From: Judy Miriga
Good People,
When a problem of multitude involving “Land Grabbing” is looming about to endanger life it is fundamentally right for people to stand up and demand that problem be fixed. In a haste, leaders must be taken to task and they must take full responsibilities and immediately accept to engage people to help in finding ways and means for resolution and recovery. Good people must unite to get to the bottom and root-cause of the problem for any reasonable good results. Those who are found to have participated and stolen public wealth and resources must be made to pay back.
We must never run away from the problem leaving only a few people who most likely were the reason for the problem to fix the problem will never work.
Africa has the resource needed to feed the world’s economic engine, a driver needed for progressive development. Africa is where the Emerging Economy all eyes in the Global Economic success depend on, but without Africa being put on a secured plan where the Chinese and the BRICS will not find room to mess Africa in a worse-case-scenario than what Africa has been exposed to ….. and where we all shall regret finding ourselves in deeper troubles to a point of no return.
Wake up good people so we all can unite to work with Africa to our mutual advantage secured under fair and balanced Partnership Development where all shall benefit equitably.
Again I say, Wake-Up !!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
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How to Rob Africa -People Power- Al Jazeera English
Published on Nov 8, 2012
A film by Stanley Kwenda, Clive Patterson and Anas Aremeyaw Anas
The world’s wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption – especially that perpetrated by those among the continent’s government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world’s poorest peoples.
Yet the West is culpable too in that it often looks the other way when that same dirty money is channelled into bank accounts in Europe and the US.
International money laundering regulations are supposed to stop the proceeds of corruption being moved around the world in this way, but it seems the developed world’s financial system is far more tempted by the prospect of large cash injections than it should be.
Indeed the West even provides the getaway vehicles for this theft, in the shape of anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities, whose disguised ownership makes it too easy for the corrupt and dishonest to squirrel away stolen funds in bank accounts overseas.
This makes them nigh on impossible for investigators to trace, let alone recover.
It is something that has long bothered Zimbabwean journalist Stanley Kwenda – who cites the troubling case of the Marange diamond fields in the east of his country.
A few years ago rich deposits were discovered there which held out the promise of billions of dollars of revenue that could have filled the public purse and from there have been spent on much needed improvements to roads, schools and hospitals.
The surrounding region is one of the most impoverished in the country, desperate for the development that the profits from mining could bring. But as Kwenda found out from local community leader Malvern Mudiwa, this much anticipated bounty never appeared.
“When these diamonds came, they came as a God-given gift. So we thought now we are going to benefit from jobs, infrastructure, we thought maybe our roads were going to improve, so that generations and generations will benefit from this, not one individual. But what is happening, honestly, honestly it’s a shame!”
What is happening is actually something of a mystery because though the mines are clearly in operation and producing billions of dollars worth of gems every year, little if any of it has ever been put into Zimbabwe’s state coffers.
Local and international non-governmental organisations say they believe this is because the money is actually being used to maintain President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in power.
True or not, it is clear that the country’s finance minister, Tendai Biti, has seen none of it. A representative of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which sits in uneasy coalition with ZANU-PF, he says he has no idea where it is going.
“We have got evidence of the quantities that are being mined, the quantities that are being exported but nothing is coming to the fiscus …. All I know is that it’s not coming to the treasury. So that is a self-evident question. It is not coming to us. That means someone is getting it. The person who is getting it is not getting it legally. Therefore, he’s a thief, therefore she’s a thief.”
Sadly, as Stanley Kwenda has realised, it is typical of a problem found all over Africa.
The continent is rich is natural resources that are being exploited for big profits, but the money is rarely used for the benefit of the people. Instead it goes to line the pockets of corrupt officials who then often smuggle it out to be deposited in secret offshore bank accounts in the developed world.
So who facilitates these transactions? And how and why does the developed world make it so easy to launder this dirty cash?
In this revealing investigation for People & Power, Kwenda and the Ghanaian undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, set off to find out. Posing as a corrupt Zimbabwean official and his lawyer, their probe takes them deep into the murky world of ‘corporate service providers’ – experts in the formation of company structures that allow the corrupt to circumvent lax international money laundering rules.
It just so happens that the pair’s enquiries take place in the Seychelles but, as they discover to their horror, they could just as easily be in any one of a number of offshore locations (or even in the major cities of Europe and the US) where anonymous companies can be set up for the express purpose of secretly moving money and keeping its origins hidden from prying eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAO035…
Investors deny Africa land grab claims
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuU31d3QVEQ
Published on Jul 12, 2012
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Investors interested in buying land in Africa, have denied accusations that they are involved in landgrabs, insisting their practice is the only way to feed growing populations. Land in Africa, often extremely fertile and absurdly cheap, is the current talk of the investment market. The wealth funds assess issues to do with political volatility, risk of extreme weather, bribery and corruption. One problem with the buyup of africa is that there is little oversight except from local governments and the investment funds themselves. Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee reports from London.
“Blood diamonds”
Published on Jul 17, 2012
The Kimberley Process, set up under the auspices of the United Nations, aims to put an end to the traffic in so-called “blood diamonds” and the use of the proceeds to finance guerrilla wars.
Blood Diamonds – The True Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7lmjjDlzp0
Published on May 3, 2012
This documentary examines the little-known truth about how the worldwide diamond trade has funded wars across western and central Africa, leading to the deaths of millions of people.
