The government of Liberia must do more to build on progress already made in fully legitimizing the country’s diamond industry, says the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Liberia. The panel was set up in ’07 to monitor compliance with sanctions put in place during the civil war. It has called for the country [...]
BAE Systems arrived in Southwark Crown Court in London earlier today to conclude their settlement with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). The arms manufacturer had agreed to a plea bargain with the SFO, which stipulated that a guilty plea over charges of ‘accounting errors’ in Tanzania would mean that they would not pursue the [...]
While it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between South African criminal justice reporting and political crime novels, at least you can rest assured at the end of a good book that the bad guys will be caught. Sounding ironically like a fictional Italian cartoon gangster, convicted drug dealer Glen Agliotti walked free from a [...]
The world watched earlier this year as one of the most significant human interest stories in years took place in Chile. The trials and tribulations of 33 miners, trapped underground for 69 days and then eventually rescued in an ambitious collaboration between the Chilean government and international agencies, was a story which even the most [...]
Rolling blackouts hit California hard in ’02 and ’03. It came out later that the power failures in the USA were deliberately engineered by energy traders at Enron who wished to drive up their profits. Electricity rates rocketed. At huge risk to the economy and great hardship for the ordinary public, an unscrupulous band of [...]
The world watched earlier this year as one of the most significant human interest stories in years took place in Chile. The trials and tribulations of 33 miners, trapped underground for 69 days and then eventually rescued in an ambitious collaboration between the Chilean government and international agencies, was a story which even the most [...]
Egyptians went to the polls on November 28th, to vote for their representatives in the People’s Assembly, the Egyptian parliament’s lower house. The parliamentary elections, which have seen the number of seats to be won rise to the highest they have ever been, will be followed by the Presidential elections next year. Uncertainty over incumbent [...]
There is a Cameroonian saying ‘goats eat where they are tethered’; the proverbial goat is usually a government official. Transparency International’s (TI) global corruption perception index (released last month) confirms what many South Africans fear – that corruption is becoming endemic. In ‘98 the country ranked 32nd least corrupt in the world; in ‘04 it [...]
Longtime opposition leader Alpha Conde was named President Elect after winning 52% of the votes in the country’s 7th November run-off election. The elections passed relatively peacefully, although clashes between protestors supporting Conde’s rival, Cellou Dalein Diallo left a number of people dead in the run up. The elections are supposed to end the rule [...]
The dispute over the building of unenclosed public toilets in Makhaza, Khayelitsha Township, on the outskirts of Cape Town is escalating into a dispute over the country’s Constitution itself. The toilets were built by the Democratic Alliance (DA) led government of the city in 2009 in response to what they perceived as the ruling ANC’s [...]
