Vulture Fund Vermin Again

I have posted on vulture funds before. Although speculators are happy to plumb the depths in pursuit of another bulion dollars, even thse people are like angels to the bastards who deal in vulture funds. One of the final acts of the last Labour government was to support a private member's bill to outlaw vulture funds in the UK. I am glad that this act was ratified by the current government earlier this year. But cases can still go forward in Jersey as the Guardian reported yesterday.

Basically these traders buy up debts where a third world country has defaulted at a significant discount, then pursue the defaulting country through overseas courts, claiming an obscene markup (in the form of accumulated interest).

Needless to say the money the countries are forced to pay means there is less left for vital services (although in the case of some leaders like the King of Swaziland it would mean less money for bling and other shit, the disgusting excuse for a human being covets)

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country emerging from a brutal, and largely unreported civil war which left millions dead. Despite its abundant mineral wealth the country is desperately poor (in no small part due to the kleptocratic reign Mobutu Sese Seko from the 1960 to 1997).

The country  has huge deposits of cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and 80% of the world's supplies of coltan ore – a valuable mineral which yields Niobium and Tantalum (the latter having much use in computers and mobile phones), yet 100 women a week are still die in childbirth and 16,000 children under the age of five die every year. One in three children in the DRC will never get anything more than primary education.

It certainly doesn't help that the DRC is pursued by vulture fund speculators through offshore tax havens such as Jersey, for debts that were run up during 30 years of war and civil war.


Now New York vulture fund FG Hemisphere has gone to Jersey to claim $100m from the DRC because a legal loophole means that the island remains free of anti-vulture laws that were passed in the UK last year. Jersey will decide next month whether to allow its courts to let the $100m go to FG Hemisphere.

So far, according to the World Bank, the top 26 vultures have managed to collect $1bn from the world's poorest countries and still have a further $1.3bn to collect. Gordon Brown has described the payouts as "morally outrageous".
 The World Bank has described vulture funds as "a threat to debt relief efforts" and the former, Bush-era US treasury secretary Henry Paulson said: "I deplore what the vulture funds are doing" in testimony before the House of Representatives' financial committee in 2007.

In terms of public donations, the impact of the vulture funds is huge. The $1bn collected by the funds is equivalent to more than double the International Committee of the Red Cross's entire budget for Africa in 2011. $1bn could fund the entire UN appeal for the famine in Somalia and is more than twice the amount of money raised by Save the Children last year.
Vulture funds also scare off new investors, who the vultures will target their investment, from a country. In the DRC, a large US company with plans to invest millions in mining pulled out last year after one vulture sued it as a result of its business with the DRC government.

It is thought FG Hemisphere bought the debt for which it is claiming $100m in the Jersey court for $3.3m, with the help of another vulture fund, Debt Advisory International (DAI).

FG Hemisphere, headed by Peter Grossman and DAI, run by Michael Sheehan – both men were former Morgan Stanley consultants – have attempted to collect on the debt by suing DRC state companies and their foreign investors.

When interviewed as part of a joint investigation between Newsnight and the Guardian, Grossman defending his involvement in the DRC, saying "he wasn't beating up on the Congo but collecting on a legitimate debt". The last decade has seen FG and DAI chase the DRC, for the same debt, in the United States, Jersey, Hong Kong and Australia.

Grossman also denied having any knowledge that, as alleged by the Bosnian police, the debt was acquired illegally in the first place.

Sheehan, who is nicknamed Goldfinger, brokered the original deal with Bosnian state company EnergoInvest and owns some of the debt. The DRC originally owed the money to EnergoInvest for a contract to build power lines.

But as Grossman looks for payment from DRC through the Jersey legal system, the world's biggest charities are appealing to Jersey to close the loophole.

Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, which has been campaigning for debt relief for over a decade, is sending a representative to Jersey next week to put the case directly to the island's government to close the vulture funds' loophole.
Tim Jones, of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: "The DRC is the second poorest country in the world. The country desperately needs to be able to use its rich resources to alleviate poverty, not squander them on paying unjust debts to vulture funds left by the dictator  Mobutu. Jersey has to shut vulture funds down."

UK legislation on vulture funds has already had an impact, when Liberia last year reached agreement to repay just over 3% of the face value of a $43m debt.

That case was originally brought by two Caribbean-based vulture funds, Hamsah Investments and Wall Capital Ltd, over a debt dating back to the 1970s and it sparked a furore when the high court ordered Liberia to repay the full debt in 2009. Liberia mobilised debt campaigners, who pushed for a change in the law, resulting in the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010 being passed.

The law, a world first, requires commercial creditors to comply with the terms of international debt cancellation schemes, which specify a single discount rate for creditors to ensure equal treatment.

The law applies to the UK courts and ensures that public money given towards debt cancellation is not diverted to private investors.

The World Bank estimates that more than one-third of the countries which have qualified for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief have been targeted by vulture funds. HIPC countries are those whose debt is unsustainable and qualify for loans from the World Bank's International Development Association or the IMF's poverty reduction and growth facility.

