Only creative artists muster making gov’t deals

Mustering govt corruption and politricks

Only creative artists muster making gov’t deals

By Opoka Christopher Arop

Many people were hardly shocked when Republic of South Sudan was among the world’s top five most corrupt countries. This was preempted when a list of more than seventy most corrupt government officials was leaked by the United States government shortly after independence in 2011.

When $5 billion was shared among seventy-fie senior government officials, the President responded by announcing that an account would be opened in Nairobi, with Kenya Commercial Bank, Kenya, to which accused ministers, presidential advisors and senior government officials would deposit part of their loot.

It is not clear to date how much has accrued into this account. What is clear however is that the public is not aware of the process, and who is managing any of the stolen funds.

This brings me to the art of making business deals in the world’s newest state; a baby of IGAD especially President Museveni of Uganda and Kenya’s political elite.

Like the history of Angola, during its political boom, business attracted people of different backgrounds, and with it different approaches to winning government contracts changed by the winds. In Angola, the diamond industry attracted several people with ready money for the government of the day to borrow, and pay back with contracts. At a time when the government is in need of urgent cash to buy ammunition and pay off political allies, a long term investment in the diamond industry was a least feasible option, and so came in the likes of Arcadi Gaydamak.

Arcadi like many businessmen in the Republic of South Sudan, holds numerous passports. And even at the Juba international airport, businessmen are not afraid to flaunt their travel documents, evidencing several nationalities.

Arcadi holds a French, Israeli (Jewish), Canadian, Russian and of course Angolan passports.

What better way to start this analysis than by posing some questions: Are business moguls in South Sudan making any clean money at all? With the case of crooks like Arcadi Gaydamak, Russian money is clean money and explainable during the redistribution period.

Some people in the international community and on internet blogs have compared this phase with the robber barons era that the United States of America went through in the 19^th Century; but there is a huge difference. The robber barons kept their money in the US, South Sudanese elites like Russia’s and Angola’s by contrast had at their disposal a wonderful array of tax havens by successive layers of secrecy and opaque shell banks, protected by successive layers of secrecy to help them drain their countries of their wealth.

I once accidentally bumped into a rather somewhat supposedly private meeting in which the South Korean delegation making power point presentations in an attempt to land a $10 billion national road network contract.

As I got in, the presentations were mid-way and I followed questions from what sounded and appeared to be ministry technocrats. Questions ranged from the South Korean company’s history in road and bridge construction, technical issues with road networking, duration for the supposed project completion etc; all well-meaning questions.

To the more important question, one engineer asked how much it would cost to construct the national network of roads and bridges and where this money would come from?

The project would cost $10 billion with a payback period of five years, the money would come in the form of a grant from the South Korean government through a South Korean National bank amounting to 70% of the total sum required. Government of South Sudan would contribute the remaining 30%, about 3$ billion in cash. The payback would be through taxation on road users as well as perhaps more importantly an oil for roads deal.

The story never saw the light of day till this paragraph. Till today I am not sure to whom the contract was awarded. So far the works have not started. But this is not to say, that with the secrecy of awarding of contracts, that such deal, with the Chinese coming atop such list in this familiar part of Africa.

Today I have a silent question of my own. If such deals were being struck in ministry halls, away from the eye of the public or press, not even legislators, just how many such deals are happening, have happened and many more to come? If so, aside from inherited debts sharing with the Khartoum government after independence, just how much debt has the government of South Sudan plunged its tax payers into, by making deals with the likes of Russia’s Arcadi in Angola?

Is it rightly an oil curse or simply a political�"industrial�"impunity that allows those who gain at the expense of the majority public to do so holding their heads proudly high?

If the more than 5$ billion allegedly embezzled by more than seventy-five senior government officials in the country was recovered and invested through open bidding into a national road network, even the thought of an army mutiny would be rejected by a people who will have grown confidence in the government’s sincerity and ability to deliver services. The citizenry would care less and demonstrate against tribal divisions and agitate for development and peace.

Whether our bunch of so called investors from Australia, Canada, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Indonesia, India, United States of America, China are the replica of Arcadi remains to be seen; but the fact is that holding multiple passports is just a tip of the iceberg. The deals they make, the money they clean and the corruption magnets they continue to feed in offshore accounts is as real.