-care they practice to alleviate their trauma, RI
learned that women and girls are reportedly purchasing and drinking
bottles of cough syrup to “go to sleep and forget.” Upon further
investigation, RI learned that this is not a pre-existing coping
mechanism amongst women and girls. In fact, demand for cough syrup
in camps has increased such that supplies have become scarcer,
driving the price up from 60 Naira per bottle to 150-200 Naira.
Meanwhile, multiple international and local aid workers expressed
concern that some current UN and INGO psychosocial support
interventions may not be staffed adequately, contrary to what their
own literature might otherwise indicate. Aid workers highlighted
that several women’s safe spaces â€“ tents â€“ erected by one UN agency
are often empty. IDP women from several sites confirmed to RI that
they are unaware of trauma support programming and that the tents
are going unused.

The fact that GBV programming does not figure among core
humanitarian programming is a failure to global commitments to both
prioritize women and girls, and place GBV prevention and response
programming in its much-deserved category of a “lifesaving”
activity. On the contrary, one senior UNFPA staff member told RI
that a request to access UN Central Emergency Response Funds (CERF)
to hold a GBV referrals pathway workshop was denied on the basis
that “CERF funds can only be used for life-saving activities.”

…

**********************************************

Nigeria: Military Cover-Up of Mass Slaughter at Zaria Exposed

Amnesty International Press Release

22 April 2016

http://www.amnesty.org – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/jnafcom

Mass slaughter of hundreds of men, women and children by soldiers in
Zaria and the attempted cover-up of this crime demonstrates an utter
contempt for human life and accountability, said Amnesty
International as it publishes evidence gathered on the ground
revealing how the Nigerian military burned people alive, razed
buildings and dumped victims’ bodies in mass graves.

The true horror of what happened over those two days in Zaria is
only now coming to light. Bodies were left littered in the streets
and piled outside the mortuary. Some of the injured were burned
alive Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International

The report, Unearthing the truth: Unlawful killings and mass cover-
up in Zaria, contains shocking eyewitness testimony of large-scale
unlawful killings by the Nigerian military and exposes a crude
attempt by the authorities to destroy and conceal evidence.

“The true horror of what happened over those two days in Zaria is
only now coming to light. Bodies were left littered in the streets
and piled outside the mortuary. Some of the injured were burned
alive,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International’s Research and
Advocacy Director for Africa.

“Our research, based on witness testimonies and analysis of
satellite images, has located one possible mass grave. It is time
now for the military to come clean and admit where it secretly
buried hundreds of bodies.”

More than 350 people are believed to have been unlawfully killed by
the military between 12 and 14 December, following a confrontation
between members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) and
soldiers in Zaria, Kaduna state.

IMN supporters – some armed with batons, knives, and machetes – had
refused to clear the road near their headquarters, the Hussainiyya,
for a military convoy to pass. The army has claimed that IMN
supporters attacked the convoy in an attempt to assassinate the
Chief of Army Staff. IMN members deny this.

Following an initial confrontation the military surrounded other
locations where IMN supporters had gathered, notably at the
residential compound of IMN leader Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky. Some people
were killed as a result of indiscriminate fire. Others appeared to
have been deliberately targeted.

All available information indicates that the deaths of protesters
were the consequence of excessive, and arguably, unnecessary use of
force.

Children injured and killed

Zainab, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, told Amnesty International: “We
were in our school uniforms. My friend Nusaiba Abdullahi was shot in
her forehead. We took her to a house where they treated the injured
but, before reaching the house, she already died.” A 10-year-old boy
who was shot in the leg told Amnesty International how his older
brother was shot in the head as they tried to leave the compound.
“We went out to try to shelter in a nearby house but we got shot.”

Shot and burned alive

On 13 December, two buildings within Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky’s compound,
one of which was being used as a makeshift medical facility and
mortuary, were attacked by soldiers. Alyyu, a 22-year-old student,
told Amnesty International that he was shot in the chest outside the
compound and was taken inside for treatment: “There were lots of
injured people in several rooms. There were dead bodies in a room
and also in the courtyard. Around 12-1pm soldiers outside called on
people to come out, but people were too scared to go out. We knew
they would kill us. Soldiers threw grenades inside the compound. I
saw one soldier on the wall of the courtyard shooting inside.”

One mother described a phone conversation with one of her 19-year-
old sons before he was killed alongside his twin brother and their
step brother and sister in the compound. “They are shooting those
injured one by one,” he told her.

As soldiers set fire to the makeshift medical facility in the
compound that afternoon, Yusuf managed to escape despite serious
gunshot wounds: “Those who were badly injured and could not escape
were burned alive,” he told Amnesty International. “I managed to get
away from the fire by crawling on my knees until I reached a nearby
house where I was able to hide until the following day. I don’t know
how many of the wounded were burned to death. Tens and tens of
them.”

Footage believed to have been shot on mobile phone by IMN supporters
after the incident shows bodies with gunshot wounds as well as
charred bodies strewn around the compound.

Cover-up

After the incident the military sealed off the areas around al-
Zakzaky’s compound, the Hussainiyya and other locations. Bodies were
taken away, sites were razed to the ground, the rubble removed,
bloodstains washed off, and bullets and spent cartridge removed from
the streets.

Witnesses saw piles of bodies outside the morgue of Ahmadu Bello
University Teaching Hospital in Zaria. A senior medical source told
Amnesty International that the military sealed off the area around
the morgue for two days. During that time he saw army vehicles
“coming and going”.

A witness described to Amnesty International what he saw outside the
hospital mortuary on the evening of 14 December: “It was dark and
from far I could only see a big mound but when I got closer I saw it
was a huge pile of corpses on top of each other.Â I have never seen
so many dead bodies. I got very scared and run away. It was a
terrible sight and I can’t get it out of my mind.”

Another witness told the organisation how he had seen diggers
excavating holes at the site of the suspected mass grave: “There
were five or six large trucks and several smaller military vehicles
and they spent hours digging and unloading the trucks’ cargo into
the hole they dug and then covered it again with the earth they had
dug out.Â They were there from about 1 or 2 am until about 5 am.Â I
don’t know what they buried. It looked like bodies, but I could not
get near.”

Amnesty International identified and visited the location of a
possible mass grave near Mando. Satellite images of the site taken
on 2 November and 24 December 2015 show disturbed earth spanning an
area of approximately 1000 square metres. Satellite pictures also
show the complete destruction of buildings and mosques.

“It is clear that the military not only used unlawful and excessive
force against men, women and children, unlawfully killing hundreds,
but then made considerable efforts to try to cover-up these crimes,”
said Netsanet Belay.

“Four months after the massacre the families of the missing are
still awaiting news of their loved ones. A full independent forensic
investigation is long overdue. The bodies must be exhumed, the
incident must be impartially and independently investigated and
those responsible must be held to account.”

On Monday 25 April, the military are expected to give evidence to
the Judicial Commission of Inquiry established by the Kaduna State
Government in January 2016. On 11 April, a Kaduna State government
official told the Judicial Commission of Inquiry that the bodies of
347 members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) were collected
from the hospital mortuary and an army depot in Zaria and buried
secretly in a mass grave near Mando (outside the town of Kaduna) on
the night of 14-15 December. The IMN claim a further 350 people who
went missing during the incidents in Zaria remain unaccounted for.

During field research carried out in Kaduna state and Federal
Capital Territory (FCT) in February 2016, Amnesty International
delegates interviewed 92 people, including victims and their
relatives, eyewitnesses, lawyers and medical personnel. Attempts
were made to interview members of the military.

IMN leader Al-Zakzaky and his wife Zeinat Al-Zakzaky were arrested
and held incommunicado. They were only allowed access to their
lawyer for the first time on 1 April 2015, three and a half months
after their arrest. Amnesty International has not had access to
those who remain in detention but has received information from
medical sources that some of the detainees were not allowed access
to necessary medical care for several weeks after their arrest.

Amnesty International is calling for those IMN supporters charged in
connection with this incident to be tried promptly and fairly and
for those still held in detention without charge to be either
immediately charged or released.

*****************************************************

Africa/Global: Panama Papers Tip of Iceberg

worker | April 11, 2016 | 9:10 pm | Africa, Analysis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
April 11, 2016 (160411)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“In other words, the leaks reveal just how the planet’s wealthiest
and most powerful citizens hide their money – trillions of it – in
offshore tax shelters like the British Virgin Islands or the
Seychelles with the help of law firms in swampy backwaters like
Panama. Over 11-million horribly incriminating documents, and this
is just one – if one of the more prominent – of the many law firms
specialising in this line of work.” – Daily Maverick, South Africa

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/pan1604.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/pan1604.php

The system is world-wide, and the Panama Papers leaks unprecedented
in scale. The volume is such that it is daunting even to read a
fraction of the stories that are coming out, with their political
implications for Iceland, the UK, Russia, China, and multiple
African countries. While names from the United States are relatively
few to date, as the Panama law firm involved focused its client
outreach on Europe and Latin America, the scandal has still called
attention to similar practices which are even more advanced in the
United States itself. And the story is advancing at country level in
many places, with the involvement of many African investigative
journalists on the ground, working together in the African Network
of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR).

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two articles focused on
revelations related to the heads of state of South Africa and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a summary of Africa-related
stories (so far) from the ANCIR. Expect many more to come. The ANCIR
also has a special website for contributing new leaks anonymously to
investigative reporters at https://afrileaks.org/

For a wide range of previous background articles on this global
system of illicit financial flows and its implications for Africa,
visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

Among just a few of recent articles worth noting, an overview in The
Nation (http://tinyurl.com/hqdnovn) by Chuck Collins of
http://inequality.org, Uganda civil society coalition statement (
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/afritax/4xjUSb7Jo3M), and a
related but independent investigative report in the Rand Daily Mail
on Zuma, Putin, the Guptas and nuclear power plans (http://tinyurl.com/zh9ppym).

For more recent updates and advocacy, see, in addition to other
links included in this Bulletin,
http://www.taxjusticeafrica.net/en/home/,
https://financialtransparency.org/, and
https://thefactcoalition.org/

And, after a slow start because they were not among those included
in the investigative group, major newspapers such as The New York
Times and the Washington Post are also giving major attention to the
leaks and to their implications for the status of the United States
itself as one of the leading “tax havens” anchoring this global
system. See, for a few examples, http://tinyurl.com/zaadjup,
http://tinyurl.com/guw6ucv, http://tinyurl.com/ze767av, and
http://tinyurl.com/hyj8lwr

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

“Panama Papers – How Zuma’s Family Is Implicated in the Greatest
Corruption Data Dump of All Time”

Richard Poplak, Daily Maverick, Apr 4, 2016

http://tinyurl.com/hu8y4hg

It’s early days. But when it comes to the so-called Panama Papers –
a 2.4 terabyte leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm called
Mossack Fonseca – it does appear that we’re dealing with a data leak
bigger than both Wikileaks and the Snowden files. Most important, it
regards something we have always known, but have struggled to prove:
the rich and celebrated hide their money in secret offshore tax
shelters. Welcome to one of the biggest stories of our time. And
while you’re settling in, try guessing which famous South African
family immediately pops up in the files?

