French Total oil boss under formal investigation

Source: Middle East Times.

AFP March 23, 2007

PARIS -- A French judge has placed the chief executive of the Total oil group under formal investigation on suspicion of paying bribes to secure a major gas field deal in Iran.

Christophe de Margerie, who is already under investigation over the Iraq "oil-for-food" bribes scandal, was officially warned of the new accusations Thursday night after he had spent more than a day in detention.

The judge placed Margerie, who has only been Total's chief executive since February, under investigation for suspected "corruption of foreign public agents and misuse of corporate assets," a legal source said.

Margerie was given conditional release.

The French oil company is suspected of paying top Iranian officials nearly 100 million Swiss francs ($80 million) through two Swiss bank accounts to win a contract for the South Pars offshore gas field in 1997.

Margerie was detained by French police Wednesday before being transferred to a serious financial crime unit a day later, judicial officials reported. Four other serving and former Total executives were also detained but later released without charge.

In a statement, Total said that its chief executive had been placed "under formal investigation in proceedings related to the development of the South Pars project in Iran."

Being placed under judicial investigation is one step short of being charged with a crime in the French legal system. It does not necessarily mean that 55-year-old Margerie is heading for trial.

A case can be dropped if a judge is unable to sustain his accusations against an individual.

In the statement Total expressed "its full support for its employees and confirms that the agreements for the development of the South Pars project were entered into in compliance with applicable law."

It also said that the company was "confident" that the "investigation will establish the absence of any illegal activities and reaffirms that Total adheres to a strict code of conduct regardless of the difficulties linked to its activities and the environments in which it operates."

The suspicions center on a contract Total won from the Iranian oil company NIOC for the South Pars field.

The French judge is partly relying on testimony given by an employee of Norwegian oil company Statoil who revealed the existence of a corruption system in Iran during an investigation in Norway.

According to sources, money was paid to Iranian officials between 1996 and 2003 when Margerie was Total's Middle East director.

Last year he was charged with complicity with fraud and corruption by the same judge as part of an investigation into a French link to the "oil-for-food" scandal in Iraq.

Companies were said to have paid money to get oil deals from Iraq while it was under UN sanctions during the Saddam Hussein years.

Several other Total executives and former executives, including Patrick Rambaud, who was also questioned over the Iran deal, have also been put under investigation as part of the "oil-for-food" scandal.

Known in the company as "Big Moustache," Margerie was promoted to head of Total in February in succession to Thierry Desmarest who had overseen huge expansion of the group and is president of the supervisory board.

Margerie studied at the elite ESCP business school in Paris, joining the finance department of Total in 1974, rising to the managing committee in 1992, and becoming director for the Middle East region in 1995.

French Judge grills Total chief over corruption accusations

Source: Yahoo News.

A French judge on Thursday questioned Total oil chief executive Christophe de Margerie over corruption suspicions surrounding a major gas deal in Iran, bringing formal charges a step closer.

The French oil giant is suspected of paying top Iranian officials nearly 100 million Swiss francs (60 million euros, 80 million dollars) through two Swiss bank accounts to win a contract in 1997

Margerie was detained by police on Wednesday and on Thursday was transferred to the serious financial crime unit, legal sources said.

He was later taken to the office of magistrate, Philippe Courroye, who has spent three months investigating the South Pars contract that Total secured with the Iranian oil company NIOC.

Courroye could place de Margerie under judicial investigation which would be the first stage toward formal charges.

Four other Total executives, including financial director Robert Castaigne and a former senior executive, Patrick Rambaud, who was in charge of Total's negotiating section, were also detained on Wednesday but released late in the day without charge.

Total has confirmed that the executives have been questioned over the South Pars offshore field deal. But a spokesman said the group, France's biggest company in terms of turnover, supports Margerie and "confirms that the agreements signed respected the law."

If Margerie is not charged he could still be warned that he is needed as a witness or given an unconditional release.

According to sources close to the inquiry, the money was paid to Iranian officials between 1996 and 2003, when Margerie was Total's Middle East director. The Swiss accounts belonged to a suspected intermediary in the deal. Switzerland has frozen some 9.5 million euros from the accounts.

The oil group's chief executive is no stranger to controversy.

Last year he was charged with complicity with fraud and corruption by the same judge as part of an investigation into a French link to the "oil-for-food" scandal in Iraq.

Companies were said to have paid money to get oil deals from Iraq while it was under UN sanctions during the Saddam Hussein years.

Several other Total executives and former executives, including Rambaud, have also been charged as part of the "oil-for-food" scandal.

