WikiLeaks cables: Sudanese president 'stashed $9bn in UK banks'

Speculation that Omar al-Bashir siphoned $9bn in oil money and deposited it in foreign accounts could fuel calls for his arrest

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has siphoned as much as $9bn out of his impoverished country, and much of it may be stashed in London banks, according to secret US diplomatic cables that recount conversations with the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court.

Some of the funds may be held by the part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group, according to prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who told US officials it was time to go public with the scale of Bashir's theft in order to turn Sudanese public opinion against him.

"Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at $9bn), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a 'crusader' to that of a thief," one report by a senior US official states. "Ocampo reported Lloyds bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money," the cable says. "Ocampo suggested exposing Bashir had illegal accounts would be enough to turn the Sudanese against him."

Lloyds responded by saying it had no evidence of holding funds in Bashir's name. "We have absolutely no evidence to suggest there is any connection between Lloyds Banking Group and Mr Bashir. The group's policy is to abide by the legal and regulatory obligations in all jurisdictions in which we operate."

Details of the allegations emerge in the latest batch of leaked embassy cables released by WikiLeaks which reveal that:

• US officials regard European human rights standards as an "irritant",criticising the Council of Europe for its stance on secret rendition of terror suspects.

• Diplomats believe judges in the war crimes trial of the Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor have been deliberately causing delays to ensure the only African judge is presiding when the verdict is delivered.

The cables were released as the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, accused the US of mounting an aggressive, illegal investigation against him. "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring," he told reporters outside the mansion on the Norfolk/Suffolk border where he is staying while on bail.

Assange has repeatedly asserted that he is the victim of a smear campaign. The Guardian today publishes the first full account of the allegations made against him by two Swedish women based on previously unseen police documents.

If Ocampo's claim about Bashir's fortune is correct, Sudanese funds being held in London banks amount to one tenth of annual GDP inSudan, which ranks fifteenth from bottom in the UN's index of the world's poorest countries. Ocampo discussed evidence of the stash with the Americans just days after issuing an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president in March 2009, the first issued by the court against a serving head of state. Bashir was indicted for seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity last year with a further three counts of genocide added in July. Ocampo, who has never released details of the alleged funds, was severely criticised for the indictment by many in Sudan and internationally amid criticisms the move would inflame fighting in the southern Darfur region.

Despite the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, Bashir has remained popular among many others in the country, particularly those who have benefited from the oil boom brought about during his presidency. A spokesperson for the Sudanese government dismissed the claim, describing it as further evidence of the ICC's political agenda in discrediting the Sudanese government.

"To claim that the president can control the treasury and take money to put into his own accounts is ludicrous – it is a laughable claim by the ICC prosecutor," said Dr Khalid al-Mubarak, government spokesperson at the Sudanese embassy in London. "Ocampo is a maverick, and this is just part of his political agenda. He has failed miserably in all his cases and has refused to investigate Iraq or Gaza – he needs success and he has targeted Bashir to increase his own importance."

"Attempts to smear not only Bashir but Sudan as a whole are well known, and are clearly linked with anti-Arab sentiments and Islamophobia," Mubarak added.

But experts said that if confirmed, the funds could have big implications for victims of human rights abuses in the county. Richard Dicker, head of international justice at Human Rights Watch, said: "If Bashir were to be tried and convicted, these funds could not just be frozen, but used as a source of reparations for victims … [of] horrific crimes in Darfur."

Robert Palmer, a campaigner at anti-corruption organisation Global Witness, said: "$9bn may sound like an inconceivably large amount of money for the president of Sudan to control. But we have uncovered evidence of substantial funds being held in a European bank by an oil-rich country in the past, where the head of state had a worrying level of personal control over the funds. In Sudan's case, the figure is almost the same amount as has been transferred from north to south Sudan under the oil revenue sharing part of the comprehensive peace agreement since 2005."

