http://johnhelmer.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Guinea-Special-Analysis-Jan-2013.pdf

Refer to pages 13 to 15.

And pages 79 to 80.

“Conde”s Great Giveaway

A government partner is handing over major stakes in the Simandou contracts to Chinese state-owned firms

Despite support from groups like George Soros’s Open Society Institute, President Alpha Condé’s government persists in striking troublesome mining deals. The government and the African Iron Ore Group, founded by Ethelbert Cooper, a Liberian, signed a deal in November 2011 that would secure AIOG a stake in the planned infrastructure for the Simandou mine – on condition that it help to arrange the finance. It now appears that AIOG has merely done what the Guinean state could have done itself – roped in Chinese state-owned enterprises – and in the process handed over a 40% portion of Guinea’s share of the railway line and port…”

– Africa-Asia Confidential

The first one was quoted above where he is mentioned in the same sentence with Randall Cooper.

The second one says:

“Let me refresh your memory on the financial contributions from your sources. Twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000.00) was the initial contribution by your consortium (Clarence Simpson and Taylor Major), when the war started. I am the founding Chairman of the Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia (ACDL). Let me not forget the $50,000.00 contribution that you passed through Mr. Allen Brown Sr. who was then running an insurance business in the Ivory Coast. You had earmarked the money specifically to buy rice for the fighting men and it was done.

Another $150,000.00 was contributed by some of your friends and delivered to Dew Mayson, Ethelbert Cooper and Emmanuel Shaw to be forwarded to the NPFL. If you recalled, those bad boys ate the money and we were only able to recover $75,000.00 of it six months later.”

As mentioned before, Dew Mayson is also listed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report as one of 49 persons to be publicly sanctioned.

Here, another Liberian commission, and another reference to Ethelbert Cooper:

http://www.emansion.gov.lr/doc/DUNN_COMMISSION_Updated.pdf

This is the report – dated 7 January 2009 – of an ad-hoc commission (the Dunn Commission) set up to invetigate the “e-mail saga” – a number of corruption scandals in the Liberian government revealed by the news website Africa Front Page through the online publication, in August 2008, of a sequence of e-mail correspondence between Liberian government officers and involved third parties.

One of the corruption cases involved the negotiations for the renewal of the contract for the services of the Liberian ship and company registry, which at the time was being run by private operator LISCR.

It appears that LISCR managed to secure the contract renewal, and that they are still online today:

http://www.liscr.com/liscr/

But in the period referred to in the report, the contract was up for renewal and there were other bidders competing with LISCR, including the company Oceanic Corporate Services of New York (OCS).

Footnote 9 on page 4 of the report reveals that Ethelbert Cooper was believed to be a “silent partner” in OCS’s endevour in bidding for the registry services. The report identifies Prof. Dew Mayson as a conduit to deliver OCS’s proposal to the Commissioner for the Bureau of Maritime Affairs, Mr. Binyah Kessely, and earlier, to his predecessor.

The report conclusions include this paragraph about the OCS bid:

“Professor Dew Mayson’s role as conduit in respect of the OCS proposal, though reportedly less pretentious, requires close scrutiny given what has gone down regarding the Registry in the past several years. It also has the appearance of undue influence in reference to the LISCR contract negotiations.

While Ethelbert Cooper is listed at number 3, Dew Mayson is in position 6 in the list of persons recommended for public sanctions in the 30 June 2009 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia – page 361 in the report here:

http://trcofliberia.org/resources/reports/final/volume-two_layout-1.pdf

There are several open letters to current Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on the internet. One of the letters is dated 30 August 2005 and is written by Jucontee Thomas Woewiyu. See details about Woewiyu later in my post.

In the letter, Woewiyu reminds President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of her role in the Liberian civil wars.

The letter contains a reference to Ethelbert Cooper:

http://theliberiandialogue.org/2014/05/16/woewiyus-an-open-letter-to-madam-ellen-johnson-sirleaf/

“…While waiting for your arrival in the Ivory Coast, you called to say that the venue of the meeting had been changed to Banjul, The Gambia. I found out later that after I left, you had another meeting with some people including Randall Cooper who then represented the NPFL in the U.S. at the home of Ethelbert Cooper.”

This establishes a further connection between Ethelbert Cooper and the NPFL – the rebel group of Charles Taylor, which received arms assistance from Ghaddafi.

1. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

President Johnson-Sirleaf became the first woman to be elected head of state in Africa when she was elected President of Liberia in 2005. In 2006, she set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which investigated two decades of civil wars in Liberia.

In the 2009 final report, the TRC listed President Johnson-Sirleaf as one of 49 persons to be barred from holding public office in Liberia for her role in the civil wars.

President Johnson-Sirleaf subsequently apologised to the people of Liberia for her involvement with Charles Taylor, and eventually, in 2011, together with another two women, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, President Johnson-Sirleaf continues to face serious criticism – including calls for her arrest and prosecution for her role in Liberia’s civil wars – especially by Liberians in America.

2. Jucontee Thomas Woewiyu

The Liberian Dialogue website re-published Woewiyu’s letter on 16 May 2014 immediately after his arrest in the United States early in May this year.

http://www.theperspective.org/2014/0515201402.php

“Observers believe that the arrest is a warning to Liberian warlords masquerading as politicians in Liberia and those who live in the comfort of the United States.” – The Perspective

Not a nice signal to Ethelbert Cooper.