Here’s a booming salvo from the vast global digi-mocracy we were
promised by the earliest of the internet’s Utopians: Clive Khulubuse
Zuma is a big fat scumbag. Oh, I’m aware that this was common
knowledge before some unbelievably heroic soul snagged 2.4 terabytes
of filth from the servers of a Panamanian law firm called Mossack
Fonseca. A resulting collaborative media project has mined the data
for recognisable names, and fancy-ass notables like Vladimir Putin,
Lionel Messi and the president of Iceland are now implicated in a
reverse alchemical process that has turned money into – fresh air!

In other words, the leaks reveal just how the planet’s wealthiest
and most powerful citizens hide their money – trillions of it – in
offshore tax shelters like the British Virgin Islands or the
Seychelles with the help of law firms in swampy backwaters like
Panama. Over 11-million horribly incriminating documents, and this
is just one – if one of the more prominent – of the many law firms
specialising in this line of work.

Which, in a round-about way, brings us once again to our thesis:
Clive Khulubuse Zuma is a big fat scumbag.

The following is yanked from a site called The Center for Public
Integrity, which serves as the landing page for much of the Panama
Papers data dump. And grok what bubbles up on the very first day –
the very first hour! – of the leak:

Clive Khulubuse Zuma is a nephew of South Africa’s President Jacob
Zuma. A mining magnate, Khulubuse Zuma has reportedly enjoyed a
lifestyle of cigars and up to 19 collectible cars. In June 2015, a
South African court found Zuma liable as chairman in the collapse of
a gold mining company that led to more than 5,000 job losses. In
court submissions, Zuma denied responsibility for the company’s
failure.

Zuma was authorised to represent Caprikat Limited, one of two
offshore companies that controversially acquired oil fields in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. In late summer 2010, as published
reports raised questions about the acquisition, British Virgin
Islands authorities ordered Mossack Fonseca to provide background
information on Zuma, which the law firm had not previously obtained.
That same year, Mossack Fonseca decided to end its relationship with
the companies. Zuma and representatives of the companies have
rejected allegations of wrongdoing and claimed the oil deals are
“quite attractive” to the DRC government.

To that last part: yeah, whatever. But what this document proves,
without any shadow of a doubt, is that Clive Khulubuse Zuma is a big
fat scumbag. More specifically, it reminds us that President’s
Zuma’s nephew was linked to Caprikat Limited, one of two companies
that successfully scammed what could amount to a R100-billion oil
fortune from the beleaguered people of the Democratic Republic of
the Congo.

What, you ask, does our blame-free, super-apologetic president have
to do with any of this?

Nothing. Except for the fact that in 2010, he paid a visit to DRC
President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, where they allegedly had a
discussion about these impressive oil fields, and nudge-nudge, wink-
wink, the corpulent Khulubuse would later come right.

Joseph Kabila has more than his fair share of fat scumbag friends,
but it does seem that Khulubuse Zuma served as one of the more
important. It’s a grim little instance of the kind of collusion that
goes on all the time – two powerful dudes meet, and billions of
dollars goes errant shortly thereafter.

As the Panama Papers now make achingly clear, this is how the world
works. The average South African citizen may be enraged with Zuma,
the Guptas, or the Zuptas, but we now have proof that they’re little
more than a pimple on the ass of an endless global corruption
network that has no overarching aim – no Illuminati-like pseudo
religious objective – other than fleecing as much dough as possible
for as long as possible. Everyone – the prime minister of freaking
Iceland included – is in on the game. The game being petty theft on
an unpetty scale.

In this it would be impossible, embarrassing even, for a Zuma to be
left out of the conversation.

The Panama Papers are one of the most significant leaks of all time,
and they are currently laying bare a legal-ish loophole that has
disappeared trillions of dollars from the global financial system.
There is much, much more to come in what promises to be the biggest
continuing news story of our epoch.

But only hours after the leak was made public, a Zuma pops up. And
he’s not alone. The world, we now know for sure, is full of them. DM

**************************************************************

“The entities behind dodgy Congo deal”

Craig McKune, Business Day Live, Apr 08 2016

http://tinyurl.com/z6j3tuk

[The amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism (
http://amaBhungane.co.za), an independent non-profit, produced this
story.]

THE Panama Papers data leak has unmasked the people originally
behind a highly controversial Congolese oil deal that was fronted by
President Jacob Zuma’s nephew Khulubuse Zuma.

One is South African businessman Mark Willcox, although in 2010, he
told amaBhungane that he held no financial interest in the deal,
however remote. Willcox was then CEO of Tokyo Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda
Holdings, and Sexwale served in Zuma’s cabinet at the time.

The other is the family of controversial Israeli citizen and diamond
scion Dan Gertler, a personal friend of Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) President Joseph Kabila. Gertler’s stake was made public in
2012, two years after the deal.

Hidden behind layers of offshore opacity, Willcox and Gertler’s
family were intended to be the original owners of Caprikat and
Foxwhelp, the mysterious British Virgin Islands (BVI) companies to
which Kabila handed highly sought-after oil rights in June 2010,
according to the leaked papers.

Willcox said this week he never accepted these shares. The evidence
appears to support this.

The papers indicate that Khulubuse Zuma held no formal stake,
despite his 2010 claim that he was the sole owner.

The political exposure of the deal to Kabila, Jacob Zuma, and
Sexwale raised concerns in 2010, but everyone involved denied that
the politicians played any role.

The Panama Papers do not shed any more light on this. But the high
level of ownership secrecy that they show â€” including the fact that
the Panamanian law firm that set up Caprikat and Foxwhelp was long
in the dark about the owners â€” may underscore concerns about
political exposure.

Through spokesman Vuyo Mkhize, Khulubuse Zuma declined to answer
questions, saying he had no obligation to declare his private
business interests publicly.

…

ON SUNDAY, journalists around the world began to publish a series of
exposÃ©s based on the Panama Papers, a trove of 1.5-million leaked
confidential documents, or 2.6 terabytes of data, from Panamanian
law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The cache was obtained by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists and the German newspaper SÃ¼ddeutsche
Zeitung and other media partners.

The documents name politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities
around the world, who have used bank accounts in offshore tax havens
and jurisdictions that offer a high degree of corporate anonymity.
In many cases, the suggestion is that these people used the offshore
financial system to avoid taxes or hide their wealth, but most deny
any wrongdoing.

Included in the documents is e-mailed correspondence among BVI
regulators, Mossack Fonseca, and Hassans, an international law firm
in Gibraltar that conducts business with Gertler’s group of
companies.

The correspondence was sparked when Foxwhelp and Caprikat hit the
news in June 2010. Kabila had just approved their production-sharing
agreement with the Congolese government for the two blocks in Lake
Albert, along the Congolese-Uganda border.

Until then, the blocks had been allocated to Irish oil major,
Tullow. But Kabila’s action had nullified this arrangement and
Tullow was furious.

It accused Congo of orchestrating a “smash-and-grab”, and questioned
the legitimacy of Caprikat and Foxwhelp, which had just been founded
and had no energy sector experience.

This week, Gertler’s Fleurette Group countered that “Tullow did not
have a valid contract with the DRC. (It) took Fleurette to court
over this issue and lost conclusively.”

Khulubuse Zuma emerged at the time as a spokesman for the two BVI
companies. He claimed to own them. AmaBhungane revealed at the time
that Khulubuse Zuma had signed the production-sharing agreement on
Caprikat’s behalf and that Jacob Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley had
signed for Foxwhelp.

Hulley did not respond to several messages seeking his comment.

The controversy deepened when it emerged that Willcox had travelled
to Kinshasa with Khulubuse Zuma and Hulley, and that the BVI
companies had used Mvelaphanda and Sexwale-linked addresses as their
legal domicilium.

Willcox said at the time that he had simply given Khulubuse Zuma
“strategic advice” on the deal, but strongly denied any personal
financial interest.

About two years later, one of Kabila’s cabinet ministers let slip
that Caprikat and Foxwhelp were actually Gertler’s companies.
Gertler did not challenge this, and now openly states that his
Fleurette Group owns 100% of Caprikat and Foxwhelp.

According to Fleurette Group, the oil blocks hold estimated reserves
of 3-billion barrels. Fleurette says it has spent $100m developing
the field.

But while the deal’s political exposure was downplayed, there was
panic among Mossack Fonseca’s staff in Panama and the BVI. E-mail
correspondence in the papers suggests that when Mossack Fonseca
registered Caprikat and Foxwhelp in March 2010, they did not know
that Willcox and Gertler were intended to be their ultimate
beneficial owners despite, “know your client” requirements.

And when they learned through news reports that Khulubuse Zuma, a
“politically exposed person”, had been granted power of attorney to
sign contracts, they considered this reason enough to resign as the
companies’ registering agent.

Having not received a proper explanation from Hassans, the Gibraltar
law firm representing Gertler, one senior staffer wrote to his
colleagues: “Perhaps we need to send a clear message that we will
not be a dump for dodgy companies.”

When a Hassans staffer wrote back, she sought to ease Mossack
Fonseca’s concerns: “I have contacted the lawyers here at Hassans
who deal with these companies from this end. They have clarified the
situation, which seems to be a case of bad press and sour grapes.”

…

That same month, Mossack Fonseca’s alarm bells rang over two more
BVI companies registered at Hassans’s request: Norseville Estates
and Burford Commercial. Apparently they had also failed to do any
due diligence on these and did not know who owned them.

The e-mails flowed back and forth, with apparently frantic Mossack
Fonseca staffers setting deadlines for Hassans that were usually not
met.

One e-mail suggested the reason for the panic: “It is necessary that
the client (Hassans) understands the urgency of this, as in the eyes
of the (financial regulator), this info should have been in our
offices in BVIâ€¦. We are in breach of the obligation to have the info
on BVI.”

After several days, Hassans wrote and explained the Foxwhelp and
Caprikat shareholding, but only up to a point. The letter described
a Cayman Islands investment fund, owned by Norseville and Burford in
Panama, whose true ownership was masked by a nominee shareholder,
and a chain of beneficial ownership reaching through foundations and
trusts in Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, and the BVI.

The letter did not disclose the identity of the real people behind
the web.

Having had enough, Mossack Fonseca’s Jennifer Mossack wrote to say
it was resigning from Foxwhelp, Caprikat, Norseville and Burford
“based on the lack of due diligence information provided by you. We
stand the possibility of being fined or our licence being revoked or
suspended for noncompliance with the relevant legislation in the
jurisdiction of BVI and Panama.”

