Posted on 01/27/2007 5:52:12 PM PST by blam
Barclays' millions help to prop up Mugabe regime
Three British firms provide key finance, allowing the Zimbabwe leader to defy world condemnation
Antony Barnett and Christopher Thompson
Sunday January 28, 2007
The Observer (UK)
Barclays bank is helping to bankroll President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, providing millions of pounds of support for his vilified land reforms, The Observer can reveal. Mugabe's opponents describe the bank's activities as a 'disgrace' and an 'insult' to the millions who have suffered human rights abuses. Barclays is the most high-profile of three British-based financial institutions, which, in total, have provided more than $1bn in direct and indirect funding to Mugabe's administration. The other two companies are Standard Chartered Bank and the insurance firm Old Mutual. According to influential newsletter Africa Confidential, that first disclosed the Barclays' loans, the British organisations provide an economic lifeline keeping Mugabe's regime afloat.
A spokesman for Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, likened the bank's actions to its support of South Africa's apartheid regime and urged a boycott. One of the most controversial of Barclays' Zimbabwe loans is the £30m it provides to a state-sponsored agricultural 'facility' aiming to sustain land reforms that saw Mugabe seize white-owned farmland and drive more than 100,000 black workers from their homes. The government has expelled more than a million opposition supporters from Harare and Bulawayo, dumping them in the countryside.
Britain backs targeted international sanctions against the regime - although there are no economic sanctions - which prevent Mugabe or his political associates travelling to Europe or the US. It is estimated that Barclays, Standard Chartered Bank and Old Mutual have lent the Mugabe regime about £100m by purchasing treasury bills and government bonds.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.guardian.co.uk ...
"lent the Mugabe regime "
If you are a stockholder, you ought to be contacting the board of directors about throwing away the company's money. Like Mugabe's gonna pay that back. Right.
Not surprised. Barclays Bank was a Nazi collaborator.
I agree. Leaving out the ethical issues, this doesn't seem like fiscal prudence. What motivation would Mugabe have to pay that back, and how could he do so?
Even if Barclay's got security deeds on the Presidential Palace . . . given Mugabe's past performance re cancelling land deeds they aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Barclay's is being fiscally irresponsible here. I wonder why . . . ? Friends of Mugabe on the Board of Directors? Bribery? Threats? Photographs of somebody in a house of ill repute?
This doesn't surprise me in the least. The UK banking and financial companies has been in a ethics nose dive for years now.
What do these banks think they're going to get out of this?
Mugabe will never pay them back, even if he could, and his successor will doubtless cancel the debts. Even if he put up the whole country as collateral, the banks will never get a penny. Maybe they're expecting the World Bank or the UN to pay them off?
"The UK banking and financial companies has been in a ethics nose dive for years now. "
Ethics are debatable. Putting investor funds into the sinkhole of Zimbabwe is financial insanity.
Where's Nick Leeson (the trader who sank Barings Bank) when you really need him?
"Bribery?"
My pick.
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