cwemory
Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Location: Gunpo, Korea
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 Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 6:50 am Post subject: Barclays' millions help to prop up Mugabe regime |
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Barclays' millions help to prop up Mugabe regime
The Observer
Three British firms provide key finance, allowing the Zimbabwe leader to defy world condemnation
Barclays bank is helping to bankroll President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, providing millions of pounds of support for his vilified land reforms, The Observer can reveal. Mugabe's opponents describe the bank's activities as a 'disgrace' and an 'insult' to the millions who have suffered human rights abuses.
Barclays is the most high-profile of three British-based financial institutions, which, in total, have provided more than $1bn in direct and indirect funding to Mugabe's administration. The other two companies are Standard Chartered Bank and the insurance firm Old Mutual. According to influential newsletter Africa Confidential, that first disclosed the Barclays' loans, the British organisations provide an economic lifeline keeping Mugabe's regime afloat.
A spokesman for Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, likened the bank's actions to its support of South Africa's apartheid regime and urged a boycott.
One of the most controversial of Barclays' Zimbabwe loans is the �30m it provides to a state-sponsored agricultural 'facility' aiming to sustain land reforms that saw Mugabe seize white-owned farmland and drive more than 100,000 black workers from their homes. The government has expelled more than a million opposition supporters from Harare and Bulawayo, dumping them in the countryside.
Britain backs targeted international sanctions against the regime - although there are no economic sanctions - which prevent Mugabe or his political associates travelling to Europe or the US. It is estimated that Barclays, Standard Chartered Bank and Old Mutual have lent the Mugabe regime about �100m by purchasing treasury bills and government bonds.
Speaking to The Observer from South Africa, Tendai Biti, MDC secretary- general, reacted angrily: 'It is immoral and it is criminal. Barclays defended their immoral actions in supporting the apartheid government in South Africa and they seem intent on repeating history in Zimbabwe.' |
rest here: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2000349,00.html |
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