Moral Terrorism in a Brave New World By Kòmbò Mason Braide, Ph.D. Port
Harcourt, Nigeria. Tuesday, 6 January 2003 @ 7:33 pm.
Opacity
Versus Transparency: That
Nigeria has been ranked the second most
corrupt country in the world, after Bangladesh, by Transparency
International, is a boring stale story, even if the criteria applied
in arriving at such a damning conclusion may not be obvious yet to some
inordinately, and chronically “patriotic”
Nigerians who, predictably, are still in a state of severe post-shock denial. Nevertheless, a wide-circulation French Sunday
newspaper, Journal du Dimanche,
reported in its 21 December 2003 edition that, between 1995 and 2000,
when US Vice President Dick Cheney was the Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton,
(incidentally, also during the same period when Generals Sani Abacha,
Abdulsalami Abubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo were in power in Nigeria),
some bribes were allegedly
doled out by that oil service company in
Nigeria, and that, probably, some of the bribes
may have found their way back to the United States of America. (Holy
Moses!) At
the very core of the matter is a US$6 billion natural gas liquefaction
plant built in Nigeria on behalf of Shell
by Halliburton, (the company Dick
Cheney headed before becoming the Vice President of the USA),
in partnership with Technip, a
French multinational engineering company. Now, the cheeky
question being asked is: “Did
some of the bribes go to Halliburton’s officials, or to some officials
of the Republican Party in the USA?” So far, this question has not
been asked by the mass media in the United States of America, and as
usual, they have conveniently
and completely ignored the
explosive French newspaper headline, targeting their Vice President.
Certainly, it will be interesting to see if the world press revisits
this scandal before the next Presidential elections in the USA, later
this year. At any rate, Justice Renaud van Ruymbeke, the famous
investigating magistrate that unearthed major elections campaign finance
scandals, which led to the indictments of several high profile
politicians in France in the 1990s, has been conducting a probe of the
Nigerian natural gas liquefaction deal since October 2003. On
Monday, 22 December 2003, another Parisian newspaper, Le Figaro,
hinted that Renaud van Ruymbeke has notified the French Ministry of
Justice that US Vice President Dick Cheney might be among those indicted
as a result of investigations into the Nigerian bribery
scandal. Renaud van Ruymbeke believes that some (or all) of the US$180 million in secret so-called “retro-commissions”
paid by Halliburton and Technip were, in fact, kickbacks (i.e. bribes) given to certain Nigerians and others elsewhere, to grease
certain palms for “expediting”
the multi-billion-dollar natural gas liquefaction project. Meanwhile,
a London-based British lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler (Esq.), who has worked for
Halliburton for some 30 (meritorious)
years, has been identified as the front
who was paid the US$180 million as a “commercial
consultant”, through a Gibraltar-based company, called TriStar, which in turn, got the money from a “consortium” that was set up specifically for the Nigerian deal,
and registered in the tax-evaders’ paradise of Madeira, a Portuguese
(so-called) “offshore banking”
island. Another former top Technip
official has also testified that the Madeira-based so-called “consortium”
was in fact a “slush fund”
dispensing mechanism, controlled by Halliburton,
through its subsidiary Kellogg
Brown & Root, and Technip.
He swore that Jeffrey Tesler (Esq.) was imposed
by Halliburton as an
intermediary. (Good Gracious!) Jeffrey
Tesler (Esq.) is a veteran cool
operator within Nigeria’s elite circles. He was the financial
adviser to General Sani Abacha (GCFR), and controlled the dead
general’s personal fortunes, while at the same time, working for Halliburton. According to Journal du Dimanche, suspicions
that Jeffrey Tesler (Esq.) laundered the US$180 million through “offshore
banks” and other similar bogus
accounts, may be correct, and that part of the money may have wound up
in General Abacha’s private piggy banks in Europe, America, the Middle
East, and elsewhere. And so, Tesler’s bank accounts in Monaco,
Switzerland and elsewhere have been investigated, in an effort to find
out where the bribe went. Beyond
Photographs And Fingerprints: The
impetus for Justice Renaud van Ruymbeke’s trans-national investigation
is a law passed in France in 2000 against “bribing
foreign officials”, following its ratification of a convention,
adopted throughout the OECD, prohibiting bribe-giving
(and bribe-taking) in the
course of commercial transactions. It is very
unlikely that Ruymbeke’s targeting of US Vice President Dick
Cheney might be retaliatory
for the exclusion of France from juicy reconstruction contracts in Iraq, by the White House, post-Saddam.
However, in Nigeria, it is very
likely that the targeting of Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar,
in the Nigerian media, might be retaliatory
for the roles he played, pre-4-19:
i.e. the 2003 presidential elections: For
sure, Renaud van Ruymbeke is exceptionally single-minded, and his
previous investigations have been aimed at politicians and political
parties, irrespective of their political persuasion. He is not a
stranger to the insalubrious world of oil
and gas politics, having previously investigated bribe-giving by the French multinational oil company, Elf. Indeed,
it was in the course of his Elf investigations that Renaud van Ruymbeke
stumbled on the shady deals of Halliburton
and Technip, in the murky
waters of the upstream sector of the Nigerian petroleum industry:
Surely, this is yet another sordid chapter in the foggy annals of Halliburton, which might as well lead to the indictment of US Vice
President Dick Cheney by a French court, on charges of bribe-taking,
bribe-giving, money-laundering,
and misuse of corporate assets.
Meanwhile,
Nigeria remains stigmatised as unsafe,
politically meta-stable, and very
corrupt, just as the United States of America continues to “fine-tune”
the scope of its self-assigned “War
against Terrorism” in all possible “axes
of evil”. However, there exists a glaring
problem in another equally crucial sector of the “war” that is staring Americans and Nigerians in the face, right
there, in the “axis of moral
terrorism”, located neither in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan, but at
their very doorsteps, right there in the White House, and in Aso Rock
Villa. This
problem of “moral terrorism”
is definitely beyond rhetoric,
biometrics or similar other apparati
of mass control in the
new world order: Who will be Nigeria’s Justice Renaud van Ruymbeke?
Who will be the van Ruymbeke of the USA, in their brave new world of
blatant moral terrorism? Why are our representatives at both the national and
states assemblies, and the Nigerian Judiciary (in particular) so strangely passive, complacent, and/or nonchalant
about Nigeria’s notoriety for corruption,
worldwide? Why has a law not yet been passed in Nigeria, since 29 May
1999, explicitly prohibiting bribe-giving
and bribe-taking in the course
of all transactions, between Nigerians, in Nigeria or overseas? Why? The
“Cat-and-Mouse” battle
continues. Kòmbò
Mason Braide
(PhD) Tuesday,
6 January 2003 @ 7:33 pm. I
welcome your comments (via e-mail: kombomasonbraide@msn.com),
and encourage this article to be freely reproduced, published,
photocopied, scanned, faxed, reprinted, reformatted, broadcast,
digitised, uploaded or downloaded, in whatever manner or form, with or
without acknowledgement, or further permission.
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