But of course there is a roadmap, dear Kevin,and one of sorts that has been drafted well before the last elections. Just read between the lines and you’ll get your roadmap.

“Another Fund, Another Liberian”

http://mg.co.za/article/1997-12-12-another-fund-another-liberian

12 December 1997

“Two eminent businessmen resigned last year from an investment fund set up by Don Mkhwanazi after he paid himself and a Liberian consultant huge salaries and the fund’s first venture flopped.

Mkhwanazi founded the National Empowerment Trust in 1994, together with the National Empowerment Trust Investment Fund, which he chaired.

But the two most prominent members of the investment fund’s executive – vice-chair Oscar Dhlomo, a leading Durban businessman, and Gibson Thula, head of the Diamond Board – quit last year.

With start-up funds of R5-million, Mkhwanazi proposed paying himself a one-off fee of R144 000 and a monthly salary of R45 000. He is also understood to have made handsome payments totalling at least R500 000 to his Liberian consultant, Ethelbert Cooper. Mkhwanazi also proposed that the fund pay for Cooper’s relocation to Durban.

Cooper is a close associate of Emanuel Shaw II and a director of International Advisory Services (IAS). IAS was set up last year by Mkhwanazi’s lawyers and was awarded the R3- million contract to advise the Central Energy Fund, which Mkhwanazi chairs. Shaw II and his son, Emanuel Shaw III, occupy offices at the energy fund’s Sandton headquarters…”

Ethelbert Cooper would pass as an American citizen. He has dual American and Liberian citizenship.

http://www.africaintelligence.com/AMA/who-s-who/2010/11/03/ethelbert-cooper,86018273-ART

“Africa Mining Intelligence has learned that businessman Ethelbert Cooper, who holds dual American and Liberian citizenship, is currently putting together …”

What are the odds that he was one of the first applicants for a Maltese/EU passport?

The gap was therefore an invitation to look into what he may have been up to in the 1990s, early 2000s.

And this is what the internet search engines found for me. I am sure the “due diligence” team at the Auberge de Clownstille will find this information, well, surprising and enlightening, if not amusing.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1098387/000093176300001663/0000931763-00-001663-0001.txt

This “general form for registration of securities” filed in June 2000 by Telemonde Inc with the US Securities and Exchange Commission lists Mr. Ethelbert J. L. Cooper (who was 45 at the time) as the Vice President of International Operations of Equitel, a company which Telemonde had bought in November 1999. It’s on page 66.

It also gives a short bio of Mr. Cooper:

“Mr. Cooper joined EquiTel in September 1999. He has extensive management and industrial experience throughout Africa. From 1981 until he joined Telemonde, he was chairman of a diversified project management and trading group, with interests in transportation and telecommunications operating in Southern and Western Africa.”

Strange: no mention of the LAMCO/LIMINCO iron ore mining venture, which got a mention by Harvard’s Hutchins Centre. And no mention of experience in iron ore businesses either.

It also says that in November 1999, Mr. Cooper had been issued 400,000 shares of Telemonde for “introduction of EquiTel to prospective joint venture partners in Africa.”

But Telemonde was a telecoms company set up in 1998 with a plan to ride on the wave of success of the dot.coms. Telemonde sold telecom bandwidths to internet companies. So when the dot.com bubble burst in late 2000, Telemonde faced the inevitable. By early 2002, sales had plummeted and profits turned to losses. Debts soared. The share price of Telemonde collapsed. By June 2002, the company’s worth – which at its peak had reached $500 million – had gone down to $370,000.

And Telemonde was not like any other company that got in trouble because of the dot.com bubble. Telemonde had been founded by Kevin Maxwell, son of the disgraced Robert Maxwell. Kevin had been declared bankrupt in the 1990s. He was discharged from the bankruptcy in 1995, but in that year he and his brother Ian were put on trial for the losses identified in the business of their father, in which business they had worked for many years. They were later acquitted, but Kevin had high hopes for Telemonde, which he wanted to use to dispel the negative reputation of the Maxwells which ensued after the death of Robert.

Telemonde’s business was not quite a clean one. The Guardian described it as “a company at the centre of a web of offshore subsidiaries, many of them scattered across secretive, sun-drenched locations, had a business model no one really understood.”

