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?

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

Just when I thought we’d heard the last of King Mswati III’s plan to have two thermal power plants to generate electricity built in Swaziland, the project rears its ugly head again.

Last year (2009), I wrote at length about how King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, had bypassed his government and secretly negotiated for two power plants worth 5 billion US dollars (E36.5 billion at current exchange rates) to be built in his kingdom.

He said the money was in place and everything was ready to go. People in Swaziland were sceptical and some smelt a fraud was about to take place.

Then, quietly, the plan was shelved and we heard no more about what happened to the money.

Reuters news agency put out a report in October 2009 saying that the plan might have been dropped because it was too ambitious and would have produced much more electricity than Swaziland needed.

Now we hear of a revised plan for two smaller power plants worth up to E7 billion (960 million US dollars) to be built by the end of the year.

The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reports that the Swaziland Public Enterprises Unit (PEU) says that Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC) will oversee the project.

This time however there is no claim that King Mswati (or anyone else for that matter) has secured the funding.

To put the E7 billion into context – it is E1 billion more than the total amount that Swaziland received from the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) last year – and the SACU money accounted for two thirds of Swaziland’s annual budget.

The completion date of the end of December 2010 is unrealistic and in the present economic climate I can’t see anyone putting up the money – especially since no one has explained what happened to the 5 billion US dollars King Mswati assured his subjects he had secured for the power plants last year.

NOW, THE SWAZILAND OIL FANTASY

Do we never learn?

Just as we hear that a grand plan for a 5 billion US dollar power plant has bitten the dust, news breaks that the Swaziland King is ‘negotiating’ a deal to develop a ‘multi-million’ dollar oil refinery in the kingdom.

King Msawti III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, on one of his regular trips to the Middle East, has asked ‘business captains’ in the oil state of Qatar to help Swaziland find up to E35 billion (4.8 billion US dollars) to develop a ‘world class’ facility that will store at least a three-month supply of fuel for Swaziland.

The Swazi Observer, in effect the king’s own newspaper, reports that the construction should be completed in about six years. Regular readers of this blog will note that this six-year timescale is an improvement on the three years completion time that the king and the fantasists who surround him usually put on their (never completed) projects.

Phiwa Ginindza, chief executive of the Swaziland Investments Promotions Authority (SIPA), who is part of a delegation presently in the Gulf States with the king, has reportedly been touting the plan around Qatar.

Ginindza told the Observer that it was clear that Swaziland needs to work extra hard to see the project through. That’s an understatement. As I reported in April 2009, SIPA has a poor record in attracting investment into Swaziland.

It admitted in its performance report for 2006 to 2008 that it had only managed to attract five foreign investments into the country in three years, with a total of 720 jobs.The businesses that were set up are very basic: one is involved in producing starch from cassava and another makes plastic bags. Two are involved in manufacturing mining drills and hand held tools and the fifth is yet another Taiwanese textile company.

Do we really expect someone with 4.8 billion bucks to spend to come running to SIPA?

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

First there was a media fanfare to announce a plan to build a 5 billion US dollar (E50 billion) power plant backed by donor money and supported by King Mwsati III who confidently guaranteed the money to pay for it was in place and it was all systems go.

And now news dribbles out that it’s not going to happen.The plan was to produce 1 000 MW of electricity (even though Swaziland at present only produces 70 MW through hydro electricity) to fulfil all the kingdom’s energy needs and to export some to neighbouring South Africa.

To save face (whose? The king’s?) we are told that the plan will not go ahead as planned but will be scaled down. But we are told, there will be a new electricity plant. Honest. No, really.

When the plan for Franken Mining to build the plant was first announced in April 2009 myself and others in Swaziland questioned whether the Swazi people were about to be victims of a gigantic fraud.

The office of King Mswati deliberately kept the plans from Parliament, with Swazi National Council (Liqoqo) chairman Prince Mangaliso playing a prominent part.Suspicions were aroused because no one could trace a company called Franken Mining.

At the time, the Times of Swaziland quoted Prince Mangaliso saying that to avoid delays in seeing the project actually taking off, government had not been involved. He said government would only be brought on board once all important aspects had been covered.Prince Mangaliso said, ‘Land and minerals are under the control of the king.’

The secrecy behind the power station deal raised concerns among civil society. The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) raised 20 specific questions about the deal and said, ‘In any normal society, the people would not be presented with decisions without some, if not a lot, of consultations.’ It remains a mystery why Franken Mining was chosen for the project and what tendering process was followed before contracts were issued.

According to a report yesterday (13 October 2009) from Reuters news agency, the original plan has been scaled down. Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC) still wants to build a coal-fired plant, but on a much smaller scale.A feasibility study will be conducted first, SEC said.

According to Reuters no reason for the scaling down of the project was given, nor has a source of funding been found for the project.

There are many questions to be asked about this project but let’s start with this one: How is it that King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, had the money to build the plant in April, but by October the money is no longer there?

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

The mystery is deepening over an alleged 5 billion US dollar (E50 million) deal to build power stations in Swaziland.

When news that King Mswati III had secured this amount to pay for a company called Franken Mining to build coal power stations broke earlier this month (April 2009) 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.

Now, comes further disturbing news about the company at the centre of the deal: Franken Mining.

The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reports today (27 April 2009) that it has hit a brick wall in its search to find Franken Mining.

It reports, ‘The Times is in possession of correspondence between the company and local officials, who include Reverend Absalom Dlamini, former Minister of Economic Planning and Development and Prince Mangaliso, now referred to as Chief Logcogco.

‘These letters have telephone numbers (both fixed and mobile) as well as a postal box address. They also have an email address.

‘For the last four or five weeks, the landline number listed has not been functioning.Dialling ignites an automatic message purportedly from Telkom South Africa.

‘The message says: “The number you have dialed does not correspond to a subscriber in service.”

‘The mobile phone number is always on voicemail and a recorded message informs the caller not to leave a message, as one will be sent automatically to the owner.

‘According to the letters in our possession, Franken Mining’s postal address is at Menlo Park in Pretoria, South Africa. The deal is also to be facilitated by Professor Frans Whelpton. Professor Whelpton’s name became known when it was linked to negotiations for the return of E28 million paid as a deposit for the king’s jet.’

I questioned the deal in a blogpost on 8 April 2009 and asked if the Swazi people are about to be the victims of a gigantic fraud.

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

Swaziland has a long track record of corruption and financial incompetence and it is estimated by the Swazi Government itself that E40 million is lost to corruption in Swaziland each and every month. Also, the long running saga of the E28 million that was secretly (and illegally) paid as a deposit by the Swazi Government to buy a private jet costing E720 million for King Mswati indicates that Swaziland’s rulers cannot be trusted to spend money wisely.

What we do know about the latest power station project is that it is connected to King Mswati through the Swazi National Council (Liqoqo), the king’s advisory body. Prince Mangaliso, chair of the SNC, confirmed to the Times that funding had been secured on behalf of the King’s Projects. He said the rights to coal reserves in Swaziland had been allocated to Franken Mining.

The sums involved in the power station deal are vast: 5 billion US dollars is roughly the equivalent of Swaziland’s entire gross domestic product. The total amount of imports into Swaziland in 2008 was worth roughly 2 billion US dollars.