It was only then that Hassans disclosed that Willcox and the family
of Gertler were behind the structure, with 10% and 90%,
respectively.

The news came as a relief to one senior Mossack Fonseca staffer: “If
these are really their clients, we are speaking about very high-
profile and worldwide-known entrepreneurs. The fact that they are
doing business in Africa makes their position difficult. We would
need to analyse further, but it is good to know that they are not
machine guns (sic) criminals.”

By this stage, however, the BVI’s Financial Investigations Agency
was asking questions, demanding all due diligence information,
particularly in respect of Khulubuse Zuma. A copy of his passport
and various bills were passed on.

But the agency still required the share register of the investment
fund that owned Foxwhelp and Caprikat. Nearly a year later, Mossack
Fonseca complained that this was never received.

According to one final e-mail before it dumped the four Gertler-
linked companies, Jennifer Mossack complained: “Hassans has proven
to be unco-operative, secretive, and dishonest with us as they hid
the identity of their client and are apparently assisting him with
his asset protection.”

Willcox says he has never heard of Mossack Fonseca, Norseville, or
Ranna Investments, an entity the documents indicate held his
intended stake.

…

His lawyer Rael Gootkin says: “It is possible that it could have
been part of Fleurette’s initial structuring to offer such a
shareholding to our client. This factually never materialised.”

He says Fleurette approached Willcox in 2010 “to find an industry
partner and/or a capital partner to develop the oil blocks”.

In response to questions this week, the Gibraltar firm says:
“Hassans fully complies with all local and international standards
regarding ownership disclosures and (know your client) practices.

“Details regarding ultimate beneficial ownership was made available
to Mossack Fonseca at all times.

“We understand that the only item of due diligence outstanding was
the register of members of the (investment fund), which, as
explained, could not be provided, as the fund had not been
launched.”

A Mossack Fonseca statement says: “Before we agree to work with a
client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process. We
follow both the letter and spirit of the law. Because we do, we have
not once in nearly 40 years of operation been charged with criminal
wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the Fleurette group says: “Businesses all over
the world use special-purpose vehicles in their corporate structures
for a variety of reasons. Fleurette uses companies incorporated
offshore to ensure tax efficiency.”

Khulubuse Zuma’s role remains a mystery. Fleurette says: “Mr Zuma
did have some early involvement as a signatory for the companies, at
a time when it was expected that he would have a greater role to
play; however, that role did not materialise.”

**************************************************************

#PanamaPapers

How The Elite Hide Their Wealth

https://panamapapers.investigativecenters.org/

[Excerpts from page as of April 11, 2016]

The Panama Papers: About this project

The Panama Papers is an unprecedented investigation that reveals the
offshore links of some of the globe’s most prominent figures.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ),
together with the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than
100 other media partners, including the African Network of Centers
for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), spent a year sifting through
11.5 million leaked files to expose the offshore holdings of world
political leaders, links to global scandals, and details of the
hidden financial dealings of fraudsters, drug traffickers,
billionaires, celebrities, sports stars and more.

The trove of documents is likely the biggest leak of inside
information in history. It includes nearly 40 years of data from a
little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama. That firm,
Mossack Fonseca, has offices in more than 35 locations around the
globe, and is one of the world’s top creators of shell companies,
the corporate structures that can be used to hide ownership of
assets.

…

As ANCIR started researching, it discovered data disclosing 40 years
of service from Mossack Fonseca stretching from Uganda to Namibia to
Sierra Leone. The company’s questionable dealings is already well
known after being exposed by investigative journalists such as Ken
Silverstein.

ANCIR and its media partners’ investigations led to findings around
Uganda’s missing taxes from oil revenue; a mega-infrastructure deal
in Namibia connected to a FIFA-related entity; secrecy in
Steinmetz’s diamond empire; and hidden players in Angola’s Sovereign
Wealth Fund, to mention a few.

Further explosive stories from Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and
Nigeria will follow this week.

But the data revealed something far more insidious than a
willingness to look past illegal activities.

It reflects a deliberate design on the part of companies like
Mossack Fonseca to commercialise the inherent weaknesses of national
and international legal and financial regimes by bulldozing the
substance, process and purpose of “due diligence”.

Thanks to these structures – banking secrecy, opaque shell entities,
use of nominees to conceal beneficial owners etc – each year, the
continent loses some $150 billion to illicit financial flows (PDF)

[for links to these stories, and more to be added, got to the ANCIR
website home page at https://panamapapers.investigativecenters.org/]

Namibia – Leaked documents show details about a well-publicised
mafia’s business connection between a convicted mafioso and Zacky
Nujoma, the youngest son of founding president Sam Nujoma.

Uganda – Leaked documents show the paper trail of the Heritage Oil
and Gas Ltd Company’s attempts at avoiding tax payment in Uganda,
writes Tabu Butagira.

Nigeria – Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and his brother Sayyu
Dantata have been linked to shell companies in tax havens, writes
Joshua Olufemi and Emmanuel Mayah.

Kenya – Kenya’s Deputy Chief Justice Kalpana Rawal was a director
and a shareholder of four companies located in a known tax haven,
writes Jacqui Kubania

DRC – Despite international laws stipulating disclosure of the
origins of gold, a tranche of leaked documents points to unsavoury
behaviour by tax havens trading in commodities, writes Khadija
Sharife.

Botswana – The president of Botswana’s highest court, Ian Kirby, has
invested in seven offshore companies domiciled and registered in a
tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, writes Ntibinyane
Ntibinyane.

Namibia – The tender for the Walvis Bay port in Namibia is tied to a
Trinidad politician with links to Brazil’s â€˜Car Wash’ scandal,
writes Shinovene Immanuel.

Sierra Leone – Dodgy dealings within the Steinmetz Group seems to
indicate undervaluing of diamonds, which is costing Sierra Leone tax
payments, reports Khadija Sharife and Silas Gbandia.

Zimbabwe – The leaks show an offshore company called HR Consultancy
had been created to pay salaries to Zimplats, which is largely owned
by South Africa’s Impala Platinum Mines. However, it denies any
knowledge of the HR Consultancy and its purpose, writes Ray Choto.

Guinea – Leaked documents pry open the corporate structure of
companies involved in a mining rights scandal in Guinea, writes
Khadija Sharife

Senegal – Homme d’affaires sÃ©nÃ©galais a crÃ©Ã© des sociÃ©tÃ©s offshore
grÃ¢ce Ã l’entreprise Mossack Fonseca. Les documents citent Ã©galement
l’architecte Pierre Goudiaby Atepa et Aliou Sow, l’entrepreneur du
Sahel SociÃ©tÃ© des entreprises (CSE).

Tunisia – Une fuite de documents internes rÃ©vÃ¨le la crÃ©ation de
sociÃ©tÃ©s offshore via Panama et expose comment le droit tunisien est
contournÃ© pour Ã©viter de payer des impÃ´ts sur les actifs Ã
l’Ã©tranger.

Mali – Les fuites rÃ©vÃ¨lent que le milliardaire Seydou Kane , l’homme
d’affaires puissance Mali-Gabonaise, a crÃ©Ã© deux sociÃ©tÃ©s offshore.
Il est Ã©galement impliquÃ© dans une affaire de blanchiment d’argent Ã
Paris.

Tunisia – En plein entre-deux-tours de l’Ã©lection presidentielle,
Mohsen Marzouk, alors directeur de campagne de BÃ©ji Caid Essebsi,
prend contact avec Mossack Fonseca, pour ouvrir une sociÃ©tÃ©
offshore.

Senegal – Le procÃ¨s pour enrichissement illicite de Karim Wade, fils
de l’ancien prÃ©sident sÃ©nÃ©galais Abdoulaye Wade, a connu son verdict
il y a un an. Il s’Ã©tait terminÃ© avec la condamnation par la Cour de
rÃ©pression de l’enrichissement illicite (Crei) de M. Wade-fils et de
ses co-accusÃ©s Ã des peines de prison ferme.

*****************************************************

Namibia: Meeting Expectations?

worker | March 23, 2016 | 8:19 pm | Africa, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin 
March 23, 2016 (160323) 
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor's Note

"During his first year as President," according to a new report from 
Namibia's Institute for Public Policy Research," Geingob has been 
saying all the right things â€“ from declaring an all-out war on 
poverty and declaring his assets as a means of promoting 
transparency and accountability, to providing tangible action [on 
other issues]." The actual record is mixed, however, and the 
president himself has stressed that "it is time to turn words into 
reality."

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/nam1603.php, and
click on "format for print or mobile."

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/nam1603.php

With a Gini index of income inequality of 59.7, Namibia ranks among
the most unequal in the world (http://tinyurl.com/mn8how), only
slightly below South Africa's rating of 62.5 (for comparison, China
is 46.9, Mozambique 45.6, the United States 45, and the Netherlands,
Sweden, and Denmark all approximately 25). Now in its second
quarter-century after gaining independence from South Africa,
Namibia still faces the legacy of the apartheid system embedded in
its social and economic structure. Yet the mood is still one of
cautious optimism, as President Hage Geingob begins his second year
in office, and Namibia is rated by Afrobarometer as the most
tolerant among 33 countries surveyed (
http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/tol1603.php).

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from a review of
Geingob's first year, by Nangula Shejavali of Namibia's Institute
for Public Policy Research. The IPPR report contains commentary and
ratings from 10 Namibian commentators, as well as an overview by the
author.

For background articles with an analytical and critical perspective
on the dominance of Namibia's ruling party, written before the
election of President Geingob, see Henning Melber, "Post-liberation
Democratic Authoritarianism: The Case of Namibia" (
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2015.1005790) and "From Nujoma to
Geingob: 25 years of presidential democracy,"
http://tinyurl.com/h3vel3k

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++

One Year Of Geingob: An Analysis of the Namibian President's Hits 
and Misses during His First Year in Office

Special Briefing Report No. 11 , March 2016

By Nangula Shejavali

Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)

http://www.ippr.org.na

"After 25 years they (Namibian citizens) want food, clothing and 
shelter. They want jobs, better housing and good nutrition. They 
want a leader who will bring prosperity to the nation and they want 
that leader to act quickly." President Hage Geingob, 21 March 
2015

Introduction

On 21 March 2015, President Hage Geingob was inaugurated as the 
third President of the Republic of Namibia. Having received an 
overwhelming 87 per cent of the vote in the Presidential election 
on 28 November 2015, the popular Geingob assumed the role of Head 
of State with an enormous level of public confidence and great deal 
of public expectation.

