Posted on 07/28/2002 12:58:46 PM PDT by LarryLied
LEADING American diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman has offered to arrange a secret payment for Government if it entrenches the right of the De Beers cartel to buy all Namibia's diamonds.
Tempelsman has written to President Sam Nujoma proposing that a secret loan of N$500 million or more be raised to cover Government's projected national Budget deficit, but the money will only be paid if Government drops plans to independently check the prices De Beers pays Namibia for diamond exports.
If it goes ahead, the move will retard plans to open up the diamond market and will further delay the implementation of two dormant sections of the Diamond Act of 1999.
It is not known if Government has accepted Tempelsman's offer.
In an extraordinary seven-page letter, dated May 27 2002, Tempelsman, who visited Nujoma three weeks earlier, thanked President Nujoma "for taking me into your confidence" on Namibia's national Budget deficit.
The diamond dealer's visit came at a time when Government was planning to invoke two sections of the Diamond Act that had been dormant since the law was passed. These concern the selling of Namibian diamonds on the open market and allowing locals direct participation.
Mines Minister Jesaya Nyamu confirmed yesterday that Government had "some time ago proposed" that Namibia should begin selling diamonds on the open market. He did not say when, but pointed out that the proposal was not "well-received by diamond producers".
In fact, Nyamu said: "There was a hysterical reaction from some quarters."
Asked whether Namdeb was among the companies that objected, Nyamu said the semi-state company "maybe wasn't opposed" but De Beers "had some problems with the idea".
De Beers is the sole marketer of Namibia's diamonds through the Diamond Trading Company, which sells them with mixed gems from other countries. The actual value of Namibian diamonds is, as a result, not known.
It is widely known in the diamond trade that Namibian diamonds are of the highest quality and used as sweeteners in consignments for De Beers' customers. Some of the diamonds are then sold back to Namibian polishers.
Tempelsman is a major De Beers sight-holder. A sight-holder is a merchant who is invited by De Beers every five weeks to pick up a box of specially selected stones for re-sale.
On learning about Government's plans to open up the trade, Tempelsman visited Namibia in May to meet with the President. Three weeks later he wrote to raise the secret off-shore loan idea.
Nyamu would "neither confirm nor deny" that the American merchant was among people trying to convince Government not to open up the industry.
Tempelsman proposed raising an offshore loan of US$80 million to be made to the purchaser of Namibia's diamonds (De Beers) which it would use to pre-buy Namibia's diamonds. From this, US$50 million (N$500m) would flow to the Government.
Further conditions set by Tempelsman include a Government legal guarantee that De Beers will get exclusive rights to Namibia's diamonds.
"Mr President," said the letter, "whether we wish it or not, the proposal above cannot bear fruit without the co-operation at several levels of your partner in Namdeb, De Beers, and thus some acknowledgement of their interests.
"They have every incentive to extend such co-operation, and I firmly believe they will. But both they and the bank lenders will, as part of this process, undoubtedly seek formal assurances that during the term of the financing facility there will be no disruption of the delivery for sale through De Beers of Namdeb's entire production.
"To accommodate the repayment schedule that is envisioned, the Sales Agreement and arrangements that have prevailed over the past decade would predictably have to be extended through 2008 [three years beyond their currently scheduled renegotiation date]."
Tempelsman stated that the loan would entail no borrowing, guarantees, or other financial undertakings by Government and thus, among others, could be accomplished on an entirely confidential basis. But Namdeb will pay up through diamond exports.
He drew Nujoma's attention to guarantees that Government had made on Air Namibia and other parastatals as unfortunate deals, and said he hoped such budgetary burdens would be cleared through the reorganisation of State companies.
Tempelsman does not specify any fees to be paid for organising the deal.
At State House, Joseph Kashea, who is acting Secretary to the President, and spokesperson Daniel Smith both said they were not aware of the existence of the letter. They, therefore, declined to comment.
Efforts to obtain comment from Tempelsman yesterday proved fruitless. His spokeswoman in New York said he was not available at the time of going to press.
COMMITTEE FOR CONGRESSMAN RONALD V. DELLUMS
TEMPELSMAN, MAURICE
10/6/92 $20,000.00
NEW YORK, NY 10017
LEON TEMPELSMAN/SON
"I am going to totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, nail by nail, brick by brick..."- Ron Dellums (D-CA) Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, 1993
Maurice Tempelsman, a diamond broker who served as an agent of influence for the Angolan Communist regime, secured the companionship of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who, for a number of years served as his mistress. Tempelsman was able to use this relationship, in combination with the Angolan oil payoffs to the Kennedy family to secure a completely pro-Communist Angolan policy by the new administration of Bill Clinton, which arranged for U.N. sanctions and follow-up U.S. sanctions on the anti-Communist UNITA freedom fighters led by Jonas Savimbi.
