Oil - France?s best Instrument of Support for Dictatorships
The Dirty Work of ELF Business in Africa before Courts
04/29/2003 - The "Elf Case" is judged as from yesterday Monday and for four months by the
correctional court of Paris, thus making it possible to lift a corner of the veil of the relationships between
France and some African oil producing countries. If all is not said yet by the protagonists, the
confidences distilled by their lawyers indicate that the three principal accused in the lawsuit (Loïk
Floch-Prigent, former Elf CEO, Alfred Sirven and André Tarallo, former executives) will say a little
more on the oil company?s turpitudes. President Omar Bongo of Gabon, the Central Africa?s oil
emirate, was recently quoted by Tarallo as one of the godfathers of the terrorist and financial Mafia Elf
has been these last forty years. The dictator of Cameroun, Paul Biya, owes Elf his seizure of power in
1992. Denis Sassou Nguesso, another war lord and dictator ruling the republic of Congo, had in 1999
snatched the power from Pascal Lissouba, the "elected" president, thanks to weapons provided by Elf
having supported both sides in conflict. In Angola, Elf also supported both the MPLA of Dos Santos
and the UNITA of late Savimbi. The list is not exhaustive. Centered on embezzlements having reached
183 million euros, the Elf case actually is or should be the lawsuit of the French colonial curse in Africa.
Ndzana Seme
That Elf, an organization operating under the mask of a private business, could control and cover the
French political and financial networks setting or dismantling at will the regimes ruling African States,
should not be a surprise. A simple principle explains it: It is easy for an international firm to impose its will
upon a dictatorial régime in a poor country than to on a democratic system in an economically well-off
country.
When in February 1993 in a Cameroonean newspaper (LNE # 13) we published the information that
Paul Barril, the then chief of Paul Biya?s presidential guard, a mercenary specialist of coups in Africa,
former number 2 of the GIGN (the French national gendarmerie intervention group), was months before
an executive employee of Elf-Serepca living in the Indépendance hotel in Douala, we were unaware
ourselves how far Elf had wider arms in Africa. Indeed a few months later in Rwanda, when the plane of
president Habiarimana was shot down, thus putting fire at the powders of the Rwandan génocide, Paul
Barril suddenly appeared before the press and celebrated the fact that he held the plane?s black box.
Paul Barril, the former member of the Elysee?s intelligence services, holds the secrecy of the Rwandan
genocide?s organization. All the ICCR investigations ignored this French mercenary who, since then, had
resurfaced as chief of the Central African presidential guard of Ange Felix Patasse, overthrown a couple
of weeks ago by a coup. Elf also knows the secrecy, but this other case is excluded from the Elf case in
hand.
No less than thirty seven actors of the scandal will pass before the Parisian court. Among those, no
politician. A small fry, one would say, for a forty-year old French oil policy having made millions of dead
in Africa, consolidated dictatorships that maintain the countries in poverty in order to reign better there
by plundering all the existing resources, polluted the African environment free of any complaints or
oppositions? To find out why all former French colonies are actually the poorest countries in the world, it
is necessary to understand the Elf case.
Elf was a privileged tool of the French post-colonial networks established by Jacques Foccart under
Charles de Gaulle regime. Anytime these terrorist networks of sabotage of African societies and
economies are pointed out, often displayed are the sensational businesses of sex, luxurious castles and
numbered accounts the French public use to adapt to.
The ordinance of reference of the judge in charge (600 pages in total) reports cases qualifiable of high
treason, which would make the heads of State of Gabon, of Congo, of Angola or Cameroun punishable
of heavy court sentences, including their empeachment. Unfortunately we are in Africa and France,
where the head of State is the supreme judge placed above the laws.
Here thus are African countries with very poor populations respectively showing infant (less than 5)
moratlity rates and life expectancy of 13.3% and 53 years in Gabon, 20.8% and 47 years in Angola,
14.4% and 48 years in republic of Congo, and 15.4% and 51 years in Cameroun for 2000, whose
heads of States and the Maffias surrounding them display the biggest fortunes in the world.
President Omar Bongo of Gabon, centre piece of the French terrorist networks in Africa, sitted on an oil
emirate producing 100 million barrels annually, is the one a U.S. Senate report dated June 11, 1999
exposed as using networks of dirty money laundering through accounts at City Bank and offshore
companies such as TENDIN, LEONTINE, and others. In 1985, among many other transactions, Bongo
transferred $50 million to TENDIN.
In 1975, to benefit alone of the explosion in oil prices, while excluding the Gabonese people from the
sharing out, Omar Bongo created three banks: the FIBA (Intercontinental French Bank), the BGL (Bank
of Gabon and Luxembourg) and the SIBA (International Bank Company). The banks held accounts,
either personal or institutional, for presidents Bongo of Gabon, Sassou Nguesso of Congo, and Eduardo
Dos Santos of Angola, as well as for the finance ministeries of each country.
These banks centralized the networks organized for the theft of national oil revenues, starting at the
national treasury level where revenues are first received. The accounts received funds from Elf accounted
for as payments to the States, including income taxes, taxes on oil production, State oil receipts,
sundries, as well as the prefinancings requested by the States for needs often very distant from those of
their people.