Yes many african countries have been ravaged by corruption and mismanagement but still that the likes of vulture funds exists serves only to kick many of the world's poorest while they are on the floor.

Yes, vulture funds are legal but then there is no law against sticking a fork up your rectum either. The likes of Grossman and Sheehan are  plainly greedy scum.  The world would be a slightly better place if they and their fellow vulture fund speculators were to drop dead tomorrow

Fuck Hilary Swank, JCVD and Vanessa Mae and the tyrant they rode in on

The Independent reports that Hilary Swank, Jean Claude van Damme and Vanessa Mae have joined Sting, Beyonce, 50 Cent and a host of other so called stars who will suck the metaphorical dick of any tyrant who will hand them a huge pile of cash.

On 26 September, Jason Weinberg, a rep or whatever for a load of hing profile Hollywood lowlife, received an awkward inquiry from the Human Rights Foundation. Was it true, they asked, that another of his clients, Hilary Swank, had accepted a large appearance fee to attend the 35th birthday party of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed despot in charge of Chechnya?



Absolutely not, he replied, in a dismissive email which suggested it was impertinent to even wonder if an Oscar-winning Hollywood liberal of Ms Swank's stature would consider such a vulgar and unethical career opportunity. "Hilary has no current plans to attend the party," it read.

As a week is a long time in politics so nine days is plenty enough time to change your mind about earning a pile of sleazy money. Dressed to the nines, and watched by the Independent’s own Moscow correspondent, Swank sauntered up Mr Kadyrov's red carpet, before delivering a charming speech about how much she had already enjoyed her stay in Grozny. "I could feel the spirit of the people, and I could see that everyone was so happy," she said. "Happy birthday, Mr President!"



Joining her was another vintage star: Jean-Claude Van Damme. Who got warm applause for finishing his speech with the pronouncement: "I love you Mr Kadyrov!" Then, after hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of fireworks had been fired into the night sky, the violinist Vanessa Mae, performed a brief set. She was paid a rumoured $500,000 (£324,000). It is thought that Van Damme, whose A list status is long past and who now gives hand jobs to crack addicts, was paid $10 and all the food he can put in his underwear.



So far, neither Swank, nor Van Damme, nor Mae, have commented on their shilling; their representatives presumably hoping that if they say silent, the whole awkward affair will go away.r.

It is very easy for celebs to earn some extra pocket money. For decades, the international A-list have been able to add to their wealth by agreeing to attend (or perform at) social occasions to which they have no obvious connection. But traditionally, their more shameless exploits in this field have remained happily below the radar. The onward march of technology puts paid to that, though.

Footage of Beyonce, 50 Cent, and Mariah Carey performing at parties hosted by the Gaddafi family caused an almighty row earlier this year. With headline movie salaries already well down, and continuing to fall from their historic high in the mid 2000s, the likes of Van Damme and Swank may face tough decisions about how to finance their Hollywood lifestyles.

Do they give up the heroin enemas and the designer cock rings or do they abandon the lucrative world of celebrity appearances altogether? Or do they ask a sleazy shitrag like Weinberg to vet incoming bookings more thoroughly? Or do they just say fuck you all I want the fucking money?

Swank, VD, Mae joined the likes of Beyonce, Sting and many others who have taken the fucking money. They are off the artistic register. As the late, great Bill Hicks would have put it, it doesn’t matter if they shit Picassos for the rest of their lives, they are whores.


On a brighter note Shakira was offered the Grozny gig but turned it down. Good for her. At least she showed good sense.

FTSE 100 Bosses say “Fuck austerity”

Britain has a shaky economy (okay the last stats were better than expected but let’s see what happens as the State contracts massively) high levels of unemployment with far more to come, an economy) and all around belt tightening. After all the Government are saying we are all in it together.

But perhaps someone should tell that to the heads and directors of the FTSE 100 companies who act as if austerity is just for little people. Yesterday’s Guardian reported on research undertaken by Income Data Services which indicated that boardroom pay rose by 55% over the last year when bonuses and share options are taken into account.

Incomes Data Services, who conducted the research, said bonuses paid to directors of FTSE 100 companies increased by 34%, while basic pay rose by 3.6%. The amount of money waiting to be disgorged from long-term incentive schemes soared by 73%, to a total of £259m, and share option gains leapt by 90%.

Steve Tatton of IDS said the report suggested that companies returned to "business as usual" once the recession ended. "It seems the days of earnings restraint were short-lived. It is as though the recession never happened," Tatton warned. "This time last year a number of companies actually reduced their bonus ceilings. Twelve months later it appears as if these measures have been reversed, with around 40 companies reporting higher bonus scheme maxima," he added.

The average FTSE 100 chief executive now earns £4.9m a year.

Now how many of these august men and women have backed the Government’s assault on the poorest and most vulnerable.

To rephrase a quote misattributed to Marie Antoinette their attitude is clearly a case of” Let them eat shit”