In a remarkable series of exchanges, the cables also reveal how Sudan's mineral wealth had a direct bearing on the ICC proceedings against Bashir, as China balked at action against him that could harm its interests in the oil industry. "Ocampo said China, as long as it continues to have oil concessions in Sudan, does not care what happens to Bashir," one cable states.

In another cable dated March 2008, a senior French official noted "growing Chinese concern about possible north-south fissures in Sudan and the possibility that its oil interests could be threatened".

"The Chinese were beginning to see more clearly that Sudan's behaviour towards Darfur and Chad could only increase the possibility of a north-south rupture will a possibly severe effect on China's stake in the oil sector,' the French are reported to have said.

In return, the Chinese expressed "puzzlement" that the French – a member of the ICC and able to influence the deferral of proceedings against Bashir – supported Ocampo's decision to pursue the Sudanese president, given France's oil interests in the region. "[The Chinese] observed French companies have oil interests in Sudan as well as Chad," the Americans stated.

France ultimately supported Bashir's indictment, but the cables suggest this was deliberately calculated to protect their oil interests. The French told the Americans they believed that firm action on Darfur was the only way to protect oil interests.

Both French firm Total and China, through affiliates of its state-owned China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, have substantial oil concessions in Sudan, which currently produces 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day .

"It is ironic that China, which postures as a friend of the people's in the developing world couldn't give a damn about the suffering of hundreds of thousands of African victims in Darfur," said Dicker. "I'm not surprised that China is putting its oil interests above the interests of humanity in seeing that these crimes of enormous concern are adjudicated, but I think it will rebound to China's discredit," Dicker added.Speculation that Bashir may have deposited billions in oil money in foreign accounts is likely to add to demands for his arrest and transparency in Sudan's oil sector."The arm of the law, when it comes to this type of crime, committed by or alleged to have been committed by heads of state or heads of government, has gotten longer," said Dicker. "There is a long road to trial in The Hague, but what's striking is a number of other heads of state and heads of government have wound up in court much to their surprise through often lengthy and circuitous pathways."

• Afua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent
• guardian.co.uk

WikiLeaks cables: Egypt 'turned down' black-market nuclear weapons deal

Cairo's ambassador to the UN claimed President Mubarak said no to offer of atomic weapons from ex-Soviet state

Egypt was offered nuclear weapons, material and expertise on the black market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a senior Egyptian diplomat.

President Hosni Mubarak turned down the offer, but the incident raises new questions over what nuclear sales were made by the other states or groups in the chaos of the early 1990s in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

Maged Abdelaziz, the country's ambassador to the UN, made the revelation to America's top negotiator on nuclear arms control, Rose Gottemoeller, in a conversation reported in a leaked US cable in May last year.

The subject came up in a discussion of the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, a foreign policy priority for Cairo. The US cable said: "Finally, in an apparent attempt to portray Egypt as a responsible member of the international community, Abdelaziz claimed that Egypt had been offered nuclear scientists, materials and even weapons following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Egypt had refused all such offers."

"A/S [assistant secretary of state] Gottemoeller asked him how he knew this to be true, to which Abdelaziz replied he was in Moscow at that time and had direct personal knowledge."

Abdelaziz declined to comment on the cable, and it is unclear from the text who made the offer.

However, other evidence points towards groups of former military officers and nuclear scientists suddenly facing loss of privileges and income.

Maria Rost Rublee, an expert on the history of Egyptian nuclear programme, said she was told by three well-informed sources – a former Egyptian diplomat, military officer, and nuclear scientist - that "non-state actors" from an unnamed former Soviet republic had tried to sell fissile material and technology to Egypt.

"Mubarak refused. He was very cautious, even over nuclear energy, and cancelled plans for a programme after Chernobyl," said Rublee, the author of Nonproliferation Norms – a study of why some nations choose the path of nuclear restraint, now teaching at the University of Auckland.

She said the leaked May 2009 US cable marks the first time a Egyptian official has claimed his government was offered actual nuclear warheads and the assistance of nuclear technicians.

Olli Heinonen, former head of the safeguards division at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said: "At the time of the Soviet collapse, there were lots of people with financial difficulties.