And here is the report of Woewiyu’s arrest with the views of the Liberian Dialogue:

http://theliberiandialogue.org/2014/05/14/jucontee-woewiyus-finally-in-jail-whos-next/

Woewiyu was a founding member with Charles Taylor of the NPFL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia), the movement which led the first Liberian civil war from 1989. Woewiyu was also a Minister of Defence for the NPFL and later a Minister of Labour when Taylor became President of Liberia in 1997.

Interesting background about Woewiyu and events in Liberia in the 1980s-1990s contained in Woewiyu’s US court indictment here:

http://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/releases/2014/140513philadelphia.pdf

3. Randall Cooper and Ethelbert Cooper

In his open letter, Woewiyu refers to Randall Cooper and Ethelbert Cooper. Their names are listed in 2nd and 3rd positions, and not for alphabetical reasons, in a list of 49 persons contained in the Consolidated Final Report dated 30 June 2009 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. The list appears under the title “List of Persons Subject to/Recommended for Public Sanctions” and under the following statement:

“All those associated with former warring factions, their leaders, political decision makers, financiers, organizers, commanders, foot soldiers shall be subject to public sanctions in one form or another.

The below comprising of the most prominent political leaders and financiers of different warring factions and armed groups, by their conduct, leadership, finances, and support, actions or inactions, are responsible for the commission of gross human rights violations, international humanitarian lawviolations, international human rights law, war crimes, and egregious domestic law violations. This list is by no means exhaustive but represents the most prominent individuals identified by the TRC worthy of public sanction because of their roles during the years of war and instability in Liberia. The following and all other persons similarly situated shall be subject to public sanctions as herein described above in section 14.2 and are specifically barred from holding public office, elected or appointed, for a period of thirty (30) years as of July 1, 2009.”

See page 361 in the TRC’s report here:

http://trcofliberia.org/resources/reports/final/volume-two_layout-1.pdf

So basically, besides dealing with Shiv Nair who is permanently debarred for corruption by the World Bank, the government of Joseph Muscat has been dealing with Ethelbert Cooper who is proposed for debarment from public office by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia.

Who knows, maybe on his next trip to Harvard’s Hutchins Centre, Mr. Cooper will be the next one to be arrested for not having declared his involvement in the Liberian war when obtaining his American papers? Or is his contribution to the Hutchins Centre on African culture part of the community service and compensation for his role in Liberia’s civil wars?

Never preach to the converted who do not bow down and quote the Fabbrika tal Kancer instead of BWSC.
My admiration Ciccio for following mature political leaders and not toy boys.

Please don’t make idle threats. We all know you won’t be wearing anything of the sort.

For here we have Mr. Cooper using his shell companies, including those in the Seychelles, to channel funds from other sources – but which originate in China. Effectively, Mr. Cooper is using his companies as a vehicle to move around sums of money. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Connor had mentioned that he had been asked if he could lend his trust fund for funds to be moved from the US to Africa.

Besides, Mr. Connor had mentioned also that he had overheard discussions about fuel efficient engines being sold in Africa – was this a discussion on powerstations?

On 1 May 2014, Gasol signed a “cooperation agreement” with China Machinery Engineering Corporation – a company which specialises in the construction of power projects in generation, transmission, and distribution. “Gasol … is interested in developing greenfield gas-fired power plants in markets where it supplies the gas.”

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

Mr. Connor described the men meeting at his villa as “mostly American businessmen” and “Christian evangelicals” who discussed different business proposals, including “a lot of talk about brokering raw African gold and selling it in Europe.”

Mr. Cooper, who is African, has US citizenship and claims to be an expert in minerals.

From now on, I am going to appear in public wearing a T-shirt with the message: “I get my gas and power from Ethelbert J.L. Cooper, the friend of the criminal and corrupt Liberian regimes of the 1990s.”

“I am only just waking up to the realisation that this must be the largest scandal of this government so far. It is an act of defiance of international law and an insult to African people and Liberians in particular.”

So Mr. Cooper was an associate of Emanuel Shaw II, who was:

1. A Minister of Finance of Liberia under dictator Samuel Doe who came to power after conducting a military coup in 1980 and ruled up to 1990 after heavily rigging the presidential elections held in 1985. Samue Doe was assassinated and overthrown in 1990, one year after Charles Taylor initiated the first civil war.

2. An ambassador extraordinaire and confidante of convicted criminal Charles Taylor – a warlord who trained under Ghaddafi’s Libya in the 1980s when Libya was a terrorist state – who initiated the first civil war of Liberia in 1989 (against Doe) and who came down during the second civil war in 2003. With Charles Taylor, Emanuel Shaw was also involved in drug-trafficking cartels.

Surely I want to know now, not later, whether, if elected in 2018, the PN will be honouring the power purchase and gas supply deal of 18 years which the government of Malta is proposing (the government and The Times say that the government has signed it already, but Enemalta’s website contradicts them) to sign with a consortium involving Maltese businessmen and led by the Liberian Mr. Ethelbet J. L. Cooper.

The PN should make clear now that it will not honour any contracts with associates of: convicted criminals, warlords, drug-traffickers, thieves, fraudsters, crooks and dictators.