Eventually, Telemonde collapsed, but it did not do so before the attention of the UK media had turned on it. And although he came close to bankruptcy, Kevin managed to clear the Telemonde debt over the years that followed.

So Ethelbert Cooper has already been involved, even if indirectly, in the collapse of a business venture which put a very prominent person in serious trouble. If Gasol, as project leader, fails to deliver the Malta gas-to-power plant on time on 9 March 2015, this time Mr. Cooper will land Malta’s prime minister Joseph Muscat in trouble.

Isn’t it comforting to know that the project leadership of a Euro 370 million project involving a LNG tanker anchored in the middle of the populated Marsaxlokk Bay is in the hands of a former Vice President of International Operations at a subsidiary of a telecom company which was wiped away with the bursting of the dot.com bubble and which brought the son of Robert Maxwell to the brink of his second bankruptcy?

This time, if Mr. Cooper’s bubble bursts, it will not be due to the dot.com crisis. Who knows, maybe this time they will blame it on the gas? If the bubble explodes, let’s hope it does not take the LNG tanker with it.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/maxwells-telemonde-in-sales-dive-6301325.html

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/feb/17/newmedia.business

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1365444/Robert-Maxwell-daughter-Ghislaine-embroiled-Prince-Andrew-scandal.html

For the benefit of readers, here is a picture of Mr. Ethelbert Cooper with Mr. Osman Shahenshah.

They are seen here doing philanthropy in New York on 9 March (yes, 9 March) 2010.

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Osman+Shahenshah/Bonhams+NY+Africa+Now+Reception+Keep+Child/pheXVLN_k85

They are both co-founders with others (including the late Dr. Rilwanu Lukman who passed away on 21 July 2014, the same day Gasol plc, of which he was chairman, withdrew from the London Stock Exchange AIM listing) of Afren plc.

Mr. Shahenshah is also CEO of Afren.

Mr. Cooper is the founder and the majority owner of Gasol, whilst Mr. Shahenshah was a director up to 2012. Gasol’s business strategy is highly inter-linked with Afren’s.

On 31 July, Afren’s board suspended Mr. Shahenshah and COO Shahid Ullah following the revelation by an independent legal firm of “evidence” “of the receipt of unauthorised payments potentially for the benefit of the CEO and COO.” An investigation is ongoing.

1. Hutchins Centre

He is a donor to the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at the Hutchins Centre – a new (2013) initiative of Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts (MA), USA).

http://www.boston.com/yourcampus/news/harvard/2013/09/harvard_announces_launch_of_hutchins_center_for_african_and_african_american_research_through_15m_gi.html

http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/

http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/cooper-gallery

The bio of Ethelbert Cooper has this introductory note:

“It is through the generosity and support of the Hutchins Center board member, Ethelbert Cooper, that the Cooper Gallery began its transformation from dream to reality. The gallery is proud to be named after him.”

2. African African-American Foundation

Mr. Cooper is also a trustee of the charity called African African-American Foundation, details of which are available online thanks to CitizenAudit.org, an excellent American website which publishes details from tax documents filed by nonprofit organisations but not otherwise made public by government.

https://www.citizenaudit.org/208835505/

Links to the 2008 and 2012 “Return of Organisation Exempt from Income Tax” for the foundation from CitizenAudit.org:

http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2009_07_EO/20-8835505_990_200812.pdf

http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2013_08_EO/20-8835505_990_201212.pdf

The 2008 return stated that “the Foundation is (was) in its organisational phase – has not began to provide program services” and that the foundation was registered in Reston, Virginia (VA).

The 2012 return stated that the “Foundation has been dormant since June 2010, but plan to restart operations and resume its mission in 2014.” By this time, the foundation was registered in Silver Spring, Maryland (MD).

Both returns show Mr. Ethelber JL Cooper as a trustee with others, and his address at The Quadrangle, Chelsea Harbour, which is a prestigious UK address. The 2008 return specifies the number 16 at The Quadrangle, which is a property worth about Stg 1.2 million.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property/16-the-quadrangle/chelsea-harbour/london/sw10-0ug/23231489

Any Maltese neighbours at The Quadrangle?

