ROMMA Commission part 6

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AN INDEPENDENT COMMISSION FOR THE REPATRIATION OF MISAPPOPRIATED MONIES AND ASSETS

House of Lords
Committee Room 4a
Wednesday  20 July 2011    1530 

Against the background of sweeping changes making their way through the Muslim territories marked out in North Africa and the Middle East, populations with no history of true autonomous government within living memory will be expected to put together ”all new” leadership regimes. It is hoped by those same populations, substantially Muslim, that their new self-government will be an interim form of Islamic Democracy, meaning a constitution based consultative.

In turn this new leadership is expected to plan, develop and implement a new social and technical infrastructure, which should include a domestic financial system that is devised with out-of-the-box thinking.

All of this will take funding and the question arises, where will the monies come from? The answer is that a substantial amount of public monies belonging to those populations exist. Often transferred out of the state and in some cases monies and assets were never even repatriated to the domestic economy, thereby avoiding any record of them in the domestic accounts or home banking system.

These monies and assets have been misappropriated by the corrupt and tyrannical rulers that have plagued the regions for decades. Those rulers treated the state funds as their own personal purses and were allowed to manage and transfer them globally, all with the co-operation of the banks in the West. All transactions with these, domestically overseas – technically offshore, monies and assets were undertaken with at least tacit approval of Western governments and usually explicit approval.

Britain, France and the US struggled to get an approval through the UN Security Council for a no fly zone, an endeavour that took almost a month and the support of the Arab League before gaining full approval. This compares with the announcement on 23rd February 2011 by the US State Department that they were “looking into” the “possibility” of sanctions. On the 27th February 2011, only 4 days later (and a Sunday), the UN Security Council voted unanimously for the imposition of sanctions against Libya. It is noted with interest that on Monday 28th February the US Treasury announced they had seized more than US$30bn of Libyan assets and that a search was still on.

How did the US Treasury round up all those monies in 1 day? They didn’t. Actually the assets were seized over the weekend under an executive order issued by President Obama on Friday 25th 2011.

It is a cause of considerable concern to the Muslim populations of the world that the US felt comfortable to act unilaterally to seize funds, but would not act unilaterally to save lives. It is also a cause of considerable concern that whilst a total of around US$100bn of Libyan monies and assets have been seized around the world, the same world governments have completely failed to enact sanctions, or even act independently, to trace and seize the misappropriated funds of the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples.

The wind of changes blowing in the MENA region give all the appearances of further regime changes, which in turn will mean further opportunities for the tracing, seizure and return of even more misappropriated monies and assets.

It is concluded that given the complicity of world governments to turn a blind eye and even encourage tyrannical despots to misappropriate domestic state funds, against the best interests of the people, it is clearly necessary to set up an independent and Muslim controlled commission to facilitate the investigation, seizure, collection, return and audit of misappropriated state funds.

As a show of good faith to the peoples, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, this commission should have the full support and unfettered access to the central banks of the world and the private banks and institutions under their dominion, to help this independent commission. The need for this commission is being advanced by the independent  think tank  Global Vision 2000 who are naming it the ROMMA Commission.

 House of Lords Committe Room 4a
Westminster London SW1A
Wednesday March 30 2011  1500

The Jasmine revolutions continue to pave a path of sweeping change charging across the MENA region. This has shaken both Davos and Wall street. Two authoritarian rulers have fallen and a third is struggling for survival and making his last stand. Opec’s chairman warns of instability in Saudi Arabia and Brent crude surges past $120 per barrel so where is this all heading? Whilst parallels with 1789, 1848 and 1989 in Europe are being drawn, more relevant is the Islamic domino theory which discards tyranny and dictatorship in the Islamic world and returns the Islamic Caliphate and is deeply embodied in Islamic eschatology. This new era has dawned and we need to learn to coexist with it rather than manage it. The centre of the storm is Libya now and Gaddaffi has declared war on his own people and threatens a scorched earth policy if the revolt continues. If this strongman falls as the longest serving Arab ruler with a brutal tyrannical track record it is clear that the green light for all out change will intensify and no regime will be able to avoid change.

Cameron admits that the UK has made mistakes supporting dictatorships assuming that the only choice was them or extremism. He has scored a spectacular own goal by snubbing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt the largest opposition party and kingmaker in a national unity coalition government. Also rushing out to the region with a posse of arm dealers touting arms is naive opportunism. The Arab street wants to bring in a new era in which its leaders are judged in their ability to represent aspirations of the people and be held accountable for their actions. It is clear that without democracy it has metamorphosed into ugly Western client hereditary dynasties riddled with corruption, nepotism and crony capitalism in which countries are treated as their own private companies. A perfect storm has been ignited with the tinderbox of a bulging young population, poverty, unemployment and food hyperinflation.

If we take oil-rich Libya alone, its political economy shows that it has a 30% unemployment rate with over 60% of the population living on $2 dollars per day. This is in a country which has 3% of world energy resources producing 1.6 million barrels per day of which 1.2 million barrels per day come to Europe. Western derivative traders have been speculating in commodities inclusive of oil and cereals which has led to soaring food prices. This has fuelled poverty and hunger and ultimately overcame the fear of a totalitarian police State. Let us be clear that the people are not revolting against dictators alone but Western neoliberal policies and the Washington consensus which has led to the privatising of State resources to multinationals. They are revolting against a Western controlled bankrupt debt based financial usurious system which is also on its last legs. This system is only surviving because of quantitative easing and it has led to hot money exporting inflation globally and leading to instability.

The implications of this include that of replacing Middle East advisors as they are deeply tainted and implicated in the status quo and are damaging British interests. The FCO needs a new broom which can deal with the new era. The Sykes-Picot world war 1 treaty which has frozen MENA needs to be discarded as the artificial borders prevent Arab unity and sustainable economic development. The energy rich regions have to be integrated with energy poor regions in MENA. The revolts will not be complete until there is a holistic revolution which satisfactorily addresses the question of to whom do the energy resources of the region belong? To whom should they be sold? At what price? To date they have been given away at subsidised rates to the West and this racket has to cