WHAT WAS PRESIDENT RENE'S PRIVATE PHONE NUMBER DOING ON DEAD DRUG DEALER IN AMERICA
In late 1984, in the US, the New Jersey police found the mutilated bodies of two local drug-traffickers, apparent victims of a gangland killing. One of the two had in his pocket an address book which contained the name and private phone number of President France Albert Rene.
The article below is the first in a series of excerpts from an essay published in the public affairs magazine African Affairs in 1996 entitled AFRICA AND INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION: THE STRANGE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA AND SEYCHELLES by STEPHEN ELLIS published in 1996.
In this episode, the author relates a story told to him by the US Ambassador to the Seychelles in the early eighties, David Fischer, on the reaction of President Rene when the ambassador informed him that the police in the American State of New Jersey had discovered his private telephone number in an address book on the mutilated body of one of two known drug dealers. Read on.
INTRODUCTION
THE SUBJECT OF CORRUPTION has emerged at the top of the agenda in recent dealings between African governments and the Western donors on whom many are heavily dependant. It is notoriously difficult to define corruption, but it is generally understood to entail the use of an official position for purposes of private enrichment or illegitimate advantage.
During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a stream of books on corruption in Africa2 or on closely related concepts such as neo-patrimonialism, prebendalism and pkleptocracy. Particularly since a World Bank report in 1989 explicitly spoke of a 'crisis of governance' in Africa south of the Sahara, much of the discussion of corruption south of the Sahara has been subsumed in a wider debate on governance.
The literature on corruption or on governance in Africa more generally tends to adopt a national perspective, investigating how national elites use corruption or manipulation of public policy to enrich themselves and maintain themselves in power. It is rather less frequent, at least in the academic literature, to encounter detailed studies of the relationship between corruption in various parts of Africa and that in industrialized countries.
The present article is an attempt to trace the development of corruption in one part of Africa in a global context. It demonstrates how the ease with which capital can be transferred and commodities bought and sold and the speed of modern communication in general have been given considerable impetus to the linking of corrupt practices across borders, and that this process of trans-national corruption was considerably encouraged by the Cold War. The main focus of study is Seychelles, a small country but one which has the meritif that is the right wordof providing interesting data on the subject under discussion. After independence in 1976 Seychelles was subject to intense international diplomatic and military activity, often of a covert nature, due largely to the islands' strategic location, which made them an asset both in US-Soviet rivalry in
the Indian Ocean and in the more localized patterns of conflict stemming from South Africa's drive to assert its hegemony in southern Africa, notably by destabilizing or manipulating neighbouring states. This led to attempts to subvert or influence the islands' government by bribery and by force, while more powerful governments and business interests associated with political parties as far afield as Italy manipulated Seychelles' status as a sovereign state in order to perform various transactions of dubious legality. There is some evidence also that the islands were used for financial transactions by arms-dealers and as a staging-post for drug trafficking.
These various interests became intertwined with each other and with the Seychelles' government's own policies, having a demonstrable effect on governance in the islands.
It should be emphasized at the outset that not all the transactions, individuals or circumstances described here can be described as corrupt. On the contrary, one of the principal conclusions which can be drawn from the present essay is that grand corruption, sometimes masquerading as ration d'etat, shapes the environment in which individual politicians, diplomats and business people are obliged to operate.
Some effects in Seychelles
As bureaucrats and businessmen hammered out these strategic arrangements in offices in Washington, Geneva, Pretoria and elsewhere, and in business meetings in hotels all over the world, and as vast amounts of money changed hands, an atmosphere of intrigue and skulduggery settled on Seychelles and among some Seychellois exiles. There were occasional political assassinations or 'disappearances' in the islands, which although few in number, had an unsettling effect in such a small community. Gerard Hoarau, the most effective of the Seychellois exiles, published a series of detailed, well-documented and highly embarrassing allegations concerning corruption by the Seychelles government and promised further revelations117 which were never forthcoming: in November 1985, Hoarau was machine-gunned in a quiet London suburb. His killer, apparently a professional assassin, was never identified.
There were constant rumours that the islands were being used for heroin- and currency-trafficking. In late 1984, in the US, the New Jersey police found the mutilated bodies of two local drug-traffickers, apparent victims of a gangland killing. One of the two had in his pocket an address book which contained the name and address of Florio Fiorini and the name and private phone number of President France Albert Rene. The circumstances
in which he had come to write these numbers in his address book were a mystery. The US ambassador to Seychelles at the time recalls that when he gave this information to the President, Rene went pale with apprehension. It was the only time that the ambassador recalls seeing Rene truly startled. Important international crime syndicates seem to have infiltrated much of the region: in London Francesco Di Carlo, a Sicilian convicted in 1987 of heroin-trafficking on behalf of a mafia crime family in a major trial, was shown to have regularly visited Mombasa, Kenya, where some casinos were said to be used by the Italian mafia for both money-making and money-laundering on a significant scale. Between the inception of Seychelles' private offshore tax haven in 1978 and 1992 some 40 companies registered to make use of the facility. According to Finance Minister James Michel, speaking in 1995, some of them 'have been engaged in illegal activities and were being investigated by Interpol and the US State Department’. In a court case in France in 1986, for example, it emerged that a company registered in the Seychelles' offshore facility had been used to transact major arms deals, possibly in an effort to acquire nuclear material for Libya.
Finance Minister James Michel's acknowledgement in 1995 of the abuses of the Seychelles' tax haven and measures taken by him to reform the way in which the system worked do not signal an end to the islands' involvement in money-laundering. In November 1995, the Seychelles national assembly amended the constitution in order to open the way for legislation guaranteeing immunity from criminal prosecution for any foreign businessman investing a minimum of $10 million in the islands.
The Economic Development Bill provides immunity from prosecution for all investors meeting these requirements 'for all criminal proceedings whatsoever except criminal proceedings in respect of offences involving acts of violence and drug trafficking in Seychelles'. The director of Britain's Serious Fraud Office commented that it was 'the perfect present for drug barons, fraudsters and money launderers'.
Editor: Stephen Ellis is the director of the Africa programme at the International Crisis Group (ICG). He is the former director of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, and former editor of the newsletter Africa Confidential. His most recent book (with Gerrie ter Haar) is Worlds of Power: religious thought and political practice in Africa (2004).
