RETRACT JUDAS JIBE, KING’S MAN TOLD

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) is demanding an apology from Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco, the chair of King Mswati III’s advisory council Liqoqo, following revelations that a US$5 billion deal to build a power station in the kingdom was a contrick.

In 2009, when the project involving Franken Mining was announced with great fanfare as a great coup for the king, SCCCO was among a small band that doubted the viability of the project.

For this, Bishop Meshack Mabuza, SCCCO Chairman, was branded a ‘Judas’ by Prince Mangaliso.

In a statement SCCCO now demands a retraction from the Prince.

Here is SCCCO’s statement in full.

COALITION DEMANDS RETRACTION FROM PRINCE MANGALISO FOR ‘JUDAS’ COMMENT

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations notes with relief that the proposed US$5 Billion Mine and Power Station project is now dead. It also notes that the reasons that the deal is dead was because it was simply a corrupt money laundering scheme that would never have brought a cent to the country.

In April 2009 when the project was announced, the Coalition took a little time to do some research and within a day knew that the project was never going to be viable. It compared how other African Leaders, especially President Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, had negotiated their deals with western businesses. It looked at the way that this project was put together and came to only one conclusion. It was ripe for corruption from the start and should not be touched.

The Coalition set out a series of 20 questions that were designed to test the ability of this project to benefit the Swazi Nation. For these questions Prince Mangaliso, called the Coalition and its Chairman Bishop Meshack Mabuza ‘Judas’ for betraying the Swazi Nation. The Coalition thinks that it would be appropriate for the Prince to acknowledge his misjudgment and publicly withdraw that remark.

The Coalition also questions the assertion that no money has been spent. Who paid for the tendering process that appeared in the ‘Engineering Times’ last year? Does Professor [Frans] Whelpton work for free? Who paid for his trip to Germany and Switzerland last year?

Bishop Meshack Mabuza, Chair of the Coalition said ‘The Coalition was called terrible names for asking the questions that nobody else asks and shining a light into some unwelcome places. This is what a healthy Civil Society is supposed do. Because we do not seek power or riches, we can ask questions of those who do. It turns out that when they are too arrogant to answer us, and childishly call us names, it is because we were right. Ordinary Swazis know what happens when deals are done in the dark. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The real Judases are those who are betraying the Swazi Nation for their own thirty pieces of silver.’

See also

$5bn SWAZI POWER PLANT WAS A CON

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

RAGE AT $5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ REPORT

$5bn SWAZI FRAUD IN THE MAKING?

$5bn SWAZI POWER PLANT WAS A CON

The office of King Mswati III has fallen for a US$5 billion con trick over a coal powered electricity plant.

The king’s advisory body Liqoqo bypassed the Swaziland Parliament to set up the deal with international aid donors.

Now, it has been realised there was no money and the scheme was a con to ‘launder money’.

It revolves around a nonexistent company called Franken Mining. Regular readers of this blog will remember that in April 2009 I wrote that King Mswati III had secured this amount to pay for Franken Mining to build coal power stations, but suspicions were aroused because no one could trace a company called Franken Mining.

The waters got murkier when it was revealed that the Swazi Government had not been involved in any negotiations over the project: instead King Mswati deliberately by-passed ministers and his office made the deal itself.

Myself and others working independently tried to piece together the background to this deal. Chief among our concerns was that US$5 billion was said to be available through donor aid to pay for two coal-powered electricity generating stations to be built in the kingdom but there was no evidence about which international donor agencies have contributed the funding or what process was gone through before awarding the contract to Franken.

We were all right to be suspicious, because no such company existed. It was a con – but it has taken 20 months for the King’s office to work it out.

A report yesterday (5 December 2010) in the Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reports Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco, the chair of Liqoqo, saying that the main intention for the unnamed donors to finance the projects in Swaziland was to gain tax relief for their respective companies and associations.

They were to apply to the US and some governments affiliated to the European Union (EU) that their companies be granted tax relief because of their involvement in humanitarian activities in developing countries across the globe.

