The Panama Papers

THE PLUNDER ROUTE TO PANAMA How African oligarchs steal from their countries The Panama Papers project last year revealed that there are quite a few African politicians, their relatives and friends among those who have stored hidden wealth in off-shore bank accounts. But how did the money get there? An investigation by the African Investigative Publishing Collective in partnership with Africa Uncensored and ZAM. INTRODUCTION When Canadian mining company First Quantum wanted to pay due tax of sixty million dollars on its copper mining operation in the DRC in 2009, it was told to pay the tax director four million, pass six million to the government and keep the rest. “Because no one here pays tax.” After the company had refused to conduct business that way it saw itself accused of ‘misconduct.’ The mine was seized and sold on to Israeli mining tycoon Dan Gertler, a good friend of the DRC’s ruling elite and nicknamed ‘Mr Grab.’ Last year, Gertler’s name was found more than two hundred times in connection with off-shore bank accounts in tax havens in the groundbreaking ‘Panama Papers’ project. So was the name of Jaynet Kabila, the twin sister of DRC president Joseph Kabila. It was because of stories like the one about First Quantum, and because of the Panama Papers, that we decided to take a closer look at African political leaders’ behaviour with regard to their own countries’ resources. International reports and activist groups had often focused on multinationals which were shipping resources out of Africa, but was that focus complete? Were our leaders simply weak and bribe-able, or more complicit than that? We looked in seven countries at African leaders’ roles in sectors of the economy and the state where they, and not the private sector, were in control. Togo’s nationalised phosphate resources, for example, should have ‘economically liberated’ its people. But we found that Togo’s president sells the resource under the market price to shady shippers. In Mozambique, villagers are violently removed from ruby fields licensed to generals and ministers. State budgets are used to build skyscrapers for the ruling party whilst people go hungry in Rwanda. Foreign currency controlled by the Burundi presidency is earmarked for certain companies, creating shortages and damaging the economy. Botswana ‘s president helps take tourism profits to off-shore tax havens. The looting by South African President Zuma has seen losses of up to, and presumably over, US$ seven billion in taxpayers’ money transferred to private bank accounts in Dubai. Recent investigative projects by the Premium Times in Nigeria, Makaangola in Angola, and Global Witness in the DRC and Zimbabwe have unearthed similar looting-by-political-elite in these countries. The question why African oligarchs behave this way whilst their people in some cases are literally starving, is perhaps best left to African authors and philosophers. One can speculate that maybe, in the race to power after the devastation of colonialism, the ones with the sharpest elbows won. Or maybe the lack of checks and balances allows unethical leaders to exploit the situation together with criminals. But what we unearthed indicates that these elites have, to some extent, morphed into the very colonialist plunder structures that they replaced. One of us, noting giant potholes in Kinshasa’s richest suburb, asked why the rich didn’t even seem to care about their own streets. “They own these houses but they don’t live here,” the local team member responded. “They live in France.”