Taking place on Namibia's 25th Independence Anniversary, Geingob's 
inauguration was a euphoric occasion, and the excitement in the air 
was palpable. Perhaps it was the promise of a fresher approach to 
governance. Or it may have been the fact that the new President 
hailed from a minority ethnic group, signalling a new era of 
tolerance and a profound sense of national unity. Geingob's 
inauguration speech set an impressive and inspiring tone that 
stressed inclusivity, promised that, "No Namibian should feel left 
behind!", and cemented this euphoria.

The new President committed to addressing a number of priorities for 
his administration, clearly stating that addressing "the 
socioeconomic gaps that exist in our society" would be the main 
focus of his administration. In this vein, he declared an "all-out 
war on poverty and concomitant inequality" and promised to work 
towards "catapulting the economy into a new period of faster 
growth, improved job creation and improved service delivery". 
Beyond the socioeconomic priority stated (and presented in more 
detail below), the President also promised to strengthen the 
governance architecture to ensure that government is able to 
effectively respond to these priorities; and called on the Namibian 
people to "stand together in building this new Namibian House."

It is against this background that this briefing paper provides a 
critical assessment of President Geingob's first year in office, 
drawing insights from a slew of documents, speeches, press releases 
and media reports issued since the President's inauguration. The 
paper also incorporates insights and scorecards from a handful of 
political, social and economic commentators. In his State of the 
Nation Address on April 21, which coincided with the opening of the 
6th Parliament in 2015, Geingob made a recommitment to the many 
promises made in his inaugural address, this time adding more 
specifics to his plans.

...

The President's Promises

During Geingob's first few weeks in office, he delivered some key 
speeches that set the tone for what his priorities would be during 
his presidency. Chief amongst these speeches â€“ in terms of 
highlighting his administration's priorities early on â€“ were his 
inauguration speech |21.03.2015| and his State of the Nation 
Address (SoNA) |15.04.2015|. These two speeches form the basis for 
this analysis.

In his inauguration speech, in addition to emphasising continuity 
(President Nujoma had represented peace, President Pohamba 
represented stability, and Geingob would represent prosperity), 
Geingob clearly outlined his priorities.

"The main priority for the next administration will be addressing 
the socio-economic gaps that exist in our society. Therefore, our 
first priority will be to declare all-out war on poverty and 
concomitant inequality. Our focal point will be to address 
inequality, poverty and hunger and that will involve looking at a 
range of policies and inter- ventionist strategies to tackle this 
issue."

In this regard, he noted a revised Government structure for his 
first term, that would better align existing Ministries to 
Government's objectives, enhance efficiencies, and make government 
more responsive in meeting these goals, i.e.: "poverty eradication 
and reduction of inequalities and disparities; sustainable economic 
growth and economic diversification; job creation; and improved 
service delivery."

In his State of the Nation Address on April 21, which coincided with 
the opening of the 6th Parliament in 2015, Geingob made a 
recommitment to the many promises made in his inaugural address, 
this time adding more specifics to his plans.

Eradicating poverty again featured prominently as a national 
priority, and the President used the opportunity to announce 
various initiatives in this regard, including an increase in the 
old age pension, and the introduction of a food bank. He also 
highlighted the need to tackle poverty using a multifaceted 
approach. "We will, therefore, tackle poverty from all fronts, 
through safety nets, access to quality education, and by creating 
jobs and growing the economy," he said, highlighting the renaming 
of the Labour Ministry to the Ministry of Labour, Industrial 
Relations and Job Creation.

With regards to overcoming inequalities, he noted that the 
finalisation of the economic empowerment policy framework was long 
overdue and that consultation would resume on this policy 
framework. In this vein, in his comments on the economy, he also 
noted efforts to "raise the bar regarding transformation of 
ownership structures" including the restriction of ownership over 
natural resources, the finalisation of policies such as the 
Procurement Bill and the Retail Charter, the implementation of the 
Industrial Policy and the Growth at Home Strategy; and the support 
for local business.

Access to land and affordable housing has been a major theme on the 
national agenda, with the Affirmative Repositioning movement 
further placing the issue particularly of urban housing â€“ front 
and centre of much of the policy discourse. In this regard, the 
President reaffirmed his "personal commitment to addressing land 
reform and provision of affordable housing to all Namibians", and 
highlighted various (possible) measures to accelerate the delivery 
of serviced land and housing.

In the SoNA, Geingob also announced the introduction of free 
secondary school education, encouraged the private sector to do 
more with regards to skills development and training, and noted the 
importance of quality and affordable health services.

He touched on the issue of combating corruption, encouraging the 
nation to report instances of corruption in its many forms to the 
Anti Corruption Commission. He also highlighted the need for public 
officials to avoid conflicts of interest, and encouraged them to 
disclose their assets. In this vein, in a much welcome move, he 
announced that he would disclose his assets through an independent 
assessment by PWC.

...

In both his Inaugural Speech and the State of the Nation address, 
Geingob highlighted and drove home a metaphor to illustrate his 
presidency's emphasis on inclusivity â€“ the analogy of The Namibian 
House. In the SoNA, he stated, "We are intent on building and 
maintaining a high quality house in which all its residents have a 
sense of shared identity. We are determined to build a house that 
will be a place of peace and refuge for all its children and a 
house in which no Namibian will be left out."
 
...

Overall Assessment

On the whole, President Geingob's performance in his first year of 
office has been a mixed bag made up of some great rhetoric, 
wonderful intentions, interesting policy pronouncements, and some 
sound action and consultation on certain policies. There have also 
been actions that have seemingly contradicted the positive rhetoric 
and some inaction on certain issues, raising question marks about 
how much progress can be achieved.

During his first year as President, Geingob has been saying all the 
right things â€“ from declaring an all-out war on poverty and 
declaring his assets as a means of promoting transparency and 
accountability, to providing tangible action with respect to 
national reconciliation, initiating consultation and early action 
on the urban land/housing crisis and reviving the policy review on 
economic transformation. That said, however, the President's first 
year in office has been focused on laying the grounds for the 
action and change he wishes to implement.

In a way, the President has admitted as much, stating during the 
opening of the third session of the current parliament that 2015 
was a year of talk, and 2016 would have to be a year of action. In 
the regard, he stated: "The year 2015 can be described as a call to 
arms. It was the year in which as President, I endeavoured to rally 
the nation behind a shared Vision through themes such as, War on 
Poverty, War against corruption, No Namibian Must feel left out and 
Harambee. I am certain that by embracing these themes and applying 
them to our policy making decisions, one day we will be able to 
eradicate poverty. In 2016, it is time to turn words into reality, 
it is time to implement and therefore I refer to this year as the 
Year of Implementation." That said, although the groundwork was 
being laid in his first year in office â€“ seen with the stating and 
restating of the Poverty Eradication, Harambee, and Namibian House 
mantras, there is still plenty to assess of the President's 
performance based on the promises made when he came to office.

The Hits

Geingob entered office on a titanic wave of support and with huge 
public expectation, and before taking the helm (i.e. during his 
time as President-elect), made some announcements that helped to 
set a strong tone for his presidency. In terms of service delivery, 
these included instructing those on the Swapo party list who would 
be serving in Parliament to submit their CVs to ensure that they 
were placed in offices where their expertise would best serve the 
nation. This was certainly a welcome move, which he noted in his 
100 days self-assessment by stating: "As you are aware, Cabinet 
Ministers were selected and allocated to various ministries based 
on their qualifications and level of expertise, after thorough 
analysis of their Curriculum Vitae, which I had requested. These 
appointments have rejuvenated the people as well as the ministries 
themselves." The President underlined the seriousness of this 
approach by naming and shaming those who had not submitted their 
resumes by the deadline.

As President-Elect, Geingob also announced the creation of the 
Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare to fast-track 
efforts to address poverty, wealth inequality and food insecurity. 
In his words: "The establishment of the Ministry of Poverty 
Eradication and Social Welfare is meant to ensure the co- 
ordination, implementation and evaluation of government programmes 
aimed at poverty eradication. This Ministry comes as a realisation 
that poverty eradication programmes are cross-cutting, and are 
developed and implemented by various government ministries but 
requires focus and co-ordination."

The poverty eradication mantra has been present in most of the 
President's speeches, and in his March 2016 meeting with former 
Presidents Sam Nujoma and Hifikepunye Pohamba, he made sure to 
explain that the Harambee Prosperity Plan "will complement our 
National Development Plans and Vision 2030. 6 It therefore, 
recognises and builds on your successes and achievements. It is 
designed to have high impact and take us closer to the attainment 
of Vision 2030." The President has announced plans to reveal the 
Harambee Prosperity Plan during his 2016 State of the Nation 
Address in mid-April 2016.

Encouragingly, there has also been positive action to follow on the 
promises made in his unifying inaugural speech. For example, he 
took action on increasing the old age pension grant from the measly 
N$600 previously granted to the elderly to N$1,000 in 2015 and 
N$1,100 for the current budget year (with another increase expected 
in 2017), in an effort to help reduce poverty; and has announced 
the creation of food banks to reduce food insecurity in the 
country, which has now been budgeted for in the 2016-2017 budget. 
Analysts have cautioned that the food banks should not become a 
bureaucratic burden and efforts should be made to ensure the 
intended recipients of food aid are the ones who receive the 
support. In this regard, the exact modalities of the plan are still 
unknown, although the Cuban government will provide support and 
advice based on their own experiences. He has also announced the 
introduction of a Basic Income Grant, although the details are 
still far from clear.

Related to poverty reduction efforts and the extension of 
opportunities for all, the President has also done well in seeing 
through reforms set out by his predecessor for free secondary 
education. His major challenge with regards to education, however, 
is ensuring that learners receive high quality education to enhance 
their life chances, and to fully exploit their potential. A clear 
strategy to enhance educational outcomes remains unclear.

With regards to governance, President Geingob has also made various 
efforts to ensure that his administration is delivering on the 
promises made to the people. He requested all Ministers to submit 
their Declarations of Intent to "outline their promises to the 
public". He held an induction seminar for Cabinet members early on 
in his Presidency "to take Cabinet through key important concepts, 
thinking and approaches that will mark the tenure of my Presidency. 
These include: good governance and ethics, poverty eradication, 
reduction of income disparities, accelerated economic growth, job 
creation and rapid industrialization." And he ensured that 
Performance Agreements (in line with the Declarations) were set in 
place to monitor the performance of his Ministers.

President Geingob has worked hard to ensure he remains a true 
ambassador of his Namibian House analogy, in which "no Namibian 
should feel left out", and, as promised, the focus of his efforts 
have remained on mending socio-economic gaps in Na- mibian society 
(particularly on poverty reduction). His public engagement through 
town hall meetings was evidence of this. According to his reports 
on these meetings, "During the period under consideration, we 
covered close to 14 thousand kilometers on road and by plane, sat 
into a collective 93 hours of town hall meet- ings, listening 
attentively to participants and meticulously documenting questions, 
observations and suggestions. We received in excess of 2400 
questions and ideas from Namibians from all walks of life. We are 
committed to respond to all questions in a formalized manner." At 
this stage, we can only assume that the formalized manner in which 
these questions will be responded to is in the embodiment of the 
Harambee Plan.