On the other hand, the banks granted disproportionate loans to the heads of States and their respective
entourages, as well as their accomplice executives at Elf.
Any way, these loans were never refunded and, to buckle the loop of embezzlements, the banks were
declared in bankruptcy and were closed without any form of outcry. Unfortunately, the actual court of
Paris finds that only the use of these funds by the accomplices at Elf is of interest, not the Maffias the
African dictators and their French political accomplices are leading.
If the SIBA and the BGL were closed earlier, respectively in 1978 and in 1986, the FIBA was
bankrupted only in 2000. Following a search to find traces of occult bonuses, important documents were
seized on Mars 7th, 2000 in the FIBA building. On Mars 9 and 10, 2000, a burglary was reported in
the same FIBA building and the bank was declared in bankruptcy and closed. The seized documents
however lifted a corner of the African oil Maffia?s veil.
Bongo?s personal account, for example, received annual deposits of $30 to $40 million, and he used
order withdrawals by phone and only in bank notes paid to intermediaries. (The president of the United
States? stated annual salary is only $200.000). He also had other accounts within Elf, managed by the
now jailed executives, and others in Europe functioning under a similar principle, such as the accounts
with Credit Foncier of Monaco. Mr. Dossou, special adviser to the presidency, was Bongo?s henchman
and close partner of Tarallo, top Elf executive. The ramifications of their networks covered Europe
including companies, all real or fictitious, such as CIBC and others in Geneva, Lichtensein, and the
United States.
In the republic of Congo, Elf financed two armed groups fighting each other for power. Elf funded a
coup attempt in 1992 by the national army chef of staff Mokoko to overthrow the then prime minister
Milongo in order to put an end to the Sovereign National Conference that was being held to start a
democratic era. There was a candidate Elf did not support and wanted its two protégés Sassou and
Lissouba to eliminate: Kolelas, seen as the Americans? man.
After having supported Sassou Nguesso, the Sovereign National Conference changed the deal when the
political leaders used their ethnic groups as the means for "democratic" struggles. The civil war settled
and Bongo, son-in-law of Sassou Nguesso, proposed to Elf and France a candidate of compromise -
the international senior official Pascal Lissouba.
Lissouba could thus seize power "democratically" thanks to a prefinancing of $150 million from the
American oil company Oxy, backed by a mortgage of the national oil production for the following ten
years at a price of $3 the barrel. The loan was repurchased later by Elf. Elf was in the center of the war
between the foe brothers, buying and delivering weapons to both Sassou troops and Lissouba troops.
The enemy leaders, as well as their family members and close relations had individual accounts with
FIBA, in addition to the accounts they had with Elf, managed according to the same Maffia-like
networks. Lissouba was thus offered a real estate worth $2 to $3 million in Paris. Sassou prefers using
Bongo?s well organized networks.
Angola, with a dayly oil production of 800.000 barrels, was offered prefinancings of $200 million in
1993 and $50 million in 1994 backed by a mortgage of part of the Sonangol?s production shares. The
Marxist Leninist MPLA State of Angola supported by Cuba and the national bank of Angola had
accounts with FIBA, credited by the prefinancings. But Elf also financed the UNITA of Jonas Savimbi.
Elf executives regularly credited the personal accounts in Switzerland for Dos Santos as well as for
Savimbi, of which NESBIT (LordPartners) credited with $23 million, NATWEST ($16 million) and
MINERAL ($6.3 million) with the BDG of Lausane, or VALDECK (LordPartners) for $18 million.
In Cameroun, Elf made similar prefinancings for $45 linnon. These were not the first in kind. Former Elf
president, Loic LeFlock Prigent, is often happy of saying that it is thanks to him and Elf that Paul Biya is
head of State in Cameroun. To say the less?
In Nigeria where Maffias are abundant and dense, 4 payments are reported as made by Elf for $1 - $3
million to an intermediary, Odugwu, in order to obtain a concession contract.
Now that the Parisian court will abund on individual unjustified enrichment and embezzlements cases the
Elf executives are accused of, little by little the greatest responsibility of the French and African political
actors will glide in the lapse of memory. After having indicated that the funds embezzled at Elf were
partly used to finance major political partis in France, the accused had retracted and remain silent since
then, implying that Elf is a powerful Maffia.
As opposed to the United States that have always abstained from ratifying several International
Conventions establishing ethical standards on oil exploitation activities, but have the "Aliens action for
tort" law that authorizes (in its section 1350) foreign plaintiffs to bring procedures against moral persons
for nonrespect of International Conventions ratified by the United States, France and Elf are completely
exempt of any responsibility for the pollution consequences on the human and natural environment their
oil exploitation create in Africa.
Even though admittedly the victims of American companies in poor countries do not have the means of
exerting the narrow space of recourse offered them, two procedures of this tytype are currently in hand.
One brought in Los Angeles by Birmane victims against Unocal and its partners, of which Total; the
other brought in New York against Texaco by civil Equatorian plaintiffs.
The African dictators, France?s accomplices through enterprises such as Elf, would never give the local
populations victim of oil exploitation the possibility to bring similar lawsuits, because their regimes have
assigned their populations the single responsibility of paying all the prices.
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©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved
