Amos

Amos is a crook but a crook with power. Her face fits in New Labour because it is black. Being a woman helps. A lesbian? Glad you asked. She has got two legs not one. Would you get the truth from the Wikipedia? Not much about her you won't. Bunging a firm £15 million then taking a job with them sounds like corruption to me. Perhaps I am biased because I just get to pay the bribe beneficial funding. I am another Forgotten Man aka Tax payer. See e.g. Ex-minister lands lucrative job with firm given £15m Government handout - from her own department

Baroness Amos – another face of corruption « Caligula's Palace
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Baroness Amos was of course the Secretary of State for DFID until 2003 and until 2007 was Leader of the House of Lords. I though that it was impossible that DFID money would be given to a company of which she was Director. On the face of it, nobody could look further removed from the development aid ethos than the man in the designer suit. I went back to writing him off, deciding he was simply making it up about Baroness Amos and his access to DFID money. In West Africa among people who wear silk suits and are driven in Mercedes, the standards of truthfulness sadly leave in general a great deal to be desired.

I would have forgotten the incident, but in December 2008 I found myself sitting next to Baroness Amos on an airport bus heading for the plane to Accra. Once on board she moved to Business class while due to overbooking I was downgraded to Economy Plus [ because her face fits? ]. Baroness Amos was going out to Accra to head the Commonwealth monitoring team for the first round of the 2008 Ghanaian elections, as John Kufuor retired. Sending Baroness Amos to monitor an election seemed to me another tremendous example of British arrogance. Valerie Amos is the very antithesis of a democratic politician. One of the Blair inner circle, she rose to Cabinet rank despite never having faced the electorate. Never, ever, at any level of politics. Her entire career was based upon New Labour internal patronage after making a very good living out of complaining about discrimination against minorities in the UK. She opened up a substantial income gap between herself and those on whose behalf she was claiming to work from a very early stage, and that gap has widened ever since.

All this came back to me as I looked at Baroness Amos quaffing champagne on that plane. So I did a bit of digging. Valerie Amos is indeed listed on their website as a non-executive director of Travant Private Equity, one of only five directors. There is nothing about developmental goals, ethics, or the environment on the website. There is a lot about real estate opportunities in West Africa (by which they do not mean housing for the urban poor), and a boast that they have “the largest fundraising from domestic investors in sub-Saharan Africa”. Remember what I said about the sources of local capital formation? Now Travant may have the most rigorous procedures for scrutinising the origin of the domestic money deposited with them. But if they do, they do not mention it on their website. Rather they emphasise that “we are deeply immersed in the business communities in which we invest”. Mmmm.

But have Travant received DFID money? On the face of it, Travant shouldn’t even want public money – they are aggressive proponents of the capitalist ethos: “We believe that the private sector, with appropriate oversight and governance, is the best shepherd of Africa’s resources. We seek to empower entrepreneurs to pursue opportunities that they have identified, creating returns for investors, jobs and economic growth.” Yet in 2007 the British Government financed Travant with £15 million of funds, provided through CDC, the investment arm of DFID. CDC is owned 100% by DFID. At launch over one third of Travant’s first equity fund came from DFID. A few months afterwards Baroness Amos, ex minister in charge of DFID, joined the board of this profit-making firm.

It says everything about New Labour that CDC, which as the Commonwealth Development Corporation used to run agricultural projects to benefit the rural poor, was rebranded as CDC with a new remit to provide most of its funds to the financial services industry. It says even more about New Labour’s lack of the understanding of fundamental personal ethics, of their embrace of greed, that they see no reason why one of their former senior ministers should not move to benefit personally from the DFID money – even if through a 100% owned satellite – thus invested.

To turn this story full circle, let us turn back to Sierra Leone. 65% of the measured exports of this country come from its rutile mines. These were under guard by Sandline at the start of this memoir. Following the British invasion of Sierra Leone, it returned to its normal state of extreme corruption. Life is hard for most of its inhabitants, and UN donated food and pharmaceuticals, clearly marked “not for sale”, are only available to the local population for cash they do not have, as the result of collusion between corrupt UN officials, government officials, and mostly Lebanese traders. But the rutile mines are working full out, and extremely profitable, with armed white men again in charge of security. A major rutile miner, Titanium Resources Group of Sierra Leone says in its 2008 interim report: “the long term future of our markets is sound and the quality and scale of our mineral reserves underline our future prospects.” The Chairman of Titanium Resources Group is Walter Kansteiner III, George Bush’s former Assistant Secretary of Sate for Africa and a founding partner of the Scowcroft Group, led by Brent Scowcroft, George Bush’s National Security Adviser and architect of the CIA’s re-introduction of torture. The Scowcroft Group advisory consultancy did huge harm in Africa in the 1990s with their advocacy of privatisation and deregulation, particularly in the forestry sector, and with some influence advocated policies worldwide which contributed to the credit bubble and collapse of recent years.

But none of that prevented Kansteiner and Scowcroft from making money out of it, and Blair’s invasion secured Sierra Leone’s mineral resources to the neo-cons. Not everyone benefits. Titanium Resources’ Interim Report 2008 mentions the disruption in production as a result of the collapse of a dredger, without feeling the need even to mention the two Sierra Leoneans who died in the incident.

But New Labour believes in profit, especially for themselves, so it was no surprise to me when Titanium Resources announced in March 2008 the appointment of Baroness Amos as a non-executive director. For me that appointment [though she later resigned] sums up the cosiness of the alliance between Bush, Blair and their acolytes. It was an alliance based on the acquisition of mineral resources by any means possible. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most infamous example. I saw it close up operating by war in Sierra Leone, and by the diplomacy of repression in Uzbekistan.

I served as a bit-player, but with a privileged view, in the Bush Blair years. I got to know many wonderful people of West Africa and of Uzbekistan, and formed strong views of how to assist them to make progress. But I was working for governments with quite a different agenda, that of international resource acquisition to benefit massive but specific commercial interests. I hope that my memoirs will, taken together, entertain with their tales of a very human and colourful life. But I trust that they will also throw some light on a most shameful period of British foreign policy, viewed from some unusual and fascinating points of vantage.
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Tying in to CDC tells us something about corruption when civil servants are let loose.
 

 

1. Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2. 100 Great Black Britons - Baroness Valerie Amos 3. Baroness Amos: All Lords (TheyWorkForYou.com) 4. Baroness Amos – another face of corruption « Caligula's Palace 5. BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Profile of Baroness Amos 6. Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos of Brondesbury (British politician ... 7. England rethink 2018 World Cup bid as Baroness Amos prepares to ... 8. Baroness Amos Fellowship 9. YouTube - The Baroness Amos on Barack Obama, 'he represents an ... 10. [ARCHIVED CONTENT] Biography: Baroness Amos 11. The Baroness Amos - African Union - International Organisations ... 12. Baroness Amos stands down from board | News | England 2018 Bid site 13. Baroness Amos makes history. (Newsmakers).(Baroness Valerie Amos ... 14. Celebrities-Baroness Amos - Joost 15. Wapedia - Wiki: Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos 16. Baroness Amos - Pipl Profile 17. Baroness Amos to take Australia role - The Scotsman 18. Graham Brown-Martin - Baroness Valerie Amos Interview 19. Article: Baroness Amos makes history. (Newsmakers).(Baroness ... 20. Cathedral date for Baroness Amos at Coventry University

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Updated on 27/01/2018 10:38