The President's consultative approach could also be seen in his 
meeting with members of the Affirmative Repositioning movement on 
the issue of urban housing, engaging the public on social media 
platforms (particularly on his Facebook page), and ensuring that 
public input is sought on critical Bills such as the New Equitable 
Economic Empowerment Framework, which deals with the economic 
transformation he spoke of in his 2015 SoNA. He has noted that, "We 
will continue engaging and consulting with stakeholders like 
farmers, the media, trade unions, youth, women and the private 
sector. These consultations will go hand in hand with a drive 
towards implementation and transformation of workable suggestions 
into actions." The 24 July 2015 consultations with the AR movement 
resulted in a plan to clear tens of thousands of plots countrywide 
for forthcoming housing projects aimed at low earners.

The President received praise â€“ along with First Lady, Monica 
Geingos â€“ for setting a personal example in declaring his assets. 
In his speech on that day, he stated that, "It is clear that in 
administering a nation, one has to be transparent and accountable. 
It is for this reason that I have decided to declare my assets in 
public, for your scrutiny." During that press conference, it was 
declared that, "Geingob's assets are worth over N$50 million while 
the First Lady's assets range from N$45 to N$60 million in equity."

...

The Misses

Despite the above-noted 'hits', the President has also missed some 
key opportunities to really shine, and to respond to the pressing 
needs of our time.

While pushing the poverty eradication agenda, he has been seen to 
spend excessively on a big government (with some Ministries having 
more than one Deputy Minister), as well as highly paid advisors, 
some of whom reportedly earn more than Ministers. While the 
Constitution does provide for the President to have advisors, the 
pay packages awarded to these advisors and to the extra Deputy 
Ministers have raised concern amongst analysts, and has added an 
extra burden on the state's coffers at the same time as Namibia's 
debt rises to worrying levels. While the amounts themselves may not 
be huge in terms of the budget as a whole, an expanded executive is 
symbolic and potentially sends the wrong message about priorities.

...

The size of the Executive, and the seeming excesses afforded to the 
President's advisors â€“ dubbed the A team â€“ have perhaps been the 
cause of the heaviest criticism the President has faced thus far. 
And while he means well in surrounding himself with the people he 
believes can best effect the change he wishes to create, many have 
continued to question the 'value add' of some of the advisors and 
what change they will actually effect. Indeed, given the expense of 
this team, and the clear need for transformation voiced by the 
President himself in his inaugural speech, one would hope for more 
concrete action. The President has announced that he will unveil 
the details of the Harambee Prosperity Plan during his second State 
of the Nation address, and there is hope that the socio-economic 
transformation that will come about as a result of the plan will 
bring about the prosperity the President has promised, and in so 
doing assure the nation of the advisors' value.

In response to the criticisms levelled with regard to the expense of 
the A-team (specifically responding to the criticism raised at The 
Namibian's #100DaysOfGeingob event), the President defended his 
selections, stating that: "There was commentary that the Namibian 
House is too expensive. I would like to say that any good house is 
expensive. Furthermore, one only worries about the expenses if the 
resources are being wasted without any delivery. It is therefore 
fair to give the Team Hage a chance and if it fails to deliver then 
you can pass a verdict. I have high expectations on the performance 
of these individuals, and will therefore be the first person to 
take them to task in case of non-performance."

...

The President has shown his defensive nature on several fronts, 
often claiming the media bends the truth, tells outright lies, or 
fails to understand his vision.

...

On fighting corruption, although the President set a positive 
personal example in declaring his assets, he has not insisted that 
members of Cabinet and other MPs be publicly accountable, and a new 
National Assembly asset register has yet to be published a year 
after MPs were sworn in. In this regard, although he has â€“ in word 
â€“ encouraged the disclosure of assets, he has missed important 
opportunities to show broader transparency and accountability by 
enforcing this practice at a broader level. Further, while his 
rhetoric on the fight against corruption has been strong, real 
action has been lacking, and there is some public skepticism about 
certain tenders that the President has been reported to have 
defended â€“ e.g. the controversial airport tender and the Xaris 
deal, amongst others.

...

Unemployment (particularly youth unemployment) remains effectively 
unattended to, despite mentions of the problem in various speeches. 
Although the President has engaged the private sector on various 
platforms, this has not produced results in terms of job creation. 
Unlike the plans announced for welfare projects to ensure poverty 
reduction, when it comes to job creation and enterprise 
development, equally if not more important in reducing poverty and 
inequality, the Geingob administration has done little.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

******************************************************

Africa/Global: Making Choices on Climate Future

worker | March 9, 2016 | 7:26 pm | Africa, Climate Change, environmental crisis, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
March 9, 2016 (160309)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

The choices for the future of the planet’s climate are ever more
stark in 2016. While the “incumbency” fossil-fuel system (as analyst
Jeremy Leggett terms it) remains powerful, the trends favoring a
more rapid transition to renewable energy are building much more
rapidly than almost anyone expected. Coal is clearly on the way out,
with the possible exception of South Africa, which continues to
invest in this outdated and deadly technology. And downward cost
trends in solar, wind, battery storage, and other renewable
technologies continue to accelerate both in developed and in
developing countries.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/clim1603.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/clim1603.php

According to GTM Research, the U.S. solar market is set to grow a
staggering 119 percent this year, while new reports also forecast
rapid growth globally and in Africa for “pico-solar” solutions
reaching those without access to electricity, with major positive
impact on income, health, and the environment. Meanwhile, however,
most countries are also still pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy
strategy which has not yet abandoned new investment in the most
damaging alternatives such as coal mining and fracking.

[See http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/sa1503.php on South Africa.
And on the United States, in the midst of unresolved policy debates
over energy policy, note the Washington Post editorial passionately
depending fracking against the critique by candidate Bernie Sanders
http://tinyurl.com/zst4oeo).

This AfricaFocus contains (1) excerpts from a report from the
Overseas Development Institute on the rapid advance of off-grid
solar markets in sub-Saharan Africa, (2) a press release from
GroundWork South Africa on the failure of environmental assessment
of a new proposed new coal plant, and (3) an overview by Jeremy
Leggett of global trends moving towards renewable energy and the
looming (if uncertain in timing) death spiral for the economic
viability not only of coal but also of oil and gas.

For an up-to-date global overview of off-grid solar market trends,
see the report by Lighting Global and Bloomberg New Energy Finance,
published March 3, 2016 http://www.lightingglobal.org – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/ja35yng

For the latest GreenTechMedia Research on the U.S. solar market,
released on March 9, see http://tinyurl.com/hhhmstb

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletin’s on climate change and the
environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Accelerating access to electricity in Africa with off-grid solar

Andrew Scott, Johanna Diecker, Kat Harrison, Charlie Miller, Ryan
Hogarth and Susie Wheeldon

January 2016

Overseas Development Institute http://www.odi.org – direct URL
http://tinyurl.com/h2oay8f

The reports from this study include an executive summary, excerpted
below, as well as case studies from 13 different African countries
(Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra
Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.)

Introduction

Today, more than one person in five lives without access to
electricity; 48% are in Africa. Around 80% of those without access
to modern energy live in rural areas. Given the high cost and slow
pace of grid expansion to rural areas, decentralised options are
often the cheapest and fastest way to extend energy access (IEA,
2014). Solar PV systems are the cheapest source of electricity for
over one-third of Africa’s population – a figure that is rapidly
increasing with falling solar prices.

There is now a wide variety of technical options that can provide
off-grid solar electricity to individual households. These solutions
to the challenge of energy access range from pico-solar lanterns
(with a capacity of under 3 watts) to large solar home systems
(above 2kW capacity), which power several lights and electrical
appliances. New models of financing and distribution, as well as the
development of pico-solar lanterns, have been instrumental in
enabling low-income households to gain access to solar energy (SzabÃ³
et al. 2013). This report considers the full range of solar devices,
using terms such as â€˜solar households solutions’ or â€˜solar off-grid
options’, except where it specifically refers to solar lanterns or
larger solar home systems (SHS).

This report was prepared for the Department for International
Development in support of preparations for the Energy Africa access
campaign, which aims to accelerate access to electricity in sub-
Saharan Africa through solar household solutions. It presents
evidence of the impact of solar household systems, reviews the
market in the region and 13 selected countries (listed in Table 1
below), and identifies the key policy measures to enable accelerated
access to electricity through solar household solutions.

The impact of solar household solutions

Impact on household finances

Poor households tend to spend a higher fraction of their income on
energy, often for vastly inferior levels of energy services. Rural
families across Africa spend ~10% of household income for 4 hours of
light at night using kerosene, torches or candles. Families with a
solar light save over $60 a year, spending just 2% of their
household income on lighting (SolarAid, 2012-15). Lighting Africa
(2010) reported that replacing kerosene lamps with solar lights
could offer returns on investment of 15-45 times the cost of the
light. The Africa Progress Panel (2015) reported that halving the
cost of inefficient lighting sources would save $50 billion for
people living below $2.50 per day. It estimated that these monetary
saving would be sufficient to reduce poverty by 16-26 million
people.

Moreover, households with access to a solar product that charges a
mobile phone can save money on charging fees. Off-grid households in
Africa spend on average $0.66 a week charging mobile phones, and
travel 28 minutes one- way to the nearest charging station
(SolarAid, 2012-15).

Impact on quality of lighting

Beyond financial savings, solar users benefit from extra lighting
hours and better quality and more reliable lighting. A SolarAid
(2012-15) survey found after purchasing a pico-solar light,
households increased the amount of time that they light their home
from 3.8 to 5 hours per night.

Impact on income generation

Improved quality and quantity of lighting can create opportunities
for income-generating activities by increasing the time available
for productive work. A number of studies found the availability of
solar lighting after sunset increased the likelihood that
enterprises will generate additional income by extending their
working hours. Solar products that enable energy services beyond
lighting create further income generating opportunities. Mobile
phone charging businesses are particularly common. Solar- powered
pumps also offer an increasingly attractive option for small-scale
irrigation systems, but often with capital costs that are too high
for low-income households.

Impact on health

By replacing kerosene lanterns, solar systems can help reduce
household air pollution. The fine particulates emitted by kerosene-
using devices exceed WHO guidelines. They impair lung function and
increase infectious illness (including tuberculosis), asthma, and
cancer risks. Poor lighting from kerosene lanterns is also
associated with compromised visual health (UNICEF, 2015).
Epidemiological evidence on the morbidity and mortality associated
with kerosene lighting is currently inconclusive.

