Wanna bet they get debt relief anyway?
Congo leader’s £169,000 hotel bill (that's $295,000 USD)
Tony Allen-Mills, New York
THE leader of one of Africa’s poorest countries paid more than £100,000 in cash towards a £169,000 hotel bill run up by his entourage during last year’s United Nations summit in New York, according to court documents obtained by The Sunday Times.
Aides to President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo startled staff at the Palace hotel on Madison Avenue by pulling out wads of $100 notes to settle a bill for 26 rooms.
Sassou-Nguesso, who is chairman of the African Union, representing all the continent’s governments, is negotiating with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel many of his country’s debts on the grounds that it cannot afford to repay them. Yet the president spent a week last September in the Palace hotel, one of Manhattan’s most prestigious addresses.
He paid $8,500 (about £4,875) a night for a three-storey suite with art deco furniture, a Jacuzzi bathtub and a 50in plasma television screen. His room service charges on September 18 alone came to more than £2,000.
More than 70% of the 3m people in the republic — known as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its larger neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo — live on less than £1.15 a day.
The president’s entourage of more than 50 people included his butler, his personal photographer and his wife’s hairdresser.
The group also occupied 25 rooms at the Crowne Plaza hotel, near the UN headquarters.
Copies of the bills show that the delegation spent a total of $295,000 (more than £169,000) for an eight-night stay in New York, including more than $81,000 (£46,400) for Sassou-Nguesso’s suite. The main purpose of the president’s visit was to deliver a 15-minute speech to the general assembly’s 60th anniversary summit. He was also entertained by an American oil firm.
Details of the president’s extravagance have outraged Congo-Brazzaville’s creditors and raised new questions about the credibility of the country’s claim to qualify for debt relief under an agreement brokered by Tony Blair at last year’s G8 summit at Gleneagles.
Anti-corruption campaigners have written to Paul Wolfowitz, head of the World Bank, urging him to oppose debt relief for Congo-Brazzaville until there has been a “massive cleaning up” of the country’s finances, which are heavily dependent on oil revenues. The IMF is due to discuss Congo-Brazzaville at an executive meeting on Friday.
Global Witness, the anti-corruption group, claimed in a recent report on Congo-Brazzaville that its oil wealth “has for too long been managed for the private profit of the elite rather than for the benefit of its entire population”.
Sassou-Nguesso arrived at the Palace, which declares itself “the ultimate in urban luxury”, on September 11. A former Marxist who lost power in 1992 but regained it after a civil war in 1997, he was shown to a suite known as the Triplex. It boasts 18ft-high floor-to-ceiling windows, marble floors and an outdoor terrace with spectacular views of the skyline.
The hotel bills record that about £6,900 was charged to the president’s account as room service. No details were itemised, but the Palace offers guests menus that include pan-seared foie gras, Scottish langoustines, truffle crumbles, Dungeness crab and braised snails in chicken mousse.
Congo-Brazzaville’s UN mission paid a $51,000 deposit by cheque to secure the rooms. The final entry on the group bill shows that the balance was settled by a “cash payment” of $177,942.96 (£102,000) — an extraordinary sum for any hotel guest to be carrying.
The details might never have been made public had some of Congo-Brazzaville’s creditors not been pursuing the country through US and British courts over repayment of debts.
Among the creditors was a US investment fund, Elliott Management, which owns more than $100m of Congo-Brazzaville debt. Sassou-Nguesso’s hotel bills were among documents subpoenaed by Elliott lawyers.
Congo-Brazzaville’s UN mission did not respond to requests for comment on the hotel bills last week. In the past Sassou-Nguesso has denounced so-called “vulture” investment funds that buy up Third World debt at a discount. He has also pledged to the World Bank and the IMF his willingness to co-operate in financial reforms.
Yet two British High Court judges both concluded in separate cases two months ago that senior Congo officials had “put forward dishonest oral evidence” and “failed to disclose relevant documents” in cases involving old debts.
In a case brought by Kensington International, a UK-based Elliott affiliate, Mr Justice Cooke ruled that senior Congolese officials had sought to hide the profits from oil transactions so that creditors could not seize them.
He found that Denis Gokana, the head of the state oil company and a special adviser to the president, had set up “sham” companies to “conceal the true facts” of the sale of a $39m oil shipment to a British trader, Glencore Energy UK, which sold the oil on to BP.
The judge found that by filtering the state’s oil through a network of bogus traders, Gokana and his political masters were trying to prevent creditors from seizing Congo-Brazzaville assets, and were making millions of dollars for their companies in the process. “In my judgment, such conduct is dishonest,” the judge ruled.
For anti-corruption campaigners, the British ruling in favour of Kensington was further evidence that despite Blair’s enthusiasm for debt relief — and the high-profile campaigning of rock stars such as Bono — writing off Congo-Brazzaville’s debts may entrench corruption.
World Bank sources said Wolfowitz was perturbed by the Congo-Brazzaville case, but he is under pressure from the French to approve a debt relief package.
Jay Newman of Elliott Management noted that the president’s hotel suite cost “more per day than the average Congolese makes in a decade”.
Newman added: “It is oh-so-chic to rock out with Bono and Kofi Annan (the UN secretary-general) and there may be instances in which debt forgiveness makes sense.
“But rather than forgiveness, for some countries the right answers are political sanctions and, when warranted, criminal prosecutions.”
timesonline.co.uk |
