NOVEMBER- DECEMBER 2021

LEADER
Corruption and the violation of human rights
RECENTLY, when the
corruption scandal involving
Credit Suisse’s phantom loan to
Mozambique emerged, the UK’s Financial
Conduct Authority, in reaction to the
outrageous criminal act by Swiss bankers,
said in a statement that the action had
caused “a debt crisis and economic harm
for the people of Mozambique”. This is
what Africans have been saying for the last
30 years or more, long before the gravity
of corruption perpetuated by Western
bankers and their African collaborators
started being exposed recently by various
watchdog groups monitoring global
financial crime.
In October, the Pandora Papers
released 12 million documents exposing
corruption globally. The unethical
activities that fuelled the illicit movement
of money were on a monumental scale.
Granted that some people might have
felt that the huge sums of money that
they had somehow contrived to make
legitimately should not fall into the hands
of governments through high taxation.
That is their problem.
But when it comes to lumbering
African countries with loans that were
not used for the purpose that they were
disbursed, and instead lined the pockets of
European and African crooks, this is not
on at all. Put plainly, these actions are a
violation of the human rights of Africans
who will have to bear the brunt of paying
off phantom loans.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights says: “Everyone has
the right to life, liberty and security of
person.” But if phantom loans such as the
$2 billion arranged by Credit Suisse and
the attendant kickbacks that were dished
out are anything to go by, then the bankers
and their cronies in Mozambique have not
given Mozambicans a chance to benefit
from Article 3.
Article 22 goes even further:
“Everyone as a member of society has
the right to social security and entitled
to realisation, through national effort
and international cooperation and in
accordance with the organisation and
resources of each state, of the economic,
social and cultural rights indispensable for
his dignity and the free development of his
personality.”
With the unethical manner in which
the $2 billion phantom loan was organised,
Mozambicans, again, have been deprived
of their human rights, as enshrined in
Article 22. The bent bankers have not
only robbed the people of Mozambique of
these rights, but also other Africans whose
corrupt governments have entered into
such dubious loan agreements in the past.
These phantom loans have always
been around in Africa. Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, the current Director General of
the World Trade Organisation, in her
contribution to a 2003 book, The
Debt Trap in Nigeria, pointed out
that when Olusegun Obasanjo became
president of Nigeria in 1999, he ordered an
audit of external loans that were contracted
in the 1980s and 1990s, the height of illicit
capital flight from Africa.
She said the Ministry of Finance
discovered that 40 per cent of these
projects “were never started, even
though the loans were fully drawn, and
of the remaining hardly any of them was
economically viable to generate returns to
service the debts”.
So, the Nigerians who were supposed
to benefit from loans taken in their name
did not. It meant that, in the case of
such dodgy loan deals, African children
were dying before the age of five
because vaccines that were meant to stop
preventable diseases were not available.
African mothers were dying in childbirth
because medical facilities were not up
to scratch due to the suspicious loans.
The atrocities caused by these faulty
disbursements are continuing today.
It is all well and good for Swiss-based
Civitas Maxima to be chasing Liberians
on charges of international crimes during
the Liberian civil wars. On its website,
Civitas Maxima proclaims: “International
crimes not only violate individual victims’
rights but also touch the humanity in all
of us”. This is commendable. But the
human rights body should look closer to
home, where rogue bankers are regularly
violating the human rights of Africans by
encouraging bribery and corruption and
granting ghost loans.
The US and UK governments have
fined Credit Suisse a total of $475
million because of the bribery and fraud
by its bankers. Shamefacedly, the bank
said it would write off $200 million of
Mozambique’s debt. Mozambicans instead
want Credit Suisse to write off the suspect
$2 billion loan. Indeed, Credit Suisse
should.
‘
African governments should take
class action against Western
banks that have violated the
human rights of Africans through
bribery and corruption
’
In fact, just as Obasanjo ordered a
review of loans granted to Nigeria, every
African government should do the same
now and take class action against Western
banks that have violated the human
rights of Africans through bribery and
corruption.
Ann Pettifor, Coordinator of Jubilee
2000 Plus, noted in her contribution to
The Debt Trap in Nigeria: “Humanitarian
intervention to defend the human rights of
a billion people in indebted nations will
result in a transformation of the global
economy. Intervention will challenge
the dominance of finance capital. And
creditors will invariably be disciplined.”
Eighteen years after this was written
African countries are still fighting against
the violation of their human rights through
bribery, corruption, illicit financial flows
and phantom loans strategically organised
by Western bankers and their African coconspirators.
Enough is enough.
AB
6
AFRICA BRIEFING NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2021