ON A QUEST TO SAVE THE WORLD'S MOST ELUSIVE ELEPHANT

By Taylor Mayo

As a field biologist, Lee White had spent years traversing some of West Africa’s most obscure rain forests, cataloging flora and tracking groups of chimps and gorillas. But all the while, he was hoping for a glimpse of something else: the rare forest elephants of the region.

Smaller than the giant elephants we know, these pachyderms are famously elusive loners that prefer the cover of shaded forests to the open plains. But their ranks are dwindling, and today they’re found only in a few West and Central African countries.

 

They’re so difficult to spot that scientists count them by tracking their dung. Indeed, White had never come closer to them than their excrement until he arrived in Gabon in 1989. 

Armed with his trusty binoculars and GPS, he drove into the dense Gabonese forest, and within 10 minutes of maneuvering through the foliage, he spotted one: a female forest elephant, with its long, downward-pointing tusks and distinctive oval ears. The majestic creature was as surprised as White — she charged his car.

White was hooked. Gabon, he decided, was a “paradise for biologists.” Much has happened in the 27 years since that first fateful encounter. Once a mere science geek, White is now a modern-day conservationist — armed, and a sworn officer of the state in charge of military police whose sole goal is to protect these gentle giants.

         

An African forest elephant basks in Gabon’s Loango National Park. Smaller and shyer than savanna elephants, forest elephants roam around in pairs, not 

White, 51, is in title Gabon’s director of national parks; in practice, he’s part scientist, part government official and part tourist impresario. He’s a zoological adventurer tasked with creating a business rationale for protecting Gabon’s wildlife, which means wooing travelers, playing politics and facing down poachers. 

So far, he’s been able to “implement a vision … which has made Gabon one of the stellar conservation stories in Africa,” says John G. Robinson, executive vice president at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Having someone with his skills and capabilities is a real bonus for the country.”

White’s is a major challenge. Elephant populations worldwide are plummeting, thanks to a cruel and profitable ivory trade operated by sophisticated global criminal networks. 

Of the 470,000 elephants remaining in Africa, around 90,000 are forest elephants. More than half of those live in Gabon. And they’re in even greater peril than previously thought: 

They reproduce three times more slowly than their savanna-dwelling counterparts, according to research published last month. It could take a century for their populations to recover from sustained poaching losses. Extinction is not unthinkable.

Efforts to save these small-statured elephants are not unlike those required to save the rest of the environment. Forest elephants and their habitats are vital to maintaining the delicate balance of the planet’s ecosystems; a vast majority of the rain forest trees’ seeds will only germinate after passing through a forest elephant’s digestive tract. Tropical forests sustain a greater diversity of wildlife than any other environment — some 80 percent of documented species — and Gabon’s forests are part of one of the most critical systems: the Congo Basin, Africa’s Amazon.

         

Gabon is a “hot spot for marine, freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity,” says Marie-Claire Paiz, Gabon country director for The Nature Conservancy. “Few other places in the continent have that overlap.

The vast majority of equatorial forests — vital carbon dioxide sinks — are found in the developing world, where competing priorities like poverty reduction and economic growth often outshine conservation. 

White’s endeavor to change the landscape of conservation in Gabon exemplifies what is required to reorient a country around conservation: the convergence of science nerds, international funders, internal politics and armed forces. 

Already, Gabon is showing that the conservation payoff might be worth the price, perhaps enticing other developing countries to follow suit. After all, it’s the world’s least developed countries that will bear the brunt of climate change, stand to gain the most from conservation and may be least likely to tackle the challenge, knowing the cost.

Gabon, a tiny nation sandwiched between Congo and the Atlantic, is jam-packed with rich zoological and botanical biodiversity. Some 88 percent of the country is covered in pristine rain forests, and in addition to shy elephants, is home to 35,000 chimps, 20,000 gorillas and groups of 1,000 mandrills (Rafiki from The Lion King) — found virtually nowhere else on earth, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Rwanda, by contrast, where Jane Goodall called home, is renowned for its gorilla population … of fewer than 900. And Gabon has the ocean too. A fifth of the world’s humpback whales pass the shoreline, and “it’s the only country in the world where elephants, crocodiles and hippos walk along the beach” together, says White.

The overcrowded rain forests make for a field biologist’s dream. White, for a long time more hard-core scientist than public-facing conservationist, completed many of the first national forest surveys himself. In the savanna, biologists count animals by car or overhead by plane, but Gabon’s forests are so dense in parts that one must trek on foot. 

And some animals, like pangolins and duikers, are seen only after dark. “If you’re feeling brave, you go out on a transect at night,” says White. It’s a bit like “swimming in murky water” while toting gear and wearing headlamps.

One night, he accidentally stumbled upon a group of sleeping gorillas and startled them awake. Suddenly, a gorilla charged him from behind, “screaming” at the top of its voice. It was so dark the gorilla missed White by a meter — he would’ve been crushed to death — and kept running and yelling until White was left surrounded by only an eerie silence.

Some melodrama is required to save animals and land that many would rather not spend resources on. There are those like British-born White, who play the political theater by canoodling up to the cradles of power — White has befriended President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose recent re-election has been mired in allegations of fraud, and was responsible for convincing Ali’s late father, who ruled Gabon for three decades, of the necessity of conservation. 