Solar household systems can also keep families and communities safer
by replacing the use of flame-based lighting, thereby reducing
burns, accidents and fires. Poisoning often occurs as kerosene is
commonly sold in soda bottles and it can be mistaken for soda.
UNICEF (2015) reported that the primary cause of child poisoning in
developing countries is accidental kerosene ingestion, and burns are
identified as one of the leading causes of child injury. One third
of SolarAid (2014-15) customers interviewed in Uganda had
experienced fires, burns and/or poisoning from kerosene.

Beyond improving health through safe household lighting, larger
solar PV systems can improve the functioning of rural health
facilities by enabling better lighting, ICT for administration,
information, and aftercare services; laboratory equipment and
refrigeration for the storage of vaccines, blood and other medical
supplies. Over 30% of all health facilities in sub-Saharan African,
serving approximately 255 million people, lack access to electricity
(Practical Action, 2013).

Impact on education

There is clear evidence that better access to lighting provides
children with opportunities to increase the quality and time of
their study/homework. SolarAid (2012-15) found that school children
in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia rated limited lighting as
their main barrier to learning and do homework. After obtaining a
solar light, children increased their study time on average from 1.7
to 3.2 hours each night. Other studies found similar improvements,
but to differing degrees. Larger solar PV systems can also provide
rural schools with electricity. Practical Action (2013) estimated
that 65% of primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 90
million pupils, lack electricity.

Impact on the environment

Worldwide, kerosene lamps emit an estimated 270,000 tonnes of black
carbon per year, causing a climate warming equivalent of close to
240 million tonnes of CO 2 , a magnitude similar to the annual
emissions of Vietnam (Lam et al., 2012; WRI, 2015). Alstone et al.
(2015) estimated doing that, when black carbon is accounted, the
climate forcing from households using kerosene lighting is nearly 10
times as high as that of the typical grid-connected households in
Kenya. Harrison & Lam (2015) found that switching from kerosene to
solar can reduce annual household emissions by as much as 555kg CO 2
e.

An outcome of the growth in sales of solar household systems will be
the associated increase in electronic waste. Recycling and
electronic waste facilities are uncommon in Africa and there is a
low level of awareness of the risks, of battery disposal for
example. Some organisations have started recycling trials.

Impact on quality of life

SHSs can have significant positive impacts on quality of life. In
Bangladesh, 82% of SHS users agreed that their system had increased
their social status, stating that neighbours and relatives from
other villages visited their houses more often to enjoy the clean
lighting. Their SHS increased the amount of time that they engaged
in social activities (Urmee & Harries, 2011). In Africa, 85% of
pico- solar users said their solar light affected the activities
they were able to do at night (SolarAid, 2012-15).

Impact on communications and access to information

Solar household systems that offer more than just lighting can
significantly improve communications and access to information. In
Uganda, 80% of phone owners charged their phones using solar
systems, suggesting that access to SHS enables telecommunication in
non-electrified areas (Harsdorff et al., 2009). Access to reliable
and affordable charging for mobile phones can also facilitate access
to financial services such as mobile money; allowing rural and/or
unbanked populations to be served. In Bangladesh, 95% of SHS users
reported improved access to information through mobile phone, TV or
radio. Many agreed that by watching TV or listening to the radio
they had greater access to information and were more informed about
general news, health-related issues, weather and natural disasters
(Urmee & Harries, 2011).

Impact on livelihoods: through solar supply chain The development of
the solar market creates jobs and income-generation opportunities
throughout the supply chain. In Bangladesh, the Africa Progress
Panel (2015) found 114,000 jobs in solar panel assembly were created
in the last 10 years. Up to 15,000 new jobs have been created in
sub-Saharan Africa through the distribution of off-grid lighting
(UNEP, 2014).

The market for solar household solutions

The market for quality-certified solar products has grown rapidly
over the past five years, reaching almost 3.5 million units in 2014.
This market grew by 165% between 2011 and 2012, and by 204% between
2012 and 2013. The rate of increase fell to 27% between 2013 and
2014, and it may have declined in the first half of 2015.

Good market information about non-certified products is unavailable,
but Lighting Africa estimated that they had a 57% share of the total
market in 2012 (Lighting Africa, 2012). If non-certified products
are taken into account, the growth in the overall market may be
continuing.

Three countries – Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia – accounted for 78%
of the sales in 2014, reaching a market penetration of 15-20% of
off-grid households. These countries have a comparatively supportive
policy environment for solar household solutions. For the region as
a whole, market penetration is estimated to be around 3%.

The development of pay-as-you-go business models, which aim for high
customer density, and the growth trend of existing companies,
suggest that markets are likely to expand outward from their
existing location.

…

The main current trend is the emergence of the pay- as-you-go (PAYG)
model, under which ownership of the solar product is transferred to
the consumer after a limited payment period. The PAYG market is very
dynamic, with new approaches appearing quickly, companies changing
their approach, and others disappearing from the market. A recent
survey found that 60% of PAYG companies use mobile payments to
collect revenue (Lighting Global, 2015).

…

A simple model was therefore developed for the study, to understand
what it would take to achieve universal access to electricity under
three scenarios: Business as Usual, Sustainable Energy for All, and
Power for All. These scenarios assume universal access is achieved
by 2080, 2030 and 2025, respectively. The model under these
scenarios was applied to market in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole and
to the market in 13 selected countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,
Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia,
Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

**************************************************

GroundWork And SDCEA Appeal Colenso Environmental Authorisation

groundWork (Friends of the South Africa)
South Durban Community Environmental Alliance

Media Advisory

March 3, 2016

http://www.groundwork.org.za – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/jsh7qrh

Durban & Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 3 March 2016 – groundWork
and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA),
represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights,Â Â on 1 March
2016 launched an appeal to the Minister of Environmental Affairs
against the environmental authorisation granted to Colenso Power
(Pty) Ltd for its proposed coal-fired power station near the town of
Colenso.

The entire Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process was
conducted within just a few months, in keeping with the severely-
restricted timeframes in the latest EIA Regulations. groundWork and
SDCEA argue that these timeframes fail to provide an adequate
opportunity to assess the significant negative impacts the power
station is set to have on people and their ability to live in a
clean, healthy environment, or for interested and affected parties
to participate meaningfully in the EIA process.

“The DEA has not applied its mind to this environmental
authorisation, but instead pushed through the authorisation without
adequately considering critical impacts that the power station will
have on water, air quality, human health and climate change”, said
Bobby Peek, Director of groundWork, which is based in
Pietermaritzburg.

The appeal states that the Chief Director (as the relevant
Department of Environmental Affairs’ (DEA) decision-maker) failed,
in granting the authorisation, to give adequate consideration to,
for example: The National Environmental Management Act (NEMA)
Principles, the NEMA s24O factors, the need for and desirability of
the station and whether the application for the authorisation
included an assessment of all the impacts, including cumulative
impacts, of the proposed coal-fired power station. This is so
because the environmental impact report (EIR) for the power station:

* neglects to provide information which is crucial for purposes of
adequately assessing the proposed station’s impacts – for example,
the report does not state where and how the power station will
obtain two-thirds of the coal it will need to operate;

* contains incorrect information (for example, estimations of the
power station’s greenhouse gas emissions and total water
requirements which are significantly below the true extent of these
emissions and the actual quantities of water required); and

* fails to assess adequately the impacts that the power station will
have on, for example, climate change, air quality, water, and human
health.

The appeal also emphasises the impact of the current drought in
KwaZulu Natal. The failure to give this any consideration in
assessing the water impacts that the power station will have –
particularly on the Thukela river, and the communities and other
users that already depend on it is another ground on which the
authorisation should be set aside.

The Chief Director cannot be said to have met the NEMA requirements
or considered the impacts of the proposed power station, in
circumstances where the EIR is incorrect and lacks fundamental
information and assessments. In addition, the conditions and
mitigation measures proposed in the authorisation are vague. They
lack the necessary detail and rigour to limit harm to the
environment and human health once the power station starts
operating.

By granting this appeal, the DEA is setting the standard for one of
the first Coal Baseload Independent Power Producers to use 198m3 of
water per day – a conservative amount given by the EIR – in a
country where one million people already do not have access to the
minimum quota of 25 litres of potable water per day. Colenso Power
is looking to the Tugela River Catchment to source its water,
despite the country being in the midst of a severe drought.

If the declaration of the Highveld Air Priority Area has shown us
anything, it is that coal-fired power stations have a severely
detrimental effect on the health and well-being of people living in
their vicinity. Yet, and despite groundWork calling upon it to do
so, Colenso Power neglected to conduct a health study as part of
their EIA.

According to Desmond D’sa, Coordinator of the SDCEA, “The model of
development which has rested on the myth of mining as a source of
wealth for all, is slowly crumbling in the public sphere. Mine
workers across the country are disgruntled with indecent conditions
and low wages for risky work. Those that live next to mines and
power stations, but are without employment, are realising that such
‘development’ has largely been made up of empty promises.”

Contacts

Bobby Peek
groundWork, Director
Tel (w): +27 (0) 33 342 5662
Tel (m): +27 (0) 82 464 1383
Email: bobby@groundwork.org.za

Desmond D’sa
Coordinator, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
Tel (w): +27 (0) 31 461 1991
Tel (m): +27 (0) 83 982 6939
Email: desmond@sdceango.co.za

***********************************************************

State of The Transition, February: “Most fossil fuel companies face
a future in which they might not have the capital to expand even if
they still want to.”

Jeremy Leggett, March 1, 2016

http://www.jeremyleggett.net – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zuykvoh

[Excerpts. For full article see link above.]

The top ten stories from the drama of the Paris Climate Summit in
December and its aftermath through to end February are, I think, as
follows, as things stand. Key policymakers are now serious about
climate risk. Civil society has awoken in critical mass. Regulators
are beginning to regulate climate risk. Disruption is moving faster
than most people think. Utilities are racing to escape a death
spiral. The shale boom is going bust. The oil and gas industry faces
the prospect of a death spiral too. Divestment from the energy
incumbency threatens to snowball. Investor engagement with the
incumbency, in concert with unfavourable economics, will soon
threaten most capital expenditure on fossil-fuel expansion. The
legal system is fast becoming a driver for the global energy
transition.

…

3. Regulators are beginning to regulate climate risk

Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg were key players in Paris. Carney,
the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the
Financial Stability Board, is the man most responsible for the
stability of the global capital markets. He intends to ensure
investors are provided with the right information so that they can
respond to the risks of climate change, and the threat of stranded
assets, by switching capital from fossil fuels to clean energy.
Bloomberg agreed in Paris to Chair an elite committee of business
leaders, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures,
that will make that happen. Behind closed doors, their deliberations
are already underway. Investors are waiting, sensitised to the need
for major change in the way the capital markets approach climate
change. This will be a vital drama to follow this year and next.
Expect significant diversion of capital away from fossil fuels as a
consequence.

