Pat Robertson Diamond mines that used slave labor, swindled relief efforts, and helped Al-Qaeda

[slampoet]

Pat Robertson makes his money the same way Osama Bin Laden does, through blood diamonds and oil. He also has hindered relief operations in Rwanda and from FEMA. Hanging is too good for this scum.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson

According to a 2 June 1999, article in The Virginian-Pilot,<18> Robertson had extensive business dealings with Liberian president Charles Taylor. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. In response to Taylor's alleged crimes against humanity the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his capture. Robertson accused President Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At the time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade.<19>


http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/pat_quotes/diamonds.html

Although the financial success of CBN is well-known, one of Robertson's lesser known organizations is his African Development Company (ADC). ADC is a private venture that invests in various land-based operations in Africa, such as mining and agriculture, with the stated goal of redirecting profits toward humanitarian projects. In Zaire, the ADC operates a diamond-mining project in the center of Zaire's prime diamond mines and forestry concessions.

Zaire is a country with a population of approximately 43 million, most of whom live in poverty. At the same time, Zaire's head of government, Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who has plundered the wealth of his nation for over thirty years, is able to live luxuriously surrounded by the comforts of vacation homes, yachts, and champagne. Corruption, health concerns, and human rights abuses in Zaire have long been an international concern, causing many countries, including the U.S., to turn a diplomatic cold shoulder toward Mobutu.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/1802/1/119?PrintableVersion=enabled

Operation Blessing, also financed entirely through charitable donations from Robertson's cult following, has proved to be a more shaky financial venture for Robertson. First, he used the airplane and resources brought in by Operation Blessing to fly to Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) to purchase diamond mines for Robertson’s company African Development Corporation, to harvest so-called blood diamonds produced by near slave labor.

Interestingly, Robertson’s diamond venture shows that he really doesn’t have a problem with dictators per se – as long as he can make some money from them. To win diamond mining rights, Robertson developed a close and friendly relationship with dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, most notorious for his collaboration with the CIA in the assassination of Congolese national liberation movement leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961.

According to a 1996 interview with a former pilot for Operation Blessing, of 40 flights to Zaire in the mid-1990s, only one or two were really related to the humanitarian work that Operation Blessing claimed to its donors would be its main work. The rest, the pilot admitted, were related to developing the blood diamond business.

When that business didn’t pan out due to changing political fortunes in Zaire and Sese Sekos’ overthrow in 1997, Robertson turned to oil speculation. In 1998 he became a main investor in the CENCO Refining Company in California and sought to invest in oil refining in Santa Fe Springs (near Huntington Beach, the site of a major oil spill in 1990).


Environmental activist and local community members who feared that Robertson’s company would pollute the water and air near their homes blocked his speculative venture. In a notorious legal battle, Robertson fought environmental laws and almost the whole state of California before backing out of those operations.

CENCO’s former lawyers sued him for his failure to pay them.

That same year, Robertson used the donations of his flock to set up an offshore mining company in the Cayman Islands called Freedom Gold Limited. The purpose of setting the company offshore, of course, was to avoid taxes and to make its connections to Robertson more difficult to trace.

According to a 2001 Washington Post story, in 1999, Robertson’s Freedom Gold signed a business deal with notoriously corrupt and brutal dictator Charles Taylor of Liberia allowing Robertson’s company to explore and receive gold mining rights in that country.

The deal gave Taylor 10 percent ownership of the company, which was founded with donations by Robertson’s faithful following in exchange for a five-year exploration concession and a 20-year mining claim.

Unfortunately the deal fell apart when President Bush withdrew US support for Taylor in 2003 and forced the embattled dictator to resign in the middle of a violent civil war.

In 2002, after complaining about the legitimacy of President Bush’s subsidies to Christian churches through a so-called faith-based initiatives, Robertson’s Operation Blessing accepted millions in taxpayer money from the administration.

Subsequent investigations of Robertson’s charity, however, reveal that it doesn’t actually distribute charitable giving to those in need, but rather serves as a "middle-man" siphoning off part of the donations for its "overhead" and then handing the money over to real charities.

Robertson and his businesses has gotten into trouble for failing to pay his creditors, for trying to avoid paying state, local and federal taxes, for breaking campaign finance rules and bending other laws. In other words, he believes that it is God’s will that he cheat, steal, make deals with tyrants, and bribe and scheme his way into greater riches – all lovingly financed by his cult following.

The question is why is FEMA promoting Operation Blessing? Can you trust Robertson with your donations? Obviously not. His record shows that he will pocket part of the donations to finance some hair-brained scheme that probably involves slave labor, environmental racism, and some brutal tyrannical government.