In 2002, White joined forces with National Geographic explorer J. Michael Fay, who had just spent three years walking more than 2,000 miles from Congo through Gabon to raise global awareness about conservation. 

The two men presented Bongo the elder with Fay’s photos and White’s forest surveys. On the spot, White says, the leader created 13 national parks; White promised he’d find a way to match whatever money the government put toward them.

In principle, convincing the government of an economically stratified nation to spend money on elephants should not be easy. But over the 18 years White was country director for Wildlife Conservation Society, he grew increasingly close with the government of Bongo the elder. 

“He was actually playing both sides of the fence, if you will,” says Robinson. Not every conservationist would take the same tack, especially while deploying large amounts of funding from donors like the United States. Eventually, White chose the government. 

Today, White’s as much a presidential adviser as an employee. (Representatives of the president’s office did not comment, citing Gabon’s electoral crisis.) Perhaps cozying up to a potential dictator-in-the-making is the price to pay for conservation success.

When Bongo introduces White at events, he calls him the “White Bantu,” jokingly — White has been a Gabonese citizen for a decade. “Lee’s turned out to be a skilled politician,” says Marie-Claire Paiz, Gabon country director for The Nature Conservancy. “Yes, he’s very close to the president, and he’s able to build trust with the highest leaders of power in the country. But also, he’s a trained scientist who understands the scientific realities and the ecology.” That, she says, makes him credible.

It’s almost as if White were groomed to play the continent’s politics. His father, a university professor, moved the family to Uganda when White was 3. Little White grew up fighting with then-president Idi Amin’s son in school — “I’m gonna tell my dad to kill your dad” was young Amin’s favorite threat, according to White. Outside the classroom, he became intimate with wildlife. 

His mom even adopted a chimpanzee — White remembers her carrying his younger sister in nappies on one hip and the chimp on the other. But the family’s time in East Africa was cut short when Amin’s Uganda became “too crazy,” White says. He was 9.

White didn’t stay away from Africa for long. With high school diploma in hand, he took a low-paying job heading up primate conservation on a tiny river island in Sierra Leone. White’s work helped turn that island into a community preserve that still exists.

But being a scientist at heart, White pursued a zoology degree from the University of London, then a Ph.D. with a focus on tropical ecology, with fieldwork in Gabon. Between degrees he spent time in Nigeria, where he rediscovered a species of monkey that scientists thought was extinct and helped create the Okomu and Cross River National Parks. 

He remembers spending the weeks arresting poachers with the Nigerian police in the forest and the weekends listening to jazz at Fela Kuti’s club in Lagos. For White, those years in Africa weren’t time abroad; he was at home. When asked, he says he feels more African than anything else.

His vision for his new home country is to use the national parks to make Gabon a luxury vacation destination, placing it in the fray with the safari worlds of Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. His goals, set by the government, are lofty: 10,000 tourists by Year 5 and 100,000 in 15 years. (Still far behind Kenya’s 1.2 million visitors to 100 lodges, but a moonshot for a country that saw barely a thousand foreign tourists last year.) Part of Gabon’s challenge is playing catch-up — French colonialists didn’t emphasize conservation the way the Brits did, and the schism lingers.

Beyond language and science, White’s mission requires him to woo the world’s top luxury tour operators and lodges, which would grow Gabon’s nascent tour industry to international class standards. So far, he’s signed two companies to open nine hotels and lodges. 

Today the country’s accommodations are run in an “amateurish way,” he says, with attendants sometimes forgetting to stock the bar with beer, wine and liquor.

But none of that matters — not his home, not the cushiest of cabins for his guests, not even the political instability in Gabon — unless the elephants themselves have a home. And that is far from guaranteed.

Whenever White’s phone rings, he looks to see if the caller’s number starts with 8816 — the code that demarcates a satellite phone — which could be terrible news. His breath catches in his chest. Someone may have died — a ranger, a poacher or yet another elephant.

Poachers used to retreat when park rangers arrived on a scene, but these days, he says they shoot Kalashnikovs and .458 rifles on sight. Earlier this year, White got the call: A ranger was shot in the lower leg in Gabon’s Minkébé National Park, where some 20,000 elephants have been killed in the last 15 years. 

He managed to get a helicopter into the remote forest, but it landed in a swamp and half sank. Eventually they flew the man to safety and he recovered, after nearly bleeding to death. “I feel often like I’ve fallen into a James Bond film,” White says. 

To combat this increasingly armed and sophisticated threat, White is developing a force of highly trained rangers with help from U.S. Marines and British special forces — who care enough to help with training because money from ivory fuels armed conflict and other illicit trades. The so-called eco-guards often face off against poachers hired by the Cameroonian military, according to White. 

If true, there’s a cruel irony at work: The United States, after all, is backing the Cameroonian military in its fight against Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram. White’s frustration is palpable. 

Sometimes the poachers aren’t what you’d expect: Two years ago, White was in Minkébé when park rangers arrested a young Pygmy boy, who looked about 12. The kid said he’d been kidnapped-slash-hired (the line is not always clear) from a school in southern Cameroon by people from the local military base and made to help them with their dirty work.