"Some guys were looking for ways of many money and set up companies, offering nuclear material, but these were individuals making the offers, not the states."

Several kilograms of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium have been seized from smugglers in the intervening years.

Meanwhile, there have been occasional accounts of former Soviet weapons scientists hawking their expertise abroad.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been trying to find out what a Russian-Ukrainian scientist who had carried out pioneering work on the Soviet nuclear bomb at Chelyabinsk in Siberia, was doing in Iran in the mid-90s.

The scientist, now back in Moscow, is an expert in the implosion techniques necessary for rigging up a nuclear warheads.

Meanwhile al-Qaida focused far more on the Pakistan nuclear programme as a possible source for a terrorist bomb.

Amid all the uncertainty, experts argue that if a warhead had gone astray in that critical period in the early 90s, it would probably have been detonated by now.

• Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 December 2010 21.30 GMT
• Article history

ًًWikileaks

Wikileaks: The Egyptian army did not want the son succeeds father

Long denied, both by President Hosni Mubarak as his heir apparent, Gamal Mubarak's ambition, 47 years, one day succeed his father as head of the Egyptian state, now seems almost certain. Powered in 2002 by his father as head of the instances of National Democratic Party (NDP), almost single party that presides over the destinies of Egypt for thirty years, Gamal Mubarak, a banker by profession, received in August, a poster campaign to glory in the big cities.

The script that runs the newsroom of Cairo would be: Hosni Mubarak is to the presidency in October 2011, elected then it is obviously one or two years later, the Rais, who would then have 84 or 85 years, is retired for health reasons and to ensure that the army, the main internal power, is not opposed to the coronation of his youngest son.

"A TYPE THAT DOES NOT EVEN COMPLETED HIS MILITARY SERVICE"

This scenario of dynastic succession, long ago that U.S. diplomats stationed in Egypt are working. In a confidential telegram of May 2007, obtained by Wikileaks and revealed by Le Monde , U.S. Ambassador Francis Joseph Ricciardone, the only one who dares to call in his writings of the Egyptian regime "dictatorship" , notes that already "the machine of PND can well, in time, organize an electoral victory "[for Gamal Mubarak].

Certainly, he notes, other potential candidate to succeed the Rais, Omar Suleiman , the intelligence chief, who hoped, there are still a few years, be appointed Vice-President [Mubarak, in power thirty years, is the first Egyptian ruler to never have appointed vice-president], "hates the idea of a President Gamal" . It is apparently not alone.

An Egyptian political analyst, received anonymously by the U.S. Chancery in September 2008, told the new ambassador, Margaret Scobey , that "the power base of Gamal is focused on the business community, not the military" . The army, which "must not forget is the true center of power in Egypt" - all the presidents of Egypt since the overthrow of the monarchy emerged from its ranks - do not like Gamal, "a type which has not even completed his compulsory military service " , noted another memo, whose ambitions and liberal reformists, including privatization, threaten its vested interests.

MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS: A RECIPE FOR CHAOS "

Under certain conditions, eg if Hosni Mubarak died before he could devote his son,"it is not impossible that the military refused to adouber Gamal and prefer a coup" , wrote already in 2007 Ambassador Ricciardone. Nothing has fundamentally changed since.
On January 6, 2008, Mubarak father evokes Chancery American qualities of his favorite son: "He's a perfectionist, an idealist always punctual" says Rais. Point, perhaps, but not with his promises.

Since 2005, Gamal Mubarak promised the Americans that every year "next year" , Egypt enact specific anti-terrorism legislation to "stop" the annual renewal of a state of emergency is an opportunity for various Egyptian security forces ( "1.4 million men" , according to another memo), to arrest and imprison about who they want and for as long they want. This law, enacted in 1967, has still not been amended. It is true that in October 2005, already the youngest President told his U.S. interlocutors that a reform of presidential elections to multiple candidates was, he said, "a recipe for chaos" .

Patrice Claude - Le Monde