Overseas Press Club Award Winner 2016A shocking investigative journey into the way the resource trade wreaks havoc on Africa, ‘The Looting Machine’ explores the dark underbelly of the global economy.Africa: the world’s poorest continent and, arguably, its richest. While accounting for just 2 percent of global GDP, it is home to 15 per cent of the planet’s crude oil, 40 per cent of its gold and 80 per cent of its platinum. A third of the earth’s mineral deposits lie beneath its soil. But far from being a salvation, this buried treasure has been a curse.‘The Looting Machine’ takes you on a gripping and shocking journey through anonymous boardrooms and glittering headquarters to expose a new form of financialized colonialism. Africa’s booming growth is driven by the voracious hunger for natural resources from rapidly emerging economics such as China. But in the shadows a network of traders, bankers and corporate raiders has sprung up to grease the palms of venal local political elites. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting. In country after country across the continent, the resource industry is tearing at the very fabric of society. But, like its victims, the beneficiaries of this looting machine have names.For six years Tom Burgis has been on a mission to expose corruption and give voice to the millions of Africans who suffer the consequences of living under this curse. Combining deep reporting with an action-packed narrative, he travels to the heart of Africa’s resource states, meeting a warlord in Nigeria’s oil-soaked Niger Delta and crossing a warzone to reach a remote mineral mine in eastern Congo. The result is a blistering investigation that throws a completely fresh light on the workings of the global economy and will make you think twice about what goes into the mobile phone in your pocket and the tank of your car.
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Tom Burgis. The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
INTRODUCTION. A Curse of Riches
1. Futungo, Inc
2 ‘It Is Forbidden to Piss in the Park’
3. Incubators of Poverty
4. Guanxi
5. When Elephants Fight, the Grass Gets Trampled
6. A Bridge to Beijing
7. Finance and Cyanide
8. God Has Nothing to Do with It
9. Black Gold
10. The New Money Kings
EPILOGUE. Complicity
AFTERWORD
Picture Section
Footnote. 3. Incubators of Poverty
Notes. INTRODUCTION: A CURSE OF RICHES
CHAPTER 1. FUTUNGO, INC
CHAPTER 2: ‘IT IS FORBIDDEN TO PISS IN THE PARK’
CHAPTER 3: INCUBATORS OF POVERTY
CHAPTER 4: GUANXI
CHAPTER 5: WHEN ELEPHANTS FIGHT, THE GRASS GETS TRAMPLED
CHAPTER 6: A BRIDGE TO BEIJING
CHAPTER 7: FINANCE AND CYANIDE
CHAPTER 8: GOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
CHAPTER 9: BLACK GOLD
CHAPTER 10: THE NEW MONEY KINGS
EPILOGUE
List of Illustrations
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Publisher
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Any Angolans curious to know how much their government had brought in from the auction would be disappointed. Mindful that in 2001 BP had been threatened with ejection after it announced plans to publish some details of its Angolan contracts, the oil companies kept the terms of the bonuses safely shrouded. Norway’s Statoil made something resembling a disclosure. It said its total ‘financial commitment’ for two oil blocks, where it would be the operator of the project, and working interests in three other blocks came to $1.4 billion, ‘including signature bonuses and a minimum work commitment’. The regime’s overall take from the whole bidding round would have been a multiple of that figure.
Both the Futungo’s business ventures and the state institutions’ activities are kept within a fortress of secrecy, so much so that Edward George, an Angola specialist who has studied dos Santos’s rule for many years, calls the regime a ‘cryptocracy’ – a system of government in which the levers of power are hidden.
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