“You can arrest one or 10 poachers, but for the trafficker, it’s nothing. He can recruit 20 more. So you have to arrest the trafficker,” says Luc Mathot, founder and director of Conservation Justice, a Gabon-based antipoaching enforcement organization. Which is where White’s political efficacy may come in: Gabon’s maximum jail sentence for ivory trafficking or killing wildlife is six months, compared to 10 years in Burkina Faso, four in Congo-Brazzaville and life in Kenya. Just last month, Mathot and his team of undercover detectives nabbed a Gabonese forestry official with nearly 800,000 euros worth of ivory — an inside job.

The director of antipoaching within the Forestry Ministry resisted sending the man to jail. So Mathot did what he usually does, and WhatsApped White. They next day the matter was sorted and the accused went to jail. White “is close with the president so he can make pressure, so that’s how we work,” says Mathot. And yet, victory will be short-lived: After six months, the official will likely take up his government post again. White says proposed legislation would punish poaching with a minimum of four years, and up to life, in prison.

Of course, White’s job is as much about protecting people from elephants as it is protecting elephants from poachers — that tension pervades wildlife conservation efforts the world over. Why, some locals ask, spend money to save the animals when you can’t even save us? Elephant killings in the north are driving the creatures from forests into populated areas, encroaching on law-abiding Gabonese and trampling their crops. Many rural Gabonese feel they’re being punished for the deeds of foreign poachers, says White. So far, the park service installed electric fencing around vulnerable villages, but hasn’t done much else to assuage the worries of farmers.

And so, White’s elephants loomed large in the recent election. This month, White says, a mob attacked two park staff members with machetes and torched the national herbarium, filled with century-old plant specimens from around the country. The staffers survived and so did the most of the plants — White managed to relocate them to his own office.

But he still can’t shake a certain rumor, rooted in a local myth, that powerful men can transform into leopards or elephants. White has been accused of destroying crops personally … as an elephant.

source: OZY

OBAMA COMMENDS BUHARI OVER FOREX FLEXIBILITY

President Barack Obama of United States of America has commended President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria for allowing flexibility in foreign exchange rates (Forex).

President Obama who spoke after a meeting with President Buhari on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, said that he and Nigerian leader had discussed fight against terrorism and ways of countering the Boko Haram militant group.

Meanwhile at a bilateral meeting with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa on the sidelines of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, President Buhari assured existing and potential investors in Nigeria of adequate protection of their lives, investments and property.

Buhari said the security situation in Nigeria had become very much better and conducive.

He said: “The de-radicalisation process is also going on, and we are achieving some measure of success. Even suicide bombing is becoming rare, as the local people are themselves rejecting indoctrination by the insurgents.”

Buhari said Nigeria was working hard to diversify the economy and expressed willingness to collaborate with South African businessmen especially in the areas of mining and agriculture, for the mutual benefit of the two countries.

In his remarks, Zuma recollected his visit to Nigeria earlier this year which he described as “very successful.”

He added that he was interested in the promotion of economic and trade partnerships between the two countries.

At another bilateral meeting with President Macky Sall of Senegal, both Buhari and the Senegalese President expressed their happiness at the good cropping season being experienced in their countries.

The two presidents also reviewed the situation in Guinea Bissau and concluded that political leaders in the country should make sacrifices to guarantee peace and development of the country.
Meanwhile, Buhari yesterday admitted that the Nigerian project is presently facing challenges on every facet of the society.

While pledging to get the economy out of the woods, he said the solutions to the challenges must be fast tracked to get the economy up and running again.

To set Nigeria on the path of greatness and prosperity, Buhari, stated that complete elimination of all forms of corrupt practices must be in the front burner, adding that this must be in the collective consciousness of every Nigerian.

The president, who was represented by the Head of Service of the Federation (HoSF), Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, made the disclosure at the 2016 Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) annual conference in Abuja.

According to him, the theme, Building a New Nigeria: strategic options and policy, chosen by the institute is apt and relevant towards charting a new course and national reorientation because of the present state of affairs in the country.

He admitted that the theme is in tandem with the policy and working agenda of the present administration.

He said: “You will agree with me that great a nation is the reward of great leadership built on good governance. This is our motivation and value proposition.

“My administration will, therefore, continue to fight corruption and associated social vices at all levels until they are exterminated from our body polity.

“By choosing this theme as the focus of this year’s Conference, the Institute has further demonstrated in thought and deed that it is committed to supporting government in achieving its drive to reposition and turn around the nation’s economy.”

On the need for Nigerians to imbibe the institute’s code of conduct, he said: “I therefore, call on the Institute to ensure that its code of conduct becomes a culture for all Nigerians through their interaction and collaboration with the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and other relevant agencies that will support this cause.

“If all Nigerians align themselves with the Institute’s code conduct, Nigeria shall become an enviable nation.”

The president, said government has not relented in its resolve to ensure that it delivers the dividends of democracy to Nigerians through good governance, especially in the areas of providing security, fighting corruption, employment generation and diversification of the economy.

He, however commended the contributions and support of the NIM towards national development and the professionalism it has demonstrated in the areas of public policy advocacy and other programmes on topical issues affecting Nigeria.