Aided by Maurice Tempelsman . . . the Kennedy family, operating through "next generation" representatives Joseph Kennedy and Michael Kennedy, was granted its own oil concession from the Marxist-Leninist government of Angola to something called the Citizens Energy Corporation.
International diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman, a generous contributor to the Democratic Party, has won unusual support from high Clinton administration officials for a business proposal that could position him as a key marketer of billions of dollars worth of Angolan diamonds, interviews and classified government cables show . . .
Lazare Kaplan International, America's largest diamond cutter, is headed by Maurice Tempelsman, whose initial foray into diamonds came in Zaire, where he was a close friend of the tyrant Mobutu Sese Seko. In the 1960s Tempelsman hired as his business agent the CIA station chief in Kinshasa, Larry Devlin, who helped put Mobutu in power and afterward served as his personal adviser.
Tempelsman is best known as Jackie Onassis's longtime companion, but he's also a prominent player in Washington. He's doled out about $500,000 to the Democratic Party in the past decade, and during the Clinton years he was twice invited to state dinners and was one of a dozen executives who went on the President's 1998 trip to South Africa.
Lazare Kaplan has a long-term agreement to buy $ 100 million worth of gems per year from ALROSA, the Russian diamond monopoly that is rife with corruption and a fierce opponent of efforts to restrict the trade in conflict diamonds. In the mid-1990s the US Export-Import Bank issued a $62 million loan guarantee to underwrite ALROSA's acquisition of mining equipment from Caterpillar. In March, the Ex-Im confirmed that it has approved a new, $200 million loan guarantee that will benefit Lazare Kaplan's diamond-cutting factories in Russia. In January Lazare Kaplan announced that last year's second-quarter sales of polished diamonds increased by 108 percent. . .
". .. UNITA would have not survived as an armed group without the powerful diamond sale network established in Antwerp. "Belgians play a predominant role in the trafficking of arms, goods and diamonds for UNITA", the Belgian secret service report points out, adding that the funds for the purchase of UNITA's arms comes from the same source as that of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Amal terrorist organisations.
The Secret Intelligence Service report noted that illegal diamond trafficking goes hand in hand with drug trafficking and money laundering. It cites companies like De Beers and countries like Great Britain and Canada as beneficiaries of this illegal UNITA diamond trafficking. It also mentions people like Maurice Tempelsman whose company buys UNITA's diamonds which are then transported to London and Antwerp through Tel Aviv. . .
When senators of both parties questioned the special access granted big Democratic Party donors by the National Security Council, NSC boss TONY LAKE pooh-poohed the charges. But last week the NSC admitted that the month beore last year's presidential election, Lake did meet with MAURICE TEMPLESMAN, the deep-pocketed Democratic donor who was the companion of JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS.
Templesman, a diamond dealer with long experience in Africa, was seeking loans from the Export-Import Bank and loan guarantees from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation for a multimillion dollar diamond deal in Angola. After the meeting, a sympathetic Lake decided to intervene: he directed an NSC staff member, with approval from legal counsel, to call Ex-Im and OPIC. The message: Templesman's venture had "merit." But TIME has obtained the text of a recent letter from Angola's ambassador in Washington that bluntly asks the U.S. to stop attempts to broker a diamond deal and, in an apparent reference to Tempelsman, criticizes similiar attempts by "private companies." The Angolan letter, as well as Administration maneuvers on behalf of Tempelsman, have raised concerns among senior G.O.P. legislators--concerns discussed with the State Department . . .
The following is partial transcript of Representative Cynthia McKinney's recent brief:
Prepared Statement of Janine Farrell Roberts
The Secret Story Behind Blood Diamonds
May I first briefly introduce myself. I hold degrees in Sociology and Theology and have authored several books written about Australian Aborigines and their civil rights struggle, which were launched by their leaders. For many years I was funded by a coalition of US and European church to work on human rights frontiers internationally.
This work led me to De Beers - after it clashed with an Aboriginal community. The more I worked internationally the more I discovered about its human rights violations. I have now been researching and writing on De Beers and the diamond trade for twenty years during which time I have made several films - including: "The Diamond Empire", a feature length" Frontline" since suppressed by WGBH due to pressure from De Beers. The owners of Doubleday also commissioned a major work from me on diamonds - only to drop it at the very last moment as they wrote "rich and important people" did not want it to come out.
