Re: [A-List] South Africa: water fraud & Scottish connection

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Rangers director held over new fraud charges
> IAIN WILSON and ROBERT McAULAY
> The Herald, 2 April 2003
> DAVE King, the Rangers director and shareholder, has been arrested over
> further corruption and fraud charges in South Africa.
> It is alleged Mr King bribed a water utility manager to ensure contracts
> would go to one of his investment firms. Mr King, who already faces 11
> counts of fraud involving non-payment of almost £60m in taxes, denies all
> accusations against him.

Well, the Umgeni water saga is part of a whole water
commercialisation-corporatisation-privatisation scam that will take years to
undo. A book I did last year (*Unsustainable South Africa*) gives context
(will be happy to send the 'script free on email to people replying offlist
at pbond@sn.apc.org), but frankly there are literally dozens of scams of
this nature in play here right now. More details on this one can be found at
http://www.bday.co.za (and search for Dave King).

We're paying a bit more attention to the more structural corruption
associated with the water I drink in Jo'burg (Umgeni is Durban). That water
comes from Lesotho and is processed through Africa's highest dam, which was
built during the late apartheid era with World Bank help, thanks in part to
a dozen transnational construction firms which bribed the top Basotho
official -- and $2 million has been found in his bank account, traceable to
those firms. The biggest is ABB, and there are Canadian, German, SA and many
other big corpos exposed. They COULD be disbarred from future WB work, which
would be a fantastic blow. But the WB is as corrupt as any on this one, and
so we're getting ready to protest the travesty of ABB et al continuing to do
work of this nature elsewhere in spite of a probably conviction on bribery
charges in coming months. Acres of Canada is guilty; Lahmayer of Germany is
on trial now; stay tuned... (Details in *Unsustainable SA*, available from
Merlin in London -- http://www.merlinpress.co.uk) and U.Natal Press here in
SA (http://www.unpress.co.za)