Bill Clinton and G.H.W. Bush Both Partnered with Canadian Mining Cos. in 3rd World Conflict areas

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The NYT reports today that Former President Bill Clinton operates a foundation with Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra. The two are reported to have worked together to seal a uranium mining deal with the President of Kazakhstan, who is accused of human rights violations. Clinton, who runs a non-profit foundation with Giustra, is not said to have personally gained from this transaction.

Meanwhile, the Times has failed to provide some important context. Former President G.H.W. Bush, Sr. has made a personal fortune doing business with Barrick Gold, a huge Canadian mining company affiliated with the Carlyle Group. Both former Presidents have, in their different ways, tapped into the $USD trillion global mining industry, based largely in Canada, which operates in the most unstable and underdeveloped regions of the world.

Giustra is a relative newcomer to the global mining business, while Barrick Gold is one of the very largest and oldest global extraction companies, and has long-established ties with conservative politicians in Canada and the United States. Both outfits do business with private military contractors and corrupt Third World dictatorships. These companies are major contributors to "charitable" and "development" agencies that operate in mineral-rich areas of Africa, South America, and Central Asia.

Giustra has partnered with Clinton as a major contributor to a charity that operates in the Third World. This is not really a new story. See, http://www.stockhouse.ca/bullboards/viewmessage.asp?no=15115993&tableid=0

Andy Hoffman
Thursday, June 21, 2007

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has teamed with a reclusive Vancouver mining financier and a Mexican billionaire to create a massive charitable effort that will see the mining industry channel funds to fight poverty in areas affected by the resource sector.

Frank Giustra, who has made millions for himself and investors financing mining deals, has pledged $100-million (U.S) and half of all his future earnings from the mining business towards the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI). Carlos Slim Helu, a Mexican billionaire who made his fortune in the telecom industry has also committed $100-million towards the effort, which will initially focus on alleviating poverty and fostering growth in Latin America.

“I firmly believe that this innovative partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the business community – and the mining industry in particular – will have a profound and positive effect on the lives of countless people in the developing world during the months and years ahead,” Mr. Giustra, the 49-year-old son of a Sudbury miner and former head of Yorkton Securities, said in a statement.

Several large mining companies including zinc and copper producer Teck Cominco Ltd. and gold miner Newmont Mining Corp. have signed on as partners to the charity group which plans to expand its efforts beyond Latin America to other parts of the developing world.

As well, mining focused Canadian brokerage firms including Canaccord Capital Inc. and GMP Securities LP have committed to the fund and will direct a percentage of their resource-related commission fees to the CGSCI.

Toronto law firm Cassels Brock has promised a financial contribution as well as a pledge to provide legal services at no charge. The Toronto Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange are also supporting the initiative.

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Although many mining companies have spent millions on funding sustainable development, education, health and infrastructure in countries and areas in which they operate, the industry still gets a bum rap, according to Newmont Mining board member and former company president Pierre Lassonde.

“What I find absolutely genius in the move here is that what has done is he has got Bill Clinton to more or less, be the spokesman for resource development. That is momentous,” Mr. Lassonde said in an interview.

In the past, some mining companies have faced severe criticism for exploiting resources in developing nations and giving little back to the community. In some cases, mining has caused environmental damage that has made some areas uninhabitable or been linked to illnesses in local people.

The CGSGI said it intends to work with local leaders to address, social, economic and environmental issues in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. The Clinton Foundation will act as the “implementing partner” linking the resource industry with local communities in the developing world.

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While the CGSGI may be the single largest charity initiative by the mining sector, Mr. Giustra's contribution follows previous large-scale donations by other industry heavyweights from Canada.

Mr. Lassonde has donated millions through his own active philanthropic efforts as has his Franco-Nevada co-founder and long-time business partner Seymour Schulich. Mr. Schulich recently gave $22.5-million (Canadian) to the Technion-Israel Institute, which is naming its chemistry department after him. His past gifts have included $27-million to York University's school of business and $20-million to McGill University's faculty of music. Barrick Gold co-founder Peter Munk gave almost $61-million to charity last year alone including $37-million to the Toronto General Hospital, $18.5-million to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and $5-million to the University of Toronto.

According to this 2006 article by Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, Barrick Gold is connected to both Bush and, less directly, with close Clinton associates in mineral extraction operations in some of the bloodiest areas in Africa. See, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

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Some people have lauded great progress in the exposure of illegal mining in DRC, particularly by the group Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose 2005 report “The Curse of Gold” exposed Ugandan officials and multi-national corporations smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People’s Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. The HRW report failed to mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick Gold described below (3). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry (4). Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Advisory Board (5). The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers—that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders arrested there.

Several multi-national mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests (6).

George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers (7).

Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.

Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. Government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977 (8).

Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998, and he sails with the Clintons off Martha’s Vineyard. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange, and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a
”scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.

Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998), and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province (9). Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.

In April 1997, Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power. The ADFL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet (10). Meanwhile, directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American (11). Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma and the Americas (12).

Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International, who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh, the former acting General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from the Congo in 2002 following a so-called “peace” agreement, Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as Ugandan proxies to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda (13).

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Katanga’s militias and racketeering are connected to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman’s criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire’s former President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman (16).

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Coltan ore is widely used in the aerospace and electronics industries for capacitors, superconductors and transistors after it is refined to tantalum. The U.S. is entirely dependant on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager, cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, P.D.A. and TV. U.S. import records show a dramatic jump of purchases from Rwanda and Uganda during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of the Congo.

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Bechtel, a U.S. aerospace & construction company, provided satellite maps of reconnaissance photos of Mobutu’s troops for the ADFL invasion of Congo in 1996; they also created infrared maps of the Congo’s mineral deposits (22). The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame, the current Rwandan President graduate of the U.S. Army officers school at Fort Leavenworth, used Bechtel’s NASA maps to locate Rwandan Hutu civilians that fled the cataclysm in Rwanda in 1994. An estimated 800,000 refugees were hunted down and killed in the Congo’s forests (23). Bechtel’s friends in high places include former Secretary of State George Shultz (Board of Directors), former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger (Bechtel Counsel) and retired U.S.M.C. general Jack Sheehan (Senior Vice President), who is also a member of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon (24). Riley P. Bechtel is on the Board of J.P. Morgan (25). Bechtel’s Nexant Company is the prime contractor on the Uganda-Kenya pipeline project, believed to ultimately facilitate petroleum transport out of the Semliki Basin of Lake Albert.

The U.N. Panel of Experts named New England-based Cabot Co. for conducting unethical business practices (26). Cabot is one of the largest tantalum processors in the world. The current Deputy Director of the U.S. Treasury, Samuel Bodman, was CEO and chairman of the board for Cabot from 1997-2001 (27). Current Director John H. McArthur is a Senior Advisor to Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank (28).

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Perhaps reflecting a larger reality about global business, these interlocking mining and charitable operations make Bill Clinton and G.H.W. Bush both competitors and business partners.