De Beers is nothing if not secretive. In the course of my investigation, De Beers banned me from its South African diamond mines where I was the guest of the National Union of Mineworkers (but I was smuggled in).
Here I witnessed in De Beers's mines horrific conditions with wages paid at one third of the official union minimum and in very hazardous conditions. I also witnessed considerable natural resources being hidden from the SA Government.
I went also to India and witnessed children as young as 8 cutting and polishing diamonds in workshops mostly supplied by De Beers through its favored merchants, working in what is defined as a form of slavery. The wages were slashed this year from 40c to 25c a diamond causing riots. Workers get one dollar a day for cutting romantic gems. India cuts 55% by value of the world's gem diamonds.
De Beers tried to stop my film in the Canadian NW Territories diamond fields - but the Sierra Club and the Unions had it happen. On 5th Avenue, merchants were phoned telling them not to speak to me "as I worked with Blacks in Australia to make life difficult for De Beers." I was also the keynote speaker at the first post apartheid conference of Southern African mineworkers where I was funded by the World Council of Churches.
I have been told that a major reason for some of my difficulties is the fear publishers have of a certain Maurice Tempelsman, the former companion of Jackie Onassis who in 1998 was reported to be developing a romantic relationship with Secretary of State Albright. He is a leading international diamond merchant of unique power and influence - often he has helped shaped US foreign policy in directions that favour De Beers. I have extensively researched his work. Much of this is in my forthcoming book "Blood Stained Diamonds" . . .
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And it was supposed to be getting better in Liberia. The place is a slave state. Aside from the diamonds trade, Europeans are raping the country of exotic, expensive hardwoods. Liberian Americans run this site. Good inside information. They look forward to the day when the county gets back on its feet. It could be an African success story. Many Americans would go there for the historical ties to America, the eco-tourism and to experience the culture. All they need is a stable, honest government (and to keep Hezbollah, gun runners and diamond dealers out).
To see how dennisw slips away from what I consider to be an honest inquiry see this, and the reply.[292]
Write a book about it and become famous...
In other words... "Bugger Off"
Or at least... "Stick it in your pipe and smoke it."
Well, the ugly band got lost somehow, and come to find out, it was platinum. It makes me a little sick to think about that. I should have left it the way it was, especially since I've never worn it!
Boy, isn't that ever the truth!!
That's because it's your personal conspiracy theory. Got tin foil hat?
Actually, there aren't all that many. It seems that the ones that have found their way to use the Internet are mostly Neo-Nazis (who has been on the Internet roughly since Germany chased the Thule BBS network over to the US and thus got kind of a flying start) and the Islamics (who have had substantial money funneled to them explicitly for doing the net thing).
However: there are some. But Wiesenthal doesn't have a total overview, and what you see on the Wiesenthal site is only a sampling. Also note that some "hate sites" of colour are kind of hidden - I know of one that looks like a White Supremacist forum but is actually run by a very nasty character from the New Black Panthers. Of course, the Supremacists on there have given him all their personal data and stuff.
Pure Mad Magazine ;).
So: is it that you actually don't know anything about this stuff and are unable to discern who is what, or do you have some other agenda?
Statistics at work. The stuff displayed on the site is just a random sample of the CD they have. And since there are so much fewer of the sites PA was looking for, there'll be few of them in the list. They are there, though, even if he didn't seem to notice them ;).
Depends on the agenda of the poster.
I notice from your Freeper profile that you live in Alaska. Yours is the most beautiful, serene and secure place known to me.
Why does exposing the activities of a major Democrat party donor and a division within the Democrat party upset you?
A nice quote from Maurice Tempelsman's buddy, the Namibian President Sam Nujoma:
"We have the capacity to fight you. We will get you. I warn those whites it is the first and last time I hear you insulting us."
Isn't that exactly what Democrats do in America's inner cities? They support corrupt far left demagogues who incite the black community, give the people absolutely nothing and then, behind the scenes, they loot the area.
McKinney is wrong about most things but she is right about Tempelsman. He,the diamond trade and the Kennedy's are getting rich off the backs of the poor.
Stay tuned for more. Reports are that former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe is trading arms for diamonds in Zimbabwe.
The sick part of this is Tempelsman, the Kennedys and the diamond cartel are coming to the American taxpayer and asking us to clean up the mess they have made of Africa.
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