4. Disruption is moving faster than most people think

Meanwhile, exciting news continues to flow for both renewables and
storage. Renewables accounted for almost two-thirds of new US
generating capacity in 2015, we learned in February: 3,500 times
more than coal. Almost 8 gigawatts of new wind was installed, and
more than 2 gigawatts of solar. Storage is heading for a
breakthrough year globally in 2016, industry analyses suggest.
Batteries lead the way, with an average price reduction of 35% in
2015.

…

6. The shale boom is going bust

We entered February with the low oil price accelerating the
mothballing of active oil and gas drilling rigs in the US shale
regions. The rig count is now down 70% from the peak in October
2014. Four of Americaâ€™s shale gas regions had become void of all
drilling. We left the month with junk-rated debt accumulated by oil
companies in excess of $250bn, and debt issuance to the oil industry
grinding to a halt. One estimate, by Morningstar, suggests that
globally oil has to reach $65 a barrel to cover the average cost of
supply. Brent crude in February averaged little above $30 and on two
days averaged below $30. The IEA warned in February that the global
glut is such that the oil price would stay low for some time.

…

7. The oil and gas industry faces the prospect of a death spiral too

Bankruptcy is not just a concern for shale drillers. The low oil
price has meant that some $400bn of expected investment has been
cancelled or delayed, to date. Morgan Stanley calculates that out of
more than 230 projects ready to go this year, only nine are now
realistic. And if you are not drilling for new oil and gas, and
depleting existing reserves, how do you grow and generate cash in
the future? Especially if, as we have seen, explosive growth of cars
that need no oil is assaulting your market.

…

8. Divestment from the energy incumbency threatens to snowball

Institutions with well over $3 trillion of funds under management
are now divested or pledged to do so, and the movement is growing.
If anyone felt inclined to suggest that this isnâ€™t a significant
threat to the oil industry, it became more difficult for them to do
so on February 25th, when Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi Arabiaâ€™s Minister of
Petroleum & Mineral Resources, exhorted his industry to combat
divestment. â€œWe must not ignore the misguided campaign to â€˜keep it
in the groundâ€™ and hope it will go awayâ€, he said.

…

9. Investor engagement with the incumbency, in concert with
unfavouable economics, will soon threaten most capital expenditure
on fossil-fuel expansion

[Even] Investors who donâ€™t divest give no free pass to oil and gas
companies. The lesson of coal is there for all to see, and many
investors have been badly burned by it. Share prices have collapsed
spectacularly. Banks including Goldman Sachs have concluded that the
coal industry is in structural decline. The bankruptcies to date
include Americaâ€™s second biggest miner, Arch Coal. Pressure is
inevitably extending to the oil and gas industry. ExecutivesÂ are
seeing previously unchallenged assertions and business models
interrogated as never before. Given everything summarised above, how
can this be expected to do anything but worsen in 2016?

*****************************************************

USA/Africa: Rising Opposition to Tax Evasion

worker | February 29, 2016 | 8:11 pm | Africa, political struggle | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
February 29, 2016 (160229)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“We said we were advising an African minister who had accumulated
millions of dollars, and we wanted to buy a Gulfstream Jet, a
brownstone and a yacht. We said we needed to get the money into the
U.S. without detection. … the results were shocking; all but one
of the the lawyers had suggestions on how to move the funds.” Global
Witness (see excerpts from report below, as well as link to full
report and video documentation)

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/tax1602.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/tax1602.php

The global systems of tax evasion (and we should add tax avoidance,
for cases in which such illicit maneuvers may be technically legal
due to faulty laws and clever lawyers) are pervasive. Africa and
other developing regions suffer the most, as highlighted by the Stop
the Bleeding Africa campaign. But every country on every continent
is affected, as resources that could be used the public good are
drained into the pockets of the rich and powerful.

Before you read further, go to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nDPKiWSTXI to check out the Stop
the Bleeding Africa song, with audio, lyrics, and photos, and
distribute widely in your networks. The song is expected to win the
best activist anthem award in the Honesty Oscars (
http://www.honestyoscars.org/). Voting is now closed and the
announcement will be made tomorrow.

This AfricaFocus contains several press releases and excerpts from
recent reports, as well as links to other reports highlighting how
the happens, from Nairobi to New York and throughout the global
economy.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on tax justice and illicit
financial flows, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

For ongoing coverage of these issues, AfricaFocus strongly
recommends
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fact-coalition (primary
focus on U.S. policy and advocacy; sign-up requires contacting the
owner) and https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/afritax (primary
focus on Africa; open sign-up)

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Roundup of Recent News & Press Releases

“Treasury keen to evade Parliament in Mauritius tax row,” Daily
Nation, Nairobi, Feb. 4, 2016 http://tinyurl.com/zm4jtm3 [For
background see Tax Justice Network-Africa press release from Nov. 2,
2015 http://tinyurl.com/zsglcd9]

Zambian civil society calls for beneficial ownership transparency in
regulations for extractive industry, Publish What You Pay Zambia and
Center for Trade Policy and Development, 14 Jan., 2016
http://tinyurl.com/zc44zl8

Former President Thabo Mbeki and delegation from UNECA High Level
Panel on Illicit Financial Flow from Africa visit Washington, DC to
urge action to curtail illicit flows from Africa See press release
from Global Financial Integrity, Feb. 19, 2016
http://tinyurl.com/zwmn75a

Americans for Tax Fairness, “Pfizer: Price Gouger, Tax Dodger”
Feb. 25, 2016 – on how Pfizer’s “inversion” (selling itself to a
foreign subsidiary) may allow it to dodge some $35 billion in taxes.
Note that such inversions have been denounced by both Democratic
candidates for president.
http://tinyurl.com/j29dzzu

Global Financial Integrity (GFI) update on illicit financial flows,
covering 2004-2013 http://tinyurl.com/gq66oy6 – includes latest
estimate of IFF from sub-Saharan Africa $74.6 billion in 2013;
average of $67.5 billion a year over the 10-year period.

[Note from AfricaFocus editor: These numbers are estimates, and
almost certainly underestimates, as both GFI and the Mbeki report
acknowledge. But for those of you using figures from earlier reports
such as “in excess of $50 billion to $60 billion a year,” it’s now
time to update the numbers and start talking about at least $65
billion to $70 billion.]

*******************************************

Lowering The Bar
: How American Lawyers Told Us How to
Funnel Suspect Funds into The United States

Global Witness

January 2016

https://www.globalwitness.org/shadyinc/

Brief excerpts only. For videos and full report go to the link
above.

Global Witness has previously looked at a whole range of crimes, and
found they all had one thing in common. They were all carried out by
anonymous company owners, who are able to skirt U.S. laws and
launder money through our financial system. If these sham companies
did not exist, those crimes would be far harder to commit.

Anonymous companies do great damage to society. Warlords and
dictators use them to steal from their people and stash the loot in
places like the U.S. A violent Mexican drug cartel called the Zetas
used American companies to launder its profits. The Iranian
government has used them to evade sanctions. Credit card scammers,
mobsters, tax evaders and other criminals routinely use them to rip
off innocent citizens or threaten U.S. interests and get away with
it.

The crazy thing is, these companies are often set up in the U.S. –
it is one of the easiest places in the world to do this legally.

To prove our point, we went undercover and approached 13 New York
law firms. We deliberately posed as someone designed to raise red
flags for money laundering.

We said we were advising an African minister who had accumulated
millions of dollars, and we wanted to buy a Gulfstream Jet, a
brownstone and a yacht. We said we needed to get the money into the
U.S. without detection.

To be clear, the meetings with the lawyers were all preliminary.
None of the law firms took our investigator on as a client, and no
money was moved.

Nonetheless, the results were shocking; all but one of the the
lawyers had suggestions on how to move the funds. To see what some
of them said, watch the video below

…

he key findings from the investigation are:

Lawyers from 12 of the 13 firms we visited suggested using anonymous
companies or trusts to hide the minister’s assets. All but one of
these firms recommended using American companies.

One of the lawyers who provided suggestions on how to move the funds
was James Silkenat, the President of the American Bar Association at
the time.

Several lawyers suggested using their law firms’ own bank accounts
to help prevent U.S. banks realizing whose money it really was, or
to have the lawyer act as a trustee of an offshore trust and use
this position to open a bank account.

While most of the lawyers asked for some information about the
minister, and his source of funds, only one lawyer refused to
provide assistance during the meeting itself.

A number, including Mr. Silkenat, indicated they would need to carry
out more checks before they could take our investigator on as a
client. Mr. Silkenat also indicated that he had to make sure that no
crimes had been committed and, if so, would have to report them.

None of the lawyers broke the law. To find out more about the
investigation, including the responses we received from the lawyers
featured read our briefing paper.

…

Ultimately, this is not about individual lawyers – it’s about what
is wrong with the law. The tactics described in the film are
commonplace. It is simply too easy to hide who you you are and what
you are doing behind companies.

This has to change. You can help fix this problem, and help cut off
some of today’s worst crimes at the source.

…

This is what is needed to fix the problem:

* The U.S. should put information about who ultimately owns and
controls American companies into the public domain for all to see.
At present, the lack of information available on the people behind
American companies is a gift to individuals who want to use them to
hide their identity and move their loot.

* The people who set up companies and trusts – lawyers, accountants
and company service providers – should be required to be on the
lookout for money laundering. At present none of these people are
required to carry out anti-money laundering checks on their
customers. They should be, especially when they are carrying out
activities such as setting up companies and managing clients’ money.

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Mistreated: How shady tax treaties are fuelling inequality and
poverty

ActionAid International

February 23, 2016

http://www.actionaid.org – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/zwlyynl

For more information, contact Savior Mwambwa, Tax Power Campaign
Manager, in Johannesburg. Email: savior.mwambwa@actionaid.org

Executive Summary

Women and girls in the world’s poorest countries need good schools
and hospitals. To pay for this, these countries urgently need more
tax revenue. A little-known mechanism by which countries lose
corporate tax revenue is a global network of binding tax treaties
between countries. This report marks the release of the ActionAid
tax treaties dataset – original research that makes these tax deals
made with some of the world’s poorest countries easily comparable
and open to public scrutiny.

Tax avoidance strategies used by some multinational corporations
deprive the world’s most impoverished communities of vital revenues.
Tax revenue is one of the most important, sustainable and
predictable sources of public finance there is. It is a crucial part
of the journey towards a world free from poverty – funding lasting
improvements in public services such as health and education. The
communities that ActionAid works with around the world are demanding
increased public funds to promote development – particularly for the
realisation of women and girls’ human rights.