“I further challenge the Institute to improve its visibility at public sessions of the National Assembly when Bills are being considered so as to make more robust professional management input that will be most relevant in the public domain.

“To set this country on the path of greatness and prosperity, complete elimination of all forms of corrupt practices must be in the front burner and our collective consciousness always.” he said.
In his remark, the president of NIM, Prof. Munzali Jibril, blamed past leaders for the mismanagement of the nation’s resources, adding, that this has accounted for the low development indices over the years.

While, blaming the present challenges of the economy on over dependence on oil, he said Nigeria has only succeeded in building strong individuals and weak institutions.
He said: “As the world’s seventh largest producer of oil, the nation had earned stupendous income (trillions of dollars) from the resource and, therefore, has no business being poor and underdeveloped.”

While advocating for the diversification of the economy, he called on members of the institute to do away with avarice, self aggrandisement, contract splitting and over invoicing, greed and other vices that are common place in the work place.

@Economic Confidential

PANAMA PAPERS LATEST-SECRECY FOR SALE: INSIDE THE GLOBAL OFFSHORE MONEY MAZE

The son of former Nigerian leader & onetime  EU Official Among 

Those Named in New Leak of Offshore Files from The Bahamas

By Will Fitzgibbon and Emilia Díaz-Struck 

Millions of leaked files from two financial service providers, a private bank in Jersey and the Bahamas corporate registry reveal how tax havens around the world are used to hide riches.

Government officials and their families and associates in China, Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts.

The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.

Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.

A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.

Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.

The goals, team members, and media partners of this multi-year project.

A cache of leaked documents provides names of politicians and others linked to more than 175,000 Bahamian companies registered between 1990 and 2016

For years, Neelie Kroes traveled Europe as one of the continent’s senior officials, warning big corporations that they couldn’t “run away” from the European Union’s rules. The Dutch politician sympathized with average citizens who worried they’d been left to pay the bills “as infringers cream off the extra profits.”

As the EU’s commissioner for competition policy from 2004 until 2010, she was Europe's top corporate enforcer and made Forbes magazine’s annual list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” five times.

What Kroes never told audiences – and didn’t tell European Commission officials in mandatory disclosures – was that she had been listed as a director of an offshore company in the Bahamas, the Caribbean tax haven whose secrecy and tax structures have attracted multinational companies and criminals alike.

Kroes was listed as director of a Bahamian company from 2000 to 2009, according to documents reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.  

Kroes, through a lawyer, told ICIJ and media partners that she did not declare her directorship of the company because it was never operational. Kroes’ lawyer blamed her appearance on company records as “a clerical oversight which was not corrected until 2009.” 

Her lawyer said the company, set up through a Jordanian businessman and friend of Kroes, had been created to investigate the possibility of raising money to purchase assets – worth more than $6 billion – from Enron Corp., the American energy giant. The deal never came off, and Enron later collapsed amid a massive accounting scandal. 

Emily O’Reilly, the European Ombudsman with powers to investigate alleged breaches of EU rules and procedures, did not comment on the Kroes’ case but said: “When the rules are breached, whether accidentally or otherwise, the negative impression it leaves with the public tends to resonate more strongly than any positive counter steps subsequently undertaken.”

Details of Kroes’ link to the offshore company are among the revelations found in a new leak of documents, received by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ, that disclose details behind companies incorporated in the Bahamas. 

The cache of 1.3 million files from the island nation’s corporate registry provides names of directors and some owners of more than 175,000 Bahamian companies, trusts and foundations registered between 1990 and early 2016. 

Today ICIJ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners are making this information available to the public. This creates, for the first time, a free, online and publicly-searchable database of offshore companies set up in the Bahamas. This information has been combined with data from the Panama Papers and other leaked offshore documents to add additional heft to one of the largest public databases of offshore entities  new information reveals previously unknown or little-reported connections to companies owned or run by current or former politicians from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In the Bahamas’ capital, Nassau, company documents can be consulted in person. An online registry, in theory, serves the same purpose. Yet the information in the online registry maintained by the Bahamian government is often incomplete. 

In addition, retrieving one company’s documents will cost at least $10, in conflict with the recommendation of the international association of company registries, which discourages search fees.

The data released yesterday involve the basic building blocks of offshore companies: a company’s name, its date of creation, the physical and mailing address in the Bahamas and, in some cases, the company’s directors. 

At a basic level, this information is crucial to day-to-day commerce. In other cases, police, detectives and fraud investigators use registries as starting points on the trail of wrongdoing.

“Corporate registries are incredibly important,” said Debra LaPrevotte, a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent whose work included tracing billions of dollars in bribes and corruption proceeds hidden in tax havens for politicians from Ukraine, Nigeria and Bangladesh. “Offshore companies are often used as intermediaries to facilitate money laundering and, frequently, the companies are only used to open bank accounts, thus the corporate registry documents, which might identify the beneficial owners, are part of the evidence.”

Unlike the Panama Papers, 11.5 million often-detailed emails, contracts, audio recordings and other documents from one law firm, the information listed in the new Bahamian documents is plainer — if still fundamental — in content. 

The new data does not make it clear, for example, whether directors named in connection with a Bahamian firm truly control the company or act as nominees, employees-for-hire who serve as the face of the company but have no involvement in its operations.

When paired with the Panama Papers, the Bahamas data provide fresh insights into the offshore dealings of politicians, criminals and executives as well as the bankers and lawyers who help move money.

The new leaked documents include the names of 539 registered agents— corporate middlemen who serve as intermediaries between Bahamian authorities and customers who wish to create an offshore company. Among them is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm whose leaked files formed the basis of the Panama Papers. 

The firm set up 15,915 entities in the Bahamas, making it Mossack Fonseca’s third busiest jurisdiction. At one point, Bahamian companies were among Mossack Fonseca’s best-sellers.

Mossack Fonseca offices.A police officer outside Mossack Fonseca's Panama City office. Photo: AP Photo/Arnulfo FrancoThe Panama Papers show how Mossack Fonseca helped clients use Bahamian secrecy to keep their name out of public filings and how the law firm undermined the global push towards tax transparency.

Beyond Mossack Fonseca and the Panama Papers, the leaked Bahamian files reveal details of the offshore activities of prime ministers, cabinet ministers, princes and convicted felons. 

It is generally not illegal to own or direct an offshore company, and there are legitimate business reasons in many cases for setting up an offshore structure. But transparency experts say it’s important that public officials disclose their connections to offshore entities.

The political and government figures named in the leaked documents include Colombia’s minister of mines and energy between 1999 and 2001, Carlos Caballero Argáez. He was listed as president and secretary of a Bahamian company, Pavc Properties Inc., between 1997 and 2008. Caballero Argáez also appeared as director of Norway Inc., a company registered in the Bahamas between 1990 and 2015.

Argáez told ICIJ that Norway Inc. held a Miami bank account owned by his father. The account’s assets were distributed to his sons upon his death, Argáez said. Pavc Properties owned an apartment in Miami, Argáez said, and his relationship with the company ended in 2008, when he sold his shares. Argáez said he and others chose the Bahamas on lawyers’ advice. He denied any conflict of interest. He said the company was set in the Bahamas for “tax purposes.”

In the case of Kroes, the former senior EU official, the records show that she was director of Mint Holdings Ltd from July 2000 to October 2009. The company was registered in the Bahamas in April 2000 and is currently active.

In response to questions from ICIJ, the Guardian and Dutch newspapers Trouw and Het Financieele Dagblad, Kroes acknowledged that she did not disclose her connection to this company in her declarations of personal financial interests when she first became competition commissioner in 2004 or in later declarations as she continued serving as a high-level EU official.

Kroes served as competition commissioner from November 2004 to February 2010 and as digital commissioner from February 2010 to November 2014. 

EU rules require that European commissioners declare all their economic interests in the previous 10 years, including governing, supervisory and advisory positions in companies devoted to commercial and economic activities.

Mint Holdings’ other directors included Jordanian businessman Amin Badr-El-Din. Badr-El-Din was still listed as holding that position in documents from July 2015. The Bahamas online corporate registry does not list the company’s directors.

Mint Holdings Ltd.Click to explore the Offshore Leaks Database.Badr-El-Din founded UAE Offsets Group, a company that reinvests proceeds from weapons sales into the United Arab Emirates. UAE Offsets Group previously contracted with the weapons manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin Corp. Kroes worked as a lobbyist for Lockheed prior to being named EU competition commissioner.

When she was appointed EU competition commissioner, Kroes placed her money in a blind trust and promised to avoid adjudicating on companies with which she had a connection.  While her opponents worried that she might be soft on the business world, Kroes earned the nickname “Steely Neelie” as she imposed record fines on companies that fixed prices and organized unfair monopolies.

Since stepping away from her EU positions, however, she has criticized her successor as competition minister for a ruling declaring that tech giant Apple owes Ireland €13 billion in unpaid taxes.

Kroes, 75, is currently a director or board member of several companies and serves as an advisor to Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Uber. She remains an influential member of the Netherlands’ ruling People's Party for Freedom and Democracy.

Kroes rejected any criticism of her business activities. Her lawyer said she denied that “she was ever conflicted by ties to the private sector.”

The declarations to the European Union that omitted mention of Mint Holdings were “made in good faith” and “to the best of her knowledge,” Kroes’ lawyer said. “The assumption was that she was no longer a director after the company was no longer needed.”

“Mrs. Kroes will inform the President of the European Commission of this oversight and will take full responsibility for it,” Kroes’ lawyer said.

Badr-El-Din said “Mint Holdings was established as a special purpose vehicle to manage the acquisition of international energy assets, principally from Enron. That deal fell through in late summer of 2000.”

If the deal had gone through, said an attorney for Badr-El-Din, the company was to become “the world’s premier gas company, leading industry away from oil and coal” and reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia’s energy monopoly.

Badr-El-Din’s role in the proposed purchase of Enron’s global assets had been previously disclosed by The New York Times, but Kroes’ involvement in the potential deal apparently had never been reported.

Kroes continued being listed as a director of Mint Holdings until 2009 because the “lawyers involved did not carry out all the instructions and terminate Mrs Kroes’ directorship with Mint Holding,” Badr-El-Din said. “Once these clerical oversights came to light in 2009, they were corrected.”

The Bahamas is a constellation of 700 islands, many smaller than a square mile. It is one of a handful of micro nations south of the United States whose confidentiality laws and reluctance to share information with foreign governments gave rise to the term “Caribbean curtain.”

For nearly a century, the Bahamas has been on the radar of tax officials around the world.

Nassau, the BahamasThe Bahamas' capital, Nassau, is home to cruise ships, resorts and offshore service providers. Photo: ShutterstockIn the 1930s, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service investigated Americans who avoided taxes in Switzerland and the Bahamas, which once sold itself as the “Switzerland of the West.” 

The focus intensified in the 1960s when U.S. investigators noticed an uptick in the use of the Bahamas by organized crime bosses. U.S. bank assets in the Bahamas, meanwhile, ballooned eight times between 1973 and 1979. By the end of the 1970s, one study reported that the “flow of criminal and tax evasion money” into the Bahamas was $20 billion a year.

To peek behind the curtain, a clandestine U.S. government project named “Operation Tradewinds” used IRS agents who paid an informant to enter the bedroom of a Bahamian banker visiting Miami and to remove his briefcase. At a nearby restaurant, another IRS informant provided the oblivious banker with “female entertainment.”

The briefcase held a goldmine of information from one Bahamian bank on 308 U.S. account holders, including mafia kingpins, celebrities and corporate moguls, who reportedly held as much as a quarter of a billion dollars.

Although the operation led to criminal prosecutions and $100 million in tax penalties, it was scrapped in 1975 after congressional outcry into the IRS’s use of informants.  A U.S. court later declared the briefcase search “flagrantly illegal.”

In 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the world’s leading tax policy forum, placed the Bahamas on a blacklist of countries that aid tax dodging. After the Bahamas hurriedly introduced nine new laws, the OECD removed it from the blacklist in 2001. 

In 2009, though, the OECD put the Bahamas on the organization’s “gray list,” a less severe categorization that nonetheless signified nonconformity with international standards.

The Bahamas is a staple of U.S. tax evasion investigations. Walter C. Anderson, a Washington, D.C., telecommunications executive who disguised his ownership of companies through shell entities in the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas, was sent to prison in 2007 for evading more than $200 million in income taxes. 

In 2007, billionaire real estate developer Igor Olenicoff pleaded guilty to a federal tax felony relating to misleading tax returns and the quiet transfer of $196 million into the Bahamas. Olenicoff, who chaired two Bahamian companies with bank accounts on the island, told Forbes earlier this year “that his offshore law firm of choice was in the Bahamas.”

Years later, the Bahamas emerged as a common thread in the U.S. Department of Justice’s crackdown on Swiss banking giant UBS. Between 2009 and 2014, the agency took criminal actions against U.S. citizens and residents with offshore dealings in the Bahamas, including a consultant from California, a steel executive from Illinois, a computer executive from Ohio, a Texan oil industry consultant, a Florida hotel developer and a New Mexico farmer.

In many cases, U.S. investigators struggled to know where to begin. Bahamian law requires the names of directors, who have complete power over offshore companies, to be filed with the national registrar. 

Yet the names are not always available online and directors’ names cannot be searched individually or without preexisting knowledge of the Bahamian company’s name. That makes it difficult to check whether a public official or a corporate executive is linked to companies chartered in the Bahamas.

In the new documents, for example, Exxon Azerbaijan Caspian Sea Limited, the energy giant’s company in the repressive yet oil-rich nation Azerbaijan lists no directors in the Bahamas registry. Yet there are 19 directors listed in the documents seen by ICIJ. 

The Bahamian company Equatorial Guinea LNG Holdings Limited shows no directors in the Bahamas’ public registry but, in files reviewed by ICIJ, six well-connected Equatorial Guineans appear, including the First Lady’s brother and four current and former ministers of energy.

Jason Sharman, who co-authored a survey of information from 40 corporate registers around the world, said the names of offshore company directors are basic information that should be easily accessible to the public.

These days, the Bahamas, a one-hour plane ride from Miami to the capital, Nassau,  claims to be cleaner than ever. Yet doubts persist.

“Bahamas has taken an attitude of selective noncompliance with its own laws, and it is now pushing out this message with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink.” – Nicholas Shaxson

In 2014, the most recent review of the Bahamas’ anti-money laundering systems by the OECD faulted the country on half of the core measures used to judge countries’ compliance with international standards. This included no requirement for banks or financial institutions to know the real identity of a company or trust owner. Although the OECD now considers the Bahamas compliant, in June 2015, the European Union listed the Bahamas and 30 other countries as uncooperative tax havens.

Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, said the Bahamas is one of the handful of tax havens with a riskier and wilder reputation than bigger offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland.

The Bahamas is “on a par with Panama in terms of its thirst for and tolerance of dirty money,” said Shaxson.

Recently, Shaxson said, as governments push tax havens to share banking and financial information with national tax agencies concerned about offshore evasion by citizens, the Bahamas has pushed back.

“They are saying ‘While everyone else is being transparent, your secrets are safe with us,’” said Shaxson. “Bahamas has also long taken an attitude of selective noncompliance with its own laws, and it is now pushing out this message with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

Bahamian authorities told ICIJ that the country honors its international obligations and cooperates with international authorities. The Bahamas “does not tolerate dirty money,” authorities said, noting it “has in many areas been rated as ‘largely compliant’ with international standards.”

Authorities did not comment on specific cases and defended the Bahamian corporate registry. “Fees for online registry searches covers the cost and upgrading of the online system,” said authorities.

Regarding the sharing of tax information, authorities said: “The Bahamas negotiates in good faith with all appropriate partners of the Global Forum for transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes, subject to…international confidentiality and data security standards.”

Marco Antonio and Augusto PinochetFormer Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, right, with his son Marco Antonio. Photo: AP Photo / Martin ThomasBahamian companies, trusts and bank accounts have appeared in numerous cases involving the seizure of dictators’ and politicians’ money. 

The son of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet used a Bahamian company, Meritor Investments Limited, to move $1.3 million to his father. Pinochet’s son, Marco Antonio, dismissed the allegations as “lies” and declared no wrongdoing through the Bahamas. Pinochet himself owned another Bahamian company, Ashburton Company Limited,  set up in 1996. 

Abba Abacha, the son of former Nigerian president, Sani Abacha, had $350 million frozen in Luxembourg and the Bahamas as part of a global asset hunt into the estimated $3 billion stripped from Nigeria during his father’s five-year rule.

Bahamian companies and bank accounts have also played key roles in graft schemes involving former politicians from Greece, Ukraine, Kuwait and Trinidad and Tobago and in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

The Bahamas was also linked to the dealings of five politicians and public officials revealed in the Panama Papers.

They include Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Qatar’s former prime minister and foreign minister until 2013, who owned Trick One Limited, a Bahamas company. In January 2005, when foreign minister, Al Thani signed a loan agreement with a bank for $53 million. As collateral on the loan, Al Thani signed up the Al Marqab, a 133-meter, prize-winning yacht worth $300 million.

Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, his father Francisco and brother Mariano, directed Fleg Trading Ltd, set up in the Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved 11 years later. Macri did not disclose his connection to Fleg Trading in asset declarations in 2007 and 2008 when he was mayor of Buenos Aires. 

Following the release of Panama Papers, an Argentine prosecutor sought information from authorities in Panama and the Bahamas as part of an investigation into whether Macri “maliciously” omitted his connections to the company.”

Macri's spokesman told ICIJ that the Argentine president didn't disclose Fleg Trading Ltd. because he held no financial interests or shares in the company.

The Bahamas was also where meetings and documents were held for Blairmore Holdings Inc., the investment fund directed by Ian Cameron, father of former British Prime Minister David Cameron. 

Ian Cameron died on Sept. 8, 2010. After the release of the Panama Papers, David Cameron was forced to admit that he financially benefited from the fund, which managed tens of millions of pounds on behalf of wealthy families. Through the offshore structure, incorporated in Panama but run from the Bahamas, the fund avoided paying tax in the United Kingdom.

Mossack Fonseca did not reply to ICIJ’s request for comment. The law firm previously told ICIJ: “As a registered agent we merely help incorporate companies, and before we agree to work with a client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process, one that in every case meets and quite often exceeds all relevant local rules, regulations and standards to which we and others are bound.” 

Mossack Fonseca pushed the Bahamas’s confidentiality laws as a selling point and echoed the country’s own defense of the offshore industry in the face growing global calls for transparency.

In 2003, as the country recovered from its money-laundering blacklisting, a Mossack Fonseca employee met with a client to discuss the need for “an aggressive public relations campaign … to try to change the bad perception people have about the Bahamas when it comes to privacy.” Information was “not exchanged often or extensively,” the two reassured one another, according to internal notes from the Panama Papers.

In 2009, a Mossack Fonseca employee proposed transferring a U.S. customer’s assets to a trust in the Bahamas to ensure confidentiality during a bankruptcy.  

In 2014, Mossack Fonseca suggested to a New Zealand client that he use a Bahamas bank to obscure his ownership of a company. In 2015, a Spanish client used the Bahamas to bank half a million dollars she did not wish to declare back home. Another Spaniard used Mossack Fonseca’s in-house directors for a company to avoid listing his name in public registers.

Tax reform advocates have criticized tax havens, including the Bahamas, for trumpeting transparency while signing exchange agreements with other tax havens or with small countries unlikely to yield much information of use to poor, tax-starved governments. It signed one such agreement in 2010 with Greenland, which has a population of 57,000.  

A Mossack Fonseca employee and a Swiss client “joked” during a meeting in 2014 about a similar agreement between Greenland and another tax haven, Switzerland, according to internal meeting notes.

Bahamas brochureA brochure promoting the Bahamas financial services industry.Today, in advertising material, the Bahamas promotes a “unique approach” that purports to respect international rules yet protect its offshore clients. The Bahamas reassures potential investors that it will share tax information later than most other countries and, even then, only with selected governments that meet stringent technical and confidentiality requirements.

In line with this approach, the Bahamas has not signed the global treaty that helps countries share tax information. The OECD, the treaty’s governing body, calls it the “most powerful instrument against offshore tax evasion and avoidance.” In August, the number of participants hit 103, which includes tax havens and some of the world’s poorest countries.

