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Stealing Africa – Why Poverty?

How much profit is fair?

Why Poverty · January 5, 2013

Description by Richard Edmondson

Most readers have probably heard of Marc Rich. He was the Jewish criminal who was pardoned by Bill Clinton just prior to the former president’s leaving office in 2001. Rich was the original founder of Glencore, the company whose exploitive activities in the African nation of Zambia are documented in the video above. Some years ago he was indicted for tax fraud, and the film goes into his criminal past in considerable detail. It will probably come as no great surprise that Rich’s pardon was sought by officials of the Israeli government.

From Wikipedia:

Clinton also cited clemency pleas he had received from Israeli government officials, including then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Rich had made substantial donations to Israeli charitable foundations over the years, and many senior Israeli officials, such as Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert, argued on his behalf behind the scenes.^[27] (Speculation about another rationale for Rich’s pardon involved his alleged involvement with the Israeli intelligence community.^[28][29] Rich reluctantly acknowledged in interviews with his biographer, Daniel Ammann, that he had assisted the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service,^[15][6] a claim that Ammann said was confirmed by a former Israeli intelligence officer.^[14] According to Ammann, Rich had helped finance the Mossad’s operations and had supplied Israel with strategic amounts of Iranian oil through a secret oil pipeline.^[6] The aide to Rich who had persuaded Denise Rich to personally ask President Clinton to review Rich’s pardon request was a former chief of the Mossad, Avner Azulay.^[23][30] Another former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, had also urged Clinton to pardon Rich,^[2] whom he said had routinely allowed intelligence agents to use his offices around the world.^[3])

Also not surprisingly, the pardon was recommended by our current Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Somewhat less familiar, perhaps, is the name of Ivan Glasenberg. It is Glasenberg who heads Glencore today. Wikipedia lists Glasenberg as a “triple citizen,” that is to say, he reportedly holds citizenship in Israel, Australia, and South Africa. So far as I’m aware, the CEO hasn’t been indicted for anything, but as you’ll see from the video, Glencore has engaged in some highly questionable business practices in regards to its copper mining operations in Zambia. Here it has extracted enormous wealth from the ground—Zambia has been blessed with the third largest copper reserves in the world—yet the country ranks among the poorer nations on earth, with a majority of its citizens subsisting on two dollars a day.

Directed by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, the above documentary is entitled “Stealing Africa.” It was released in November of last year and originally aired on the BBC—which probably explains the omission of the Israeli connection or the absence of any mention of Glasenberg or Rich even being Jewish. Glencore today is called Glencore Xystrata as a result of a merger which took place in May of this year, just a few months after the documentary’s release. Also, just as a matter of interest, Marc Rich died in June of this year. Glasenberg, still among the living, is listed by Forbes as having a net worth of $6.7 billion.

A little bit more on the documentary is available from the website Why Poverty:

In Ruschlikon, a sleepy village in Switzerland, the wealthy residents are receiving more tax revenue than they can use since the arrival of Ivan Glasberg, CEO of commodity giant Glencore. Yet in Zambia, where Glencore owns a majority stake in the country’s biggest copper mining operations, tax is an issue that’s contributing to its poverty…

Glasberg netted $9.6 billion when Glencore went public in 2011. The receipt of of his taxes overwhelmed the public coffers of Ruschlikon so much that the mayor decided to lower the town’s tax rate by 7%.

Not so fortunate for the residents of copper-rich Zambia – where Glencore owns a 73% stake in the Mopani Copper Mines (one of the biggest mining operations in the country).

Unfortunately, Zambia’s copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia’s copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they’ve extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world.

So why hasn’t copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia yet made the residents of Ruschlikon better off? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia’s case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens.

The film also gives us some insight into why so many governments, particularly in poorer parts of the world, seemingly do nothing to stop rampant corporate abuses. This is true even in Zambia, which ironically at present has what appears to be a fairly decent government—with some committed officials striving to act in the public interest. But the problem is, quite simply put, Glencore is more powerful.

Director Christoffer Guldbrandsen
Producer Henrik Veileborg
Produced by Guld­brandsen Film

To find out more and get teaching resources, go to http://www.whypoverty.net

Why Poverty?
http://www.whypoverty.net/en/video/34/

October 15, 2013 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Africa, Bill Clinton, Glencore, Marc Rich, Rüschlikon, Switzerland, Zambia