Amerikanske investorer kræver nu, at afrikanske lande betaler over en halv milliard US dollars for gammel gæld – meget mere end de selv betalte
KINSHASA, 22 November 2011: American financial investors – or “vultures” (gribbe), including a top funder of the Republican Party – have demanded that African nations pay over half a billion dollar for old debts for which the investors paid only a few million, Democracy Now! reports Monday.
That is outlawed throughout most of the world, but not in the USA.
One New York vulture speculator, Peter Grossman of FG Capital Management, is demanding 100 million US dollars from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Is he collecting a legitimate debt from DR Congo — or is the vulture’s claim based on a stolen security?
While the rest of the world wrote off the debts ofDR Congo and other poor nations to make poverty history, Peter Grossman and his fellow vulture financiers saw a chance to profiteer from the public’s generosity.
Their scheme is to get rich quick by buying up worthless African debt then suing for 10 or 100 times what they paid for it.
Where the story begins and ends
Democracy Now!’s investigation began in DR Congo, suffering from an epidemic of cholera. In the town of Kinshasa and everywhere is the country, cholera is sweeping. It is a struggle for people to recover from years of civil war.
In a Kinshasa encampment there is no access to clean water, which is necessary for the recovery. So what happened?
A financial speculator known as a vulture has blocked DR Congo receiving 100 million US dollars, which the vulture wants for himself.
In this village, the British government and UNICEF dug a well at a cost of less than 2.000 US dollars. They were able to provide clean water, cholera free water, for 400 people. That still leaves 50 million Congolese without clean water.
The vulture wants 100 million US dollars. For that, 200.000 children would have their lives saved, a UNICEF project director told Democracy Now!