The new Labour government has practiced DoubleSpeak right from the beginning of their term in office. Time and time again we have seen actions that contradict the rhetoric. “Tista ma taqbilx maghna imma tista tahdem maghna” was closely followed by the removal of many, no matter how well qualified and experienced, because they were in some way associated with the PN. “Meritocracy” was followed by the appointment of all those who featured in the Labour campaign to positions of responsibility. The much touted “Malta Taghna Lkoll” slogan soon became Malta Taghna Biss.

Are we surprised that the contract with Henley and Partners has not been made public? No. Are we surprised that we no longer see any transparency in the way Government operates? No. And would we be surprised if Labour has been working with companies well known for their corrupt practices? No. Frankly I wouldn’t even be surprised if they had to bring the North Koreans here to train the police to beat up those who protest against the government. They’ve done it before!

The short bio states:

“Additionally, Mr. Cooper’s iron ore focus continues in the present day through his leadership of African Iron Ore Group (“AIOG”), a company which is assembling a portfolio of prospective assets across Africa. AIOG’s existing activities include rights to develop rail and port infrastructure for the massive Simandou iron ore project in Guinea and similar positioning in Cameroon, where its strategic ally London AIM-listed International Mining & Infrastructure Corporation plc (“IMIC”) is completing the acquisition of a major new iron ore project.

In furtherance of these goals in the iron ore sector, Mr. Cooper has been the key figure in the formation of a formal alliance of large Chinese state-owned contractors which will support the projects of AIOG and IMIC by supplying an integrated package of rail, port, power and ore-processing infrastructure solutions, as well as by providing related project financing.”

Here is a picture and a news release of the momentous meeting of Mr. Cooper with “large Chinese state-owned contractors” China Railway Materials Commercial Corp – not to be confused with China Railways, a client of Shiv Nair, but both corporations are owned by the Chinese government (which is an ’employer’ of Shiv Nair) so they are effectively two subsidiaries of the same communist ‘holding.’

http://www.crmsc.com.cn/crmscnewEN/news_Show_user.asp?ID=1578

(Makes me wonder who was handling that camera…)

That meeting took place in June 2012.

It seems that the Chinese company established “win-win” (sounds like a Chinese phrase) relations with African Iron Ore Group “astonishingly fast:” in September 2013, AIOG signed an agreement with China Railway Materials.

http://www.imicplc.com/public/RegulatoryFilings/2013.09.05_IMIC_AIOG_Signs_Cooperation_Agreement_with_CRM.pdf

Also in September 2013, AIOG and its strategic partner IMIC plc opened a representative office in China.

http://m.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/mobile/news/detail.html?announcementId=11698049

In March 2014, Gasol plc – the company which we now know was founded and is majority-owned by Mr. Cooper – signed a “strategic partnership agreement” (this phrase sounds definitely British, but recently it has become intrinsically very Chinese) “under which AIOG appoints Gasol to be its exclusive partner for the provision of LNG to Gas to Power Solutions.”

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11907916

And in May 2014, Gasol signed a “cooperation agreement” with China Machinery Engineering Corporation, which followed “from the Strategic Partnership Agreement that Gasol concluded recently with AIOG.”

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11939594

The executive chairman of IMIC plc – the strategic partner of AIOG – is Mr. Haresh Kanabar, who is also a director of Gasol.

http://www.imicplc.com/our_board.aspx

Sitting alongside Mr. Kanabar on the board of IMIC there is Mr. Liu Guoping, a former Senior Vice President of China Railway Materials (see same link to the board of IMIC).

So, the connections may be a bit complex, but essentially there are strong links to China, and definitely to Chinese money, and to China’s operations in Africa. Mr. Cooper is a central figure in this process it seems that he is the one who established the links of Gasol to China.

I have this feeling that Mr. Cooper and Shiv Nair have met somewhere.

It would also be interesting to know if Mr. Barry Connor who leases villas to visitors in the Bahamas ever met Mr. Ethelbert J. L. Cooper, who as a Liberian, would probably pass as an American citizen.

http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/ethelbert-cooper

Let me guess the name of that painting: “The clowns at the Auberge de Castille”?