Tax treaties – agreements between countries that carve up tax rights
– play a facilitating role in many of these tax avoidance schemes.
Tax treaties have played a part in most well-known cases of
aggressive tax planning, such as in Google’s and Amazon’s tax
schemes. Many of the tax treaties that ActionAid has scrutinised are
ensuring that money flows untaxed from poor to rich countries,
making the world more unequal and exacerbating poverty.

Tax treaties have so far received little public scrutiny – but this
is changing. ActionAid has commissioned original research that makes
the content of more than 500 binding treaties signed by lower-income
countries (those classified as low and lower-middle income by the
World Bank) in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa available to the public
and open to scrutiny for the first time. These important tax
agreements decide when, how and even if some of the world’s poorest
countries can tax foreign-owned corporations that are making money
within their borders.

Global corporations use tax treaties to limit their tax
contributions in the lower-income countries where they generate
profits. Tax treaties that aggressively lower tax contributions in
lower-income countries are harming revenue collection in these
countries and the rights of the world’s most vulnerable people. They
have no place in the 21st century. The era of outdated and
unscrutinised tax treaties that create opportunities for
multinational tax avoidance must come to an end. It’s time to ensure
that all investors pay their fair share and put an end to
aggressively lowered taxes and double non-taxation on investment
income.

Developing countries lose billions

Bangladesh is losing approximately US$85 million every year from
just one clause in its tax treaties that severely restricts its
right to tax dividends. With an annual total health expenditure of
approximately US$25 per capita, remedying this alone could pay for
health services for 3.4 million people.

In 2004, Uganda signed a tax treaty with the Netherlands that
completely takes away Uganda’s right to tax certain earnings paid to
owners of Ugandan corporations, if the owners are resident in the
Netherlands. A decade later, as much as half of Uganda’s foreign
investment is owned from the Netherlands, at least on paper. The
result of the current treaty is lost tax revenue in Uganda, which
could have paid for essential public services for the Ugandan
people.

…

ActionAid has identified the most restrictive treaties

All tax treaties restrict the right to levy tax, but some treaties
take away far more tax power than others. The ActionAid tax treaties
dataset shows that the overall number of tax rights that lower-
income countries give up varies widely from treaty to treaty.
ActionAid’s new research identifies the treaties that remove more
tax rights than most – which we call very restrictive treaties. It
finds that the United Kingdom and Italy are tied as the countries
with the largest number of very restrictive treaties with lower-
income Asian and sub-Saharan African countries, followed by Germany.
China, Kuwait and Mauritius also have a rapidly growing number of
very restrictive treaties with some of the world’s poorest
countries.

Treaties that lower-income countries have with OECD countries (a
club of rich, industrialised countries) take away more rights to tax
than those with non-OECD countries. Worryingly, the deals struck
with OECD countries are getting worse over time.

Tax treaties with tax havens such as Mauritius can come at a
particularly high cost. Money is often routed through tax havens as
part of tax avoidance strategies that rely on tax cuts contained in
treaties signed by those havens.

…

Tax treaties limit poor countries the most

ActionAid is deeply concerned that the balance of tax rights created
by tax treaties is not fair. In practice, the taxing restrictions
within tax treaties impose an unfair burden on lower-income
countries compared to wealthier countries. While both parties to a
tax treaty give up some tax rights, the dominant model treaty
squeezes the tax rights of the capital-importing (lower-income)
country more than the capital-exporting (wealthier) country.

In 2015-16, the OECD, the European Parliament and the European
Commission have acknowledged that the balance of tax rights in tax
treaties is a problem for developing countries.

Some treaties result in multinational corporations not paying
certain types of taxes either in the lower-income country where they
operate, or in the country where they are based, so called double
non-taxation. This practice cuts urgently needed tax contributions
in some of the world’s poorest communities. Uganda’s tax deal with
the Netherlands blocks Uganda from taxing income that investors
bring home from Uganda and the income is routinely not taxed in the
Netherlands either. These investors enjoy double non-taxation while
Uganda misses out on vital tax contributions.

Political action is needed

Tax treaties are voluntary; they can be renegotiated and cancelled.
Rwanda’s successful renegotiation with Mauritius in 2013 is a strong
example, and included five important triumphs that re-established
Rwanda’s rights to tax construction sites, business services,
interest and royalty payments. Mr Moses Kaggwa, Commissioner for tax
policy at the Ugandan Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic
Development said in 2014: “We have stopped negotiations of any new
agreement until we have a policy in place that will not only offer
guidelines but give clear priorities of what our interests and
objectives are.”

Lower-income countries should not sign bad tax deals with other
governments that take away their taxing power. Wealthier countries
can act to align the rules of their tax treaties with development
objectives.

ActionAid is calling for governments to:

* Urgently reconsider the treaties that restrict the tax rights of
low and lower-middle income countries most.

* Subject treaty negotiation, ratification and impact assessments to
far greater public scrutiny.

* Take a pro-development approach to the negotiation of tax treaties
by adopting the UN model tax treaty as the minimum standard.

ActionAid is calling for multinational corporations to:

* Be transparent about their interactions with developing country
governments regarding treaty terms and refrain from lobbying
governments to conclude tax treaties that are particularly
advantageous to their own business interests, but of limited or
unclear benefit to the developing country concerned.

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OECD invites developing countries to join anti-tax avoidance plan,
but only after the rules have been written

The OECD’s plan to open BEPS system after it has already been
designed highlights the need for a truly universal tax body

February 23, 2016

Financial Transparency Coalition (
http://www.financialtransparency.org)

Ahead of this week’s G20 Finance Ministers meeting, the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development announced plans to invite
non-member countries to join in its anti-tax avoidance system (
http://tinyurl.com/j7o8vdf). The Base Erosion and Profit Shifting
(BEPS) project aims to tackle the problem of corporate tax dodging.
Although the invitation for inclusion comes as the global discussion
about tax dodging reaches new heights, the bones of the plan have
been in place for years, leaving no room for substantive input.

“Inclusion after the fact is a poor substitute for a voice in how
the standards are designed,” said Oriana SuÃ¡rez of the Latin
American Network on Debt, Development, and Rights. “Developing
countries now being invited into the BEPS system did not have a say
while the rules were being set.”

“The OECD is certainly one part of the global fight against tax
evasion and tax avoidance, but it’s not well-positioned to be the
sole standard bearer for the globe,” added Porter McConnell of the
Financial Transparency Coalition. “Having its members speak on
behalf of the rest of the world’s countries is patronizing and it’s
ultimately ineffective.”

“Again, we’re seeing an attempt by the OECD to get global buy-in for
a system that was designed by the few,” said Alvin Mosioma of the
Tax Justice Network-Africa. “G77, a group of 134 developing
countries, have for years been demanding a stronger voice and a true
seat at the table, but the latest OECD proposal fails to respond to
this demand.”

“The frustrating reality is that we’ve already seen proposals to
create an inclusive intergovernmental UN body for setting global
standards, but it has repeatedly been blocked by the same OECD
countries that are asking others to join their system,” added Pooja
Rangaprasad of the Financial Transparency Coalition. “Despite the
latest announcement by the OECD, a UN body continues to be the most
effective and inclusive global solution.”

###

Notes to Editors:

[1] The OECD proposal will be presented to G20 Finance Ministers at
their next meeting on 26-27 February in Shanghai, China.

[2] The issue of a UN tax body was subject of negotiations at the
3rd Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in
July 2015 (http://tinyurl.com/h3969sd).

[3] The BEPS Project, agreed to by G20 Leaders at the 2015 G20
Summit in Turkey, aims to tackle corporate tax avoidance and tax
evasion. The plan was developed by members of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 34 wealthy
countries.

Contact: Christian Freymeyer , Financial Transparency Coalition
+1.410.490.6850 cfreymeyer@financialtransparency.org

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Tax Reform Should Close Offshore Loopholes, End Tax Haven Abuse

February 24, 2016

FACT Coalition Submits Comments to House Ways and Means Committee
Ahead of International Tax Reform Hearing

http://www.thefactcoalition.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/hpnc2hl

Washington, D.C. – Ahead of a planned hearing on international tax
reform, the FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate
Transparency) Coalition today submitted comments to the U.S. House
Committee on Ways and Means urging lawmakers to focus reform efforts
on closing offshore loopholes and ending tax haven abuse.

“Offshore loopholes and tax haven abuse cost U.S. taxpayers $150
billion per year,” said Clark Gascoigne, Interim Director of the
FACT Coalition, upon submitting the comments to the Committee. “It’s
an enormous amount of lost revenue that must instead be shouldered
by small businesses, domestic corporations, and ordinary
individuals.”

“At the same time, tax haven abuse facilitates the outflow of
trillions of dollars from developing countriesâ€”exacerbating global
poverty and inequality and increasing our national security risks,”
continued Mr. Gascoigne. “It’s high time that Congress reform our
tax code to close these loopholesâ€”protecting the most vulnerable
among us and evening the playing field for domestic businesses to
compete fairly with multinational corporations. We hope that the
Committee chooses to move in this direction.”

The FACT Coalition’s submission to the Ways and Means
Committeeâ€”which is co-signed by 12 of the coalition’s
membersâ€”specifically highlights a number of issues, including:

* How the tax code is riddled with loopholes inserted by special
interests resulting in the ability for large, multinational
corporations to shift their tax responsibilities to small businesses
and average taxpayers.

* How companies use the current system of deferral to indefinitely
put off paying taxes until the profits are “brought back” to the
U.S.

* The practices of inversions and earnings stripping, where a
domestic company purchases a foreign firm that’s usually much
smaller and reincorporates overseas in a low or no tax jurisdiction.
The company then loads down the domestic entity with so much debt as
to obviate any potential tax payments.

* How Congress should avoid embracing changes to the tax code that
provide false “solutions” like a shift to a territorial tax system
or proposals to create patent or innovation boxes.

The Coalition proposes policy solutions along the lines of the Stop
Tax Haven Abuse Act (S. 174, H.R. 297), the Stop Corporate
Inversions Act (S. 198, H.R. 415), and ending the ability of
multinational corporations to indefinitely defer paying taxes on
offshore profits.

###

Notes to Editors:

Download a PDF of the FACT Coalition’s submission (
http://tinyurl.com/gskfqqz).

Full signatories of the submission include: American Sustainable
Business Council, Americans for Tax Fairness, Citizens for Tax
Justice, FACT Coalition, Fair Share, Global Financial Integrity,
Jubilee USA Network, Main Street Alliance, New Rules for Global
Finance, Oxfam America, Public Citizen, Tax Justice Network USA, and
U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

Learn more about the hearing on the website of the House Ways and
Means Committee (http://tinyurl.com/gskfqqz).

Journalist Contact: Clark Gascoigne, FACT Coalition
cgascoigne@thefactcoalition.org +1 202.813.0290

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