‘We discovered that they were a syndicate hell-bent on money laundering tactics when we checked their genuineness. I can confirm that the projects we announced last year will not take off. We can’t deal with those people who wanted to help us because their financial activities are not so clean,’ Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco told the newspaper.

What isn’t fully explained is why the Prince ever thought Franken was legitimate. There was no trace of their company anywhere and the amount of money it claimed to have to invest was so huge – about five times the size of Swaziland’s annual budget.

Also at the centre of the deal was Professor Frans Whelpton, of the University of South Africa. He was supposed to be the middle man between the Swazi Government and Franken. According to Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco in 2009, Whelpton was to invest and manage the US$5 billion.

Now, the Prince says Whelpton was also a victim of the con. Whelpton made the news last month (November 2010) when another project he was involved in – to secure E400 million in development aid as part of a deal to get back E28 million deposit for a private jet for the king – was announced to be a failure.

See also

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

RAGE AT $5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ REPORT

$5bn SWAZI FRAUD IN THE MAKING?

NO REFUND FOR SWAZI KING’S JET

At last the Swazi Prime Minister has admitted it: his government’s plan to get back the E28 million Swaziland paid as a deposit for a jet for King Mswati III has come to nothing.

Readers with long memories will know that Swaziland’s inept Finance Minister Majozi Sithole boasted that he had secured the money along with maybe E400 million more that would go on development projects.

But Barnabas Dlamini, the illegally-appointed Prime Minister has admitted that the money will not be coming home.

In typical form Dlamini doesn’t accept any responsibility for the debacle, but instead insists that the man who promised that he could get the money back ‘has been dodging us and there is nothing we can do’.

In November 2009 I called the scheme to return the money a fantasy and a hoax.

In May 2009, the money was said to be under the trust of Professor Frans Whelpton at the University of South Africa. It was also said that the donors refused to allow the money to be given directly to the Government of Swaziland. By the government’s own admission about E40m a month is lost to corruption in Swaziland.

I said then that I couldn’t work out is whether the Swazi Government was simply lying to get itself out of a hole or whether the prime minister and the finance minister genuinely believed that donor agencies would be so lax as to give a professor E400m to spend as he saw fit in Swaziland.

In May 2009, Whelpton told the Times of Swaziland, the only independent newspaper in the kingdom, that he had not received any money and he didn’t know who the donors were.

FANTASY WATCH – KING’S JET MONEY

Here’s a new round of my game Fantasy Watch. This one involves the return of a deposit paid for a new jet for King Mswati III and the promise that E400 million (about 40 million US dollars) would be given to Swaziland for development projects.

In June 2009, I cast doubts on a claim by Swaziland Finance Minister Majozi Sithole that he had secured the return of a E28 million deposit on an ill-fated (and probably illegal) attempt to buy King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, a private jet from taxpayers' money.

Sithole had claimed that he had secured a refund of the deposit (believed to be E28 million) plus interest on the money, plus extra money from unnamed donors. A total of E400 million was said to be available for ‘social upliftment’ projects.

Part of the deal was that the Swazi Government would not be allowed to touch the money (by the government’s own admission about E40m a month is lost to corruption in Swaziland), but instead funds would be made available through a trust fund administered by Prof Frans Whelpton, of the University of South Africa.

I and others cast doubts on the whole project and wanted to know where the money was coming from. It was widely reported that a company called DAFIN Asset Finance Limited had a large role to play in setting up the project.

Now Sithole has admitted that Swaziland might not get the E28 million jet deposit back nor will it get the development cash (reported now to be E450 million, an increase on the previously claimed E400 million, which was itself an increase on the E100m originally stated. But that’s fantasies for you, they just keep growing).

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reports today (27 November 2009) that Sithole is in an ‘embarrassing situation’.

I bet he is. He trumpeted the triumph of getting the money for Swaziland and now it’s been revealed to be a figment of the imagination.

According to the Observer, the Swaziland Finance Committee reckons the whole thing has turned into a circus and the integrity of the people involved in the fictitious deal is questionable.

The committee wants Sithole and two MPs to go meet Prof Whelpton and DAFIN to find out what’s going on.

I’d save them the trip. I think we all know what’s going on.