Reply #35: Pat Robertson's Gold

[Octafish]

Thanks for the important articles and info, bobthedrummer. The USG chart on Bout and his Syrian-American and bin-Laden buddy Chichakli is a must-have.

For those interested in Viktor Bout:

http://www.ruudleeuw.com/vbout00.htm

Bout is, or was, very good friends with Charles Taylor. It's no reach to see they may have more than one very conservative friend in common:

Pat Robertson's Gold

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A29

Last week's terrorist attacks brought out the worst in televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Three days after hijacked jetliners slammed into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and the Pennsylvania countryside, Robertson posted a statement on his Christian Broadcast Network (CBN) Web site announcing that pornography, rampant secularism, the occult, abortion, the absence of prayer in schools and insults of God "at the highest level of our government" had sent the Almighty over the edge. America was attacked, Robertson asserted, "because God Almighty is lifting His protection from us."

SNIP...

Which is the subject of today's column, and the basis for this humble question: What, pray tell, does the Good Lord make of Pat Robertson's gold-mining venture in Liberia with Charles Taylor, international pariah and one of the most ruthless, greedy and terror-producing heads of state in all of sub-Saharan Africa?

What? He didn't know?

Well it probably slipped Robertson's mind, busy as he is in getting people to send in those checks, money orders and love offerings to support his cause. How the reverend found time to hook up with Taylor, I'll never know.

But in May 1999, Robertson, through Freedom Gold Limited, an offshore company registered in the Cayman Islands but based at CBN headquarters in Virginia Beach, signed an agreement with Taylor and key cabinet members allowing the for-profit Freedom Gold to explore and receive mining rights in southeastern Liberia, where gold is believed to be in the ground.

It's a great deal for Liberia, which is now an economic basket case thanks to the long civil war and Taylor's corruption. It's also good for Freedom Gold, which was formed by Robertson in 1998. Liberia -- and for all practical purposes we're talking Taylor -- gains 10 percent ownership of Freedom Gold.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A7124-2001Sep21

Gold. Oil. Power.

Greedy Oligarchic Pinhead