Update on the Kimberley Process
Uploaded on Apr 28, 2011
Elly Harrowell a Campaigner for Global Witness provided an update on the Kimberley Process at Objective Capital’s Precious Metals Diamonds & Gemstones Investment Summit.
To view full video, visit: http://www.objectivecapitalconference…
Final hearing of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in the war crimes trial of Charles
Uploaded on Feb 2, 2009
United Nations, 2 February 2009 – Stephen Rapp, Chief Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), has heard on 30 January at The Hague the 91st and final prosecution witness in the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor. The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up jointly by the Government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations. It is mandated to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed in the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996.
Blood Diamonds – Sierra Leone
Uploaded on Jan 31, 2008
February 2006
West Africa’s civil wars were almost exclusively funded by the trade in ‘blood diamonds’. But now, the UN and EU is tightening the trade in precious gems through the Kimberly Process.
The Truth Behind Africa’s Conflict Diamonds
Uploaded on Nov 24, 2008
This video was prepared for the WRIT 340 class at the University of Southern California. It is for educational purposes only and is covered by the Fair Use doctrine.
“Plundering of Africa Through Secret Mining Deals,” Kofi Annan
May 10, 2013 By admin Leave a Comment
Mr. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian President
Tax avoidance, secret mining deals and financial transfers are depriving Africa of the benefits of its resources boom, ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has said.
Firms that shift profits to lower tax jurisdictions cost Africa $38bn (£25bn) a year, says a report produced by a panel he heads.
“Africa loses twice as much money through these loopholes as it gets from donors,” Mr Annan said.
It was like taking food off the tables of the poor, he said.
The Africa Progress Report is released every May – produced by a panel of 10 prominent figures, including former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Graca Machel, the wife of South African ex-President Nelson Mandela.
‘Highly opaque’
African countries needed to improve governance and the world’s richest nations should help introduce global rules on transparency and taxation, Mr Annan said.
The report gave the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example, where between 2010 and 2012 five under-priced mining concessions were sold in “highly opaque and secretive deals”.
This cost the country, which the charity Save the Children said earlier this week was the world’s worst place to be a mother, $1.3bn in revenues.
This figure was equivalent to double DR Congo’s health and education budgets combined, the report said.
DR Congo’s mining minister disputed the findings, saying the country had “lost nothing”.
“These assets were ceded in total transparency,” Martin Kabwelulu told Reuters news agency.
The report added that many mineral-rich countries needed “urgently to review the design of their tax regimes”, which were designed to attract foreign investment when commodity prices were low.
It quotes a review in Zambia which found that between 2005 and 2009, 500,000 copper mine workers were paying a higher rate of tax than major multinational mining firms.
Africa loses more through what it calls “illicit outflows” than it gets in aid and foreign direct investment, it explains.
“We (Africans) are not getting the revenues we deserve often because of either corrupt practices, transfer pricing, tax evasion and all sorts of activities that deprive us of our due,” Mr Annan said.
“Transparency is a powerful tool,” he said, adding that the report was urging African leaders to put “accountability centre stage”.
Mr Annan said African governments needed to insist that local companies became involved in mining deals and manage them in “such a way that it also creates employment”.
“This Africa cannot do alone. The tax evasion, avoidance, secret bank accounts are problems for the world… so we all need to work together particularly the G8, as they meet next month, to work to ensure we have a multilateral solution to this crisis,” he said.
For richer nations “if a company avoids tax or transfers the money to offshore account what they lose is revenues”, Mr Annan said.
“Here on our continent, it affects the life of women and children – in effect in some situations it is like taking food off the table for the poor.”
Source: BBC
Africa’s “lift-off” held back by illicit finance drain: AfDB
By Pascal Fletcher | Reuters – Fri, May 10, 2013
By Pascal Fletcher
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Africa’s economic development is being held back by a “hemorrhage” of illicit financial flows, which may be getting worse, the African Development Bank said on Friday, calling for reforms to stem the losses.
A draft report to be presented at the AfDB’s annual meeting in Morocco later this month shows net resource outflows from Africa totalling up to $1.4 trillion over the 30-year period to 2009, far exceeding inflows to the continent.
Illicit financial flows were “the main driving force” behind $1.2-1.3 trillion of the three-decade net drain, it said.
This is about four times Africa’s current external debt and almost equivalent to its current GDP.
“The trend is continuing, it could even be increasing,” AfDB Chief Economist Mthuli Ncube said in a phone interview. Figures for the period since 2009 were not yet fully available.
“We need to block the leakage … It is holding back Africa’s lift-off,” he added.
The report, by the AfDB and the Washington-based advocacy group Global Financial Integrity and made available to Reuters, called for anti-corruption agencies and laws, and mechanisms to combat money-laundering, to be reinforced and for government budget processes to be made more transparent.
The illicit outflows between 1980 and 2009 were often linked to the extraction of oil and minerals and covered criminal activities like money-laundering, tax evasion and transfers from corruption, kickbacks and contraband, the report said.
But they also included what the report called “mispricing of trade” – for example, opaque business deals negotiated with local authorities which flout or ignore existing legislation.
The study on illicit transfers comes as the world’s least developed continent experiences an economic growth surge, outpacing global averages. The World Bank and IMF see Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP accelerating to over 5 percent in coming years, driven by investment and high commodity prices.
“This is the poorest region in the world and that is why we are shining a torch on this … Africa needs these resources more than any other region,” Ncube said, adding, “There is a lot to lose if nothing is done.”