Insight: Coup plotters wanted colony of their own

[emad]

Sunday Times
January 23, 2005

Insight: Coup plotters wanted colony of their own



THE FAILED coup attempt involving Sir Mark Thatcher was to have made Equatorial Guinea a private colony run for the benefit of the British plotters, leaked documents reveal.

The papers, passed to The Sunday Times by South African intelligence sources, reveal that the plotters had created a trading company to control the oil-rich West African state.

The Bight of Benin Company (BBC), named after the bay on the state’s coastline, was to have grabbed control of the country’s economy, its oil reserves, army and police.

The company would have controlled the country as a private fiefdom, modelled on the British East India Company, which ran vast swathes of India before it formally became part of the empire.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1452718,00.html

[tlcandie]

1. So....

They were trying to take it over before the US did? :shrug:

[emad]

3. The connection to Riggs Bank, a subsidiary of which has Bush's

uncle Jonathan Bush as CEO, is paramount.

[UL_Approved]

6. What, more oil ties?

How could that be? Can this world get any more twisted? :shrug:

[TahitiNut]

2. State Corporatism = Fascism

:shrug:

[itzamirakul]

4. Fascism...more and more blatant... n/t

[emad]

5. Bight of Benin Company role:

Moto’s closest advisers were to be tied to BBC, which would control the recruitment and payment of government officials. If this failed, they could resort to blackmail. “We must have the moral high ground. We must be in charge of the process of transparency, pursuing corruption.” This, it was hoped, would give a steady income stream. Perhaps more importantly it would “hopefully” provide “damaging information about M (Moto) or at any rate some of his family or colleagues”.

The plotters were also wary of a figure described as E, understood to be a reference to Eli Calil, one of Moto’s main supporters. According to the documents, E “has been working on this for a long time; clearly will have seen it as one where technicians execute the arrival plan and then he is in control. He may have an exaggerated view of his level of control over M”.

The coup plan was thwarted last March when Mann and his mercenaries were arrested at Harare airport in Zimbabwe as they waited to collect arms. Mann is now serving a four-year jail sentence in Harare for weapons offences.

Thatcher returned to Britain last week after pleading guilty to financing the coup, under a deal to co-operate with South Africa’s national prosecution authority. His evidence will be passed to British detectives investigating whether the alleged financiers, including Wales, Tremain and Calil, plotted the coup in breach of UK anti-terrorism laws. A spokesman for Thatcher refused to comment last week.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1452718_2,00.html

“We must have the moral high ground. We must be in charge of the process of transparency, pursuing corruption.”

Sounds like Karl Rove

[struggle4progress]

7. These Ownership Society folks are everywhere!