The Bahamas argues that the cost and administrative burden of automatically exchanging tax details is too high and that client privacy could be jeopardized. The Bahamas claims it will instead uphold international rules through bilateral, or one-to-one, agreements.

“I am very doubtful that jurisdictions that seek to maintain bilateralism on this issue are serious about meeting their commitments even under bilateral agreements,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, professor of tax law at the University of Michigan and former consultant for the United States and the OECD.

The multilateral convention “is the new global standard,” said Professor Avi-Yonah, “and jurisdictions that are serious about exchange of information sign on to it. I worry that money will flow to the bilateral jurisdictions and no information will be forthcoming.”

The Bahamas, however, has reason to be happy with the status quo. In 2016, the Bahamas expects to earn $17.7 million from offshore company fees.

Recently, when countries met to forge an agreement on swapping tax information between nations, organizers declared that soon tax cheats would have “nowhere left to hide.” The Bahamas’ minister of financial services struck another note with reporters, concluding: “We got everything we wanted.”

Contributors to this story: Mar Cabra, Rigoberto Carvajal, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez, Juliette Garside, Gaby de Groot, Michael Hudson, Carlos Eduardo Huertas, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, David Pegg, Martijn Roessingh and Vanessa Wormer

 

Emir Sanusi, Awosika, Utomi for Afrinvest Banking Sector Report Launch

The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria, Ibukun Awosika, and renowned Professor of Political Economy, Pat Utomi, will lead other prominent bankers, economists and management experts from within and outside the country to attend the launch of the 2016 Nigerian Banking Sector Report on Wednesday, September 21 at the Muson Centre Onikan, Lagos.

 

Published by Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited, the Annual Nigerian Banking Sector Report has come to be recognized as the leading and most incisive report on Nigeria’s banking industry, and a valuable reference for local and international investors in the Nigerian economy. This year’s report is titled ‘Searching for Investor Confidence’, and it chronicles developments within the global and domestic economy in relation to monetary and fiscal policy responses to shocks while also contextualizing the impact of policy decisions on domestic macroeconomic variables. 

 

According to Ike Chioke, Managing Director of Afrinvest, who confirmed the participation of eminent personalities and key stakeholders from the financial services industry: “We are privileged to have quite a large number of dignitaries and notable financial experts from both the public and private sector attend the launch of this year’s Banking Sector Report, which is the 11^th since the inception of the report. Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has graciously accepted to be our Special Guest of Honour.” 

 

“We are also pleased to announce that the Chairman of First Bank, Ibukun Awosika, and revered Professor of Political Economy, Professor Pat Utomi, will join other distinguished economists and bankers on a panel discussion during the launch to share their expert views and opinions about what needs to be done in the face of Nigeria’s current economic challenges in order to regain investor confidence and put our economy back on the path of growth and prosperity.” 

Other confirmed panelists include Doyin Salami, Senior Fellow - Lagos Business School and Member – Monetary Policy Committee of the CBN; Herbert Wigwe, Group MD/CEO, Access Bank Plc; Ayo Teriba, CEO, Economic Associates; Razia Khan, Regional Head of Economics, Standard Chartered Bank; and Sulaiman Abubakar, Chief Financial Officer, Sterling Bank Plc.

 

Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited is a wealth advisory firm involved in investment banking, securities trading, asset management and investment research with a focus on West Africa.

 

SAUDI AUTHORITIES PREVENTS OVER 200,000 ILLEGAL PILGRIMS FROM PERFORMING HAJJ

A total of 237,583 undocumented pilgrims, including more than 9,700 Saudi men and women, were turned back and prevented from entering Makkah and all of the Holy Sites as Hajj climax today with the climbing of Mount Arafat.

Though, a total of 1.34million pilgrims were officially listed to have performed the Hajj rites across the world excluding 100,000 from within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This was confirmed by Col. Sami Al-Shuwairikh, Director of Awareness and Media in the General Security of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

According to agencies reports, he also confirmed that 104,784 cars, carrying people without Hajj permits, were also turned back.

Twenty-four cooking gas cylinders were confiscated at pilgrims’ tents in Mina as the Saudi Authorities said as a precautionary safety rules, liquid cooking gas are not allowed to be used in the tents in Mina and Arafat.

Twenty seven well-equipped ambulances arrived in Arafat carrying sick pilgrims who were confined to hospitals in Madinah. They were received with roses, flowers and Zamzam water by a number of health officials.

 

To ensure a hitch free pilgrimage for the Muslim faithful, who will descend Mount Arafat before sunset today and return to Mina where where sacrificial lambs will be slaughtered tomorrow,  the authorities of the Kingdom had mobilised 60,000 staff through its Ministry of Hajj & Umrah,  5,000 hospital beds, 100 ambulances, 158 sick-bays along the pilgrims routes from Makkah to Medina, 18,000 buses, over 30 surveillance aircraft and helicopters, 51 medical buses on stand by. 23,000 to keep Makkah and other holy cities clean during and after the pilgrims departure.

In total, the authorities computed that all the foreign pilgrims spent  a total of about $5.3billion up to date during their visit to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj. 

Pilgrims are expected to start their return journey to their different next weekend after the Sallah holidays cum festivities.