Posted on 05/09/2002 7:48:32 AM PDT by Clive
Menashe cons Chiluba By David Masunda Deputy Editor-in-Chief 5/9/02 3:07:46 AM (GMT +2)
INTERNATIONAL wheeler-dealer Ari Ben-Menashe, paid millions by the Zimbabwe government to spruce up its tattered image, conned the administration of former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba of more than US$6 million (about $330 million at the official exchange rate) three years ago, it was established this week.
The London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), in a determination just made public, has ordered Ben-Menashe and his Carlington Sales Company to pay back US$6,108,822 plus interest for failing to supply impoverished Zambia with 50,000 tonnes of maize it paid for in 1998.
The judgment was made by arbitrator Axel H Baum after leading South African bank Nedcor Bank Limited, acting on behalf of the Zambian government, appealed to the international court because Ben-Menashe had refused to pay back the money after failing to deliver the maize.
But the money trail might prove elusive and just as hazy as the underworld of international wheeling and dealing, as Nedcor has found out.
Willem Kruger, the bank’s head for legal affairs, told the Financial Gazette that Carlington has "liquidated itself" to avoid repaying the money it conned out of the Zambian authorities.
"We are unable to effect our rights in terms of the arbitration because Carlington has liquidated itself," Kruger said by telephone from Johannesburg yesterday.
According to court documents, Zambia’s Food Reserve Agency was introduced to Ben-Menashe in 1997. The agency then entered into an agreement with the former spy in Israel’s Mossad agency to buy 50,000 tonnes of maize from Carlington, one of the businessman’s firms.
Ben-Menashe, at the centre of a court case in Zimbabwe after allegedly trapping opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai into a plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe, was initially paid US$2.4 million by the Zambian government in 1997 as a deposit for the maize.
He was further paid other amounts to total US$7,746,108 by April 1999 after a new contract was negotiated and the US$2.4 million was carried over into the new 1998 corn contract.
But the controversial businessman began to prevaricate when asked to supply the maize saying part of the payment for the maize deal was for the "lobbying" work he did on behalf of Chiluba and the Zambian government and that the US$2.4 million was never meant to be carried forward into the 1998 corn account.
He alleged that some of the money meant for him for both the maize deal and the lobby work had disappeared because of rampant corruption involving senior Zambian government officials under Chiluba, including the president’s close advisers.
Ben-Menashe said he was forced to bribe many influential Zambians and claimed that a former leading opposition politician, Paul Tembo, was brutally murdered in Lusaka around that time because he was going to testify on his behalf.
Baum, the sole arbitrator, dismissed Ben-Menashe’s defence and ruled that the former spy’s offer to provide evidence of rampant corruption in Chiluba’s government was "clouded with references to the need for prior approval from some nebulous authorities" and was only meant to delay judgment.
The maize deal has attracted immense media scrutiny in Zambia and internationally because it allegedly involves former senior members of the Chiluba cabinet such as finance minister Edith Nawakwi, now in opposition, and Chiluba’s special adviser Donald Chanda.
The LCIA, whose investigations give a glimpse into the murky underworld of so-called international lobbyists such as Ben-Menashe, was instituted after the former Israeli spy tried to wriggle out of his obligations to deliver the maize by inferring that the money for the deal was diverted to "special projects" demanded by Chiluba.
In the complex arrangement, Ben-Menashe — a self-proclaimed admirer of Mugabe — was also paid various sums by the Zambian government for "international lobbying" while at the same time collecting millions in hard currency to supply maize to the drought-stricken country.
Ben-Menashe’s Canadian-based Dickens and Madson public relations company has since been employed by the Zimbabwean government and the ruling ZANU PF party to lobby internationally to improve Zimbabwe’s battered image.
Dickens and Madson, which is supposed to have secretly recorded senior Zimbabwean opposition leaders plotting to kill Mugabe last year, is involved in the treason court case against Tsvangirai where its video tapes form the key evidence that might be presented by the prosecution.
The Canada-based businessman, who has been in and out of Harare since the video tapes were broadcast leading to the charge against Tsvangirai and two senior members of his party, says he has now distanced himself from the case because he is preoccupied with lobbying for Zimbabwe.
The LCIA has ordered Ben-Menashe to pay Nedcor US$4,988,508 for breach of contract and interest of US$1,120,313. The businessman will also pay the costs of the arbitration court amounting to 255,213 British pounds.
Kruger said Nedcor was participating in Carlington’s liquidation process to try to recover some of its money and did not rule out pursuing Ben-Menashe himself.
"We are certainly investigating whatever we can do . . . we are looking for alternative means to recover the money," Kruger said.
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