WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

(not to mention a national bankruptcy like the one in Argentina)
According to the logic of CBL contracts, the assets would be taken over
and operated by the U.S. trust in the case of insolvency. We can only
speculate about what the actual consequences would be. Likewise,
insolvency on the part of the U.S. trust or the intermediary bank could
cause tremendous problems for Stuttgart City Council.
The aftermath of the deals will only become fully recognisable if
and when an emergency arises. As a rule, those responsible have not
even read – let alone understood – the wording of the contract, which
was drawn up in English and to which the public must have no access
under any circumstances. Most CBL contracts are more than a thousand
pages long and have only been translated in part. It is apparently
perfectly normal nowadays to make decisions based on a synopsis of
the contractual set of agreements. These summarised descriptions of
transactions, however, have often been formulated by the very people
who stand to profit considerably from the deals and who therefore do
not have the necessary impartiality.
Another aspect of CBL transactions is the unacceptable loss of
democracy caused by the nondisclosure of documents. Any control the
public may have had is checkmated. There is no way of ascertaining
whether or not corruption is at work and if so, where it lies and how
much money is involved. This secrecy alone is enough to nurture
suspicions because no plausible reasons have yet been given as to
why this should be the case. Events surrounding Leipzig’s CBL deals
reveal that such wariness is not completely unfounded. The managing
directors of the city’s waterworks and transport services were treated
by the investor to transatlantic Concord flights and invited to the
exclusive Burj-al-Arab Hotel in Dubai. When questioned by the public
prosecutor carrying out inquiries, one of the directors explained that
his new Lange & Söhne wristwatch – worth €19,000 – had been a
present from his wife. 37
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