Known in the company as "Big Moustache," Margerie was promoted to managing director of Total in February in succession to Thierry Desmarest who had overseen huge expansion of the group and is president of the supervisory board.

Ethiopian offensive spurs deadly violence in Somali capital

AFP picture by Mustafa Abdi.
Smoke rises in the horizon above the Towfiq neighborhood in Mogadishu. Seven Ethiopian soldiers have been killed in Mogadishu, and two of their bodies dragged through the streets amid heavy fighting sparked by an Ethiopian offensive against insurgents.

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Seven Ethiopian soldiers were killed on Thursday in Mogadishu, and two of their bodies dragged through the streets amid heavy fighting sparked by an Ethiopian offensive against insurgents.

Dozens of men and women pulled the bodies of two soldiers in the street, shouting "We will kill the Ethiopian troops", while five other bodies in Ethiopian uniforms lay on the ground in the southern district of Shirkole.

They were the first Ethiopian soldiers reported killed in Mogadishu since Somali-Ethiopian troops drove out Islamists from the capital three months ago.

The scenes echoed deadly violence last week, when angry crowds burned the bodies of two dead Somali soldiers and dragged another through the streets.

In the early 1990s similar treatment was meted out to US troops during a failed UN-backed peace operation in Somalia.

Loudspeakers on Thursday transmitted calls for residents to come out and fight the Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's interim government, after the Ethiopians launched a heavy offensive in tanks and helicopters.

As the fighting continued, AFP correspondent witnessed a plane leaving Mogadishu airport with around a dozen wounded Ethiopian soldiers on board. The same plane had brought in around 60 Ethiopian soldiers on Thursday morning.

Ethiopian helicopters dropped deafening bombs and fired heavy machine gun fire in the first airborne attacks since the start of the year.

An AFP correspondent saw helicopters fire missiles near the Ethiopian forces' base in the former Somali defence ministry headquarters -- a common target for insurgent attacks.

A thick cloud of black smoke also rose up from fighting around Mogadishu stadium and helicopters fired rockets near the main Bakara market.

"The idea is to clear Mogadishu of gunmen," an Ethiopian diplomat in Somalia told AFP, requesting anonymity.

"The military operation will continue until all the objectives are fulfilled. We are urging the people of Mogadishu to stay at home, not to panic or join attacks against the Ethiopian troops," he said.

"The military operation will immediately cease when there are no gunmen and troublemakers in that part of Mogadishu," he added.

Five people died after being brought wounded into Medina hospital, out of a total of 130 injured there, bringing an earlier death toll to 15.

AFP picture taken by Jose Candon.
Helicopters of the Ethiopian army arrive at Mogadishu's airport. Ethiopian helicopters fired missiles on southern Mogadishu on Thursday as heavy fighting across the Somali capital left 10 people dead in an offensive against insurgent fighters.

The fighting mainly took place in the south, but there were also attacks in Mogadishu's Ramadan district in the north of the city.

At least 10 civilians were killed caught in crossfire in earlier fighting, which shattered a shaky six-day ceasefire with the powerful Hawiye clan, which has largely controlled the Somali capital since 1991.

As his troops fought in Mogadishu, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told parliament in Addis Ababa that he had withdrawn two-thirds of his forces from Somalia.

"As the situation in Somalia unravelled differently than expected, we had to withdraw troops gradually in two rounds. Hence, two-thirds of our troops have been withdrawn so far," Meles said in a speech to parliament.

"Our mission was to destroy the fundamentalist threat posed on us and we have succeeded in achieving this."

Islamists who ruled southern and central Somalia for six months from June last year had threatened to attack neighbouring Ethiopia.

But Meles said a second round of withdrawal had been delayed because the African Union's deployment of peacekeepers has not taken place "as desired."

AU troops plan to take over from Ethiopian forces to allow them to withdraw but have yet to make their mark in the volatile Somali capital as only 1,500 Ugandan troops have been deployed.

The AU force is supposed to number 8000 but only 4000 have been committed. The Uganda troops are the only ones to have been deployed.

The government last week announced a crackdown on Islamist insurgent fighters in a bid to bring calm to the capital ahead of a national reconciliation conference set to start mid-April.

Dozens of people have died and thousands of residents have fled Mogadishu since the start of the year.

A bloody power struggle that followed the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre exploded into inter-clan warfare that has defied more than 14 attempts to restore a functional government in Somalia

Source: KeepMedia.

China, Russia; Arab, Muslim states object to Darfur report

Source: CNN.

