CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

Dirty Money at Work 139
ing kickbacks into his foreign bank accounts from local producers and by
commandeering shipments from state-owned companies for payment into
his accounts. Take just diamonds as an example: Tens of millions of stones
were exported at prices as low as $8.55 per carat, with the rest of the value
paid to Mobutu abroad. 166 But as Jonathan Kwitny, a reporter for the Wall
Street Journal, wrote: “The hard Western currency that pays for all [these]
goods stays outside the country. It goes into the pockets of Western businessmen.
... The elite may bring a few million dollars of the stolen wealth
back into Zaire in the form of Mercedeses, and other goods for their private
use. But the development capital their countrymen need to pull themselves
into the twentieth century never makes it home.” 167
Not only did Mobutu and his rotating clique of sycophants tap export
proceeds for their foreign bank accounts, they indulged in almost
every conceivable form of self-enrichment. Bribes were elicited for special
and even routine services. Bribes were demanded from foreign companies
for incorporation papers, licenses, and permits. Bribes were even paid by
the U.S. government. Roger Morris, an ex-National Security Council official
in Washington, estimated that Mobutu personally got perhaps $150
million from the CIA just through the mid-1970s. 168 Mobutu also pocketed
CIA money he was supposed to pass to Angolan rebels in the
1980s. 169
In 1971 Mobutu changed the name of his country to Zaire and the next
year dropped the Joseph from his own name and rechristened himself as
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga, which means “the all-powerful
warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from
conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake.” The last part of his self-anointment
proved entirely accurate.
In 1973 Mobutu began transferring ownership of foreign-owned businesses
to local citizens, meaning himself and other senior party and government
officials. Some 1,500 to 2,000 enterprises were taken away from
expatriate farmers, transporters, shop owners, and small manufacturers, with
predictably disastrous results for the local economy.
Mobutu is sometimes credited with inventing banking from home. He
often would pick up the telephone and order transfers from central bank reserves
into his own overseas accounts or delivery of sacks of foreign currencies
to his several places of residence. Budgeted presidential allowances
represented some 15 to 20 percent of government expenditures, but