Sanctions (EU Exit) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Chidgey (LD) [V]]

I thank the Minister for his introductory comments. Allow me first to declare my interest as a partner in the advisory board of Transparency International UK. Under the guidance of its offices, I presented a Private Member’s Bill to curb corruption. The then Labour Government did not support it and it fell in the Lords. A remarkably similar government Bill subsequently appeared and sailed through on to the statute book. Be that as it may, there have been remarkably few prosecutions under the Act in the years that followed; perhaps these SIs will help jog the institutional memory—perhaps through the updates that the Minister alluded to.

My remarks focus on Burundi and Guinea, primarily because they are two countries of which I have personal knowledge and experience, and thus like to think I can speak on with a degree of authority. I shall deal with Burundi first—this small, poor country in central Africa, overshadowed by its larger, more powerful neighbour, Rwanda. Like Rwanda, Burundi is threatened by ethnic turbulence, with a population of some 10 million split between 14% Tutsi and 85% Hutu. A visit to the genocide museum over the border in Rwanda is a telling reminder of where this can lead.

The Minister mentioned the importance of democracy, the rule of law and human rights in relation to the coming sanctions. It is questionable whether that is accepted in the country itself. Since independence from Belgium in 1962, Burundi has been governed as a presidential democratic republic. Its first elected President was assassinated in 1993. Since then, some 200,000 Burundians have perished in ethnic violence and hundreds of thousands more have become internally displaced or refugees. Human rights abuses abound. President Ndayishimiye, in office since mid-2020, claims to have made policy changes to provide the opposition with political space and to mend relations with the international community. This assertion is challenged by the leader of the opposition, Mr Rwasa, who says that there have been no changes, with opposition meetings banned and the President himself stating that there is no room for opposition. Democracy, the rule of law and human rights seem to be way down the agenda.

I recall speaking at a conference on aid effectiveness in Maputo, Mozambique, and being heckled from the audience. It turned out to be two Burundian MPs. They were complaining loudly that the UK had withdrawn all financial aid from Burundi, which was then about $20 million a year, and replaced it with technical assistance in its Treasury. In fact, a Burundian Vice-President told me later that it was the best thing we ever did. He said the taxes collected through the revenue officials the UK trained were four times greater than the cancelled aid. In his reply, can the Minister say what, if any, changes have been made to the sanctions regime in recognition of the change of leadership in Burundi? What is the current situation regarding aid for Burundi?

Similarly, in Guinea, what impact have the changes in the leadership had on the sanctions regime? With the collapse of France’s Fourth Republic, Guinea was the only colony in France’s African empire to take the harsh option of immediate independence without transitional support, rather than joining the French community of nations created by de Gaulle. In 1958, France abruptly left Guinea, taking with it everything it could move. The incoming President, Ahmed Sékou Touré, swept to power and introduced a centralised Marxist socialist regime. A third of the population fled the country. Those who remained suffered the privations of a failing state—hyperinflation, food shortages, starvation and riots. Sékou Touré called for help, first from the Russians and then the Chinese.

Guinea is potentially an incredibly wealthy country in terms of natural and mineral resources. It has up to one half of the world’s bauxite reserves and a large deposit of high-grade iron ore. In parallel with failed economic policies and state-sponsored drug smuggling, a series of brutal dictatorships have enforced control through murder, human rights abuses and imprisonment. My client at the time, the Minister of Public Works, was imprisoned by the President and starved, eventually to death. The 2009 violent outbreak was just one of many such incidents. In January this year, the French-Israeli mining tycoon, Beny Steinmetz, was sentenced in a Swiss court to five years in jail, guilty of corruption by bribing the late President Conté’s fourth wife, Mamadie, with $10 million to persuade the President to transfer the Simandou iron ore concession to Steinmetz for $170 million. Steinmetz later sold on a 51% share for $250 billion. Is the Minister confident that the sanctions delivered under these SIs are sufficient to tackle this level of extreme corruption?