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- China and Russia joined with Arab and Muslim states on Friday in urging the U.N.'s human rights watchdog to ignore a report from a mission to Darfur that blamed Sudan for continuing war crimes against civilians there.

The two permanent Security Council members argued the mission, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, last month failed to gain access to the vast western region of Sudan and had not fulfilled its mandate.

[I see. Deny access, then complain because they did not verify everything? Clever, but foolish.]

Despite warnings from Western and some African states that failure to act would undermine the credibility of the newly formed rights Human Rights Council, Muslim and Arab states and their allies backed Sudan's line that the report had no legal basis.

"The so-called mission failed to make an onsite visit. The report cannot be considered objective ... and has no legal basis," China said in a statement to the 47-state Council, which was echoed by Russia.

After initially agreeing to the mission, the government of Sudan refused to grant visas to the five-strong team because it opposed one of the members, who it said had previously spoken of genocide in Darfur and could not be objective.

The U.N. investigators, asked by the Council in December to examine reports of massive abuse in Darfur, were forced to conduct their work from neighboring Chad and in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, headquarters of the African Union.

Observers estimate 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million driven from their homes since a revolt broke out between rebels and government-backed Arab militias four years ago in Darfur.

The Sudanese government denies responsibility for abuses and blames rebel groups that have refused to sign a peace deal.

"This report has no legal standing. This faulty report should not be discussed," Sudan's Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Elmardi told the Council.

Earlier, Williams had urged the Council to act on her team's recommendations, saying: "Innocent civilians continue to suffer and die. They do not need more reports. They are pleading for protection."

Western members of the Council supported the findings of the report, the latest international probe to point the finger at Khartoum over the violence in Darfur, and a number of African states, including Zambia, Nigeria and Senegal, joined them.

The report declared that the government had "manifestly failed to protect the population ... from large-scale international crimes and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes."

Rebels were also guilty of crimes against civilians.

"I urge the members of the Human Rights Council to act on the relevant recommendations ... with the aim of improving the situation of human rights in Darfur," the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in a statement.

It is time to dissolve the UN, and get them off our property. They no longer serve their purpose. They are NOT stopping GENOCIDE.

Soldiers bar U.N. official from Darfur refugee camp

Source: CNN.

KASSAB, Sudan (AP) -- Sudanese soldiers barred the U.N. humanitarian chief on Saturday from a Darfur refugee camp whose residents have been raped and attacked by gunmen suspected of belonging to pro-government militias.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon failed, meanwhile, to persuade Egypt to push Sudan's leader to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the region.

The convoy carrying humanitarian chief John Holmes was halted at a checkpoint about a mile outside the Kassab refugee camp, and he was told he lacked the proper papers for a visit there.

"I'm frustrated, annoyed, but it's not atypical of what happens here," Holmes told journalists traveling with him. He said he had obtained all the necessary clearances from the government in Khartoum.

Other U.N. officials working in Darfur said that aid workers and U.N. staff members were regularly blocked from doing their work at army checkpoints, and that Sudanese authorities had recently confiscated costly satellite gear from one convoy.

The soldiers at the checkpoint briefly prevented a car carrying journalists from leaving after Holmes turned back. The journalists were allowed to leave only after the troops confiscated a videotape from a U.N. television cameraman.

The Sudanese army spokesman, Sawarmy Khaled Taat, initially said he believed there had been a mixup and that the U.N. had not obtained the proper permission for Holmes' visit.

But later Saturday, Sudanese authorities in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, apologized, saying the incident was an individual mistake by Sudanese military intelligence personnel manning the checkpoint at Kassab, home to more than 25,000 refugees in a region under tight control of the janjaweed militia and government forces.

Holmes accepted the apology, the U.N. said.

In need of aid are some 4 million people in Darfur caught in the midst of fighting between rebels, the government and the pro-government janjaweed. More than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in four years of fighting, and the Arab janjaweed are accused of widespread atrocities against ethnic African civilians.

Ban, who is in Egypt on a Mideast tour, said he had asked President Hosni Mubarak during a morning meeting to press Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to accept the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Mubarak did not comply with the request.

Aboul Gheit said talks were needed between al-Bashir's government and rebels who were not part of a peace agreement signed last year with another rebel group.

"Without getting them together in one agreement, any talks over international forces cannot be crystallized," Aboul Gheit said.

The United Nations has failed to persuade Sudan to accept the deployment of a "hybrid" force of 22,000 U.N. and African Union troops.

Al-Bashir reneged on a November agreement to accept the UN-AU force and claimed last month that U.N. troops were not needed because the 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur can maintain order.

Egypt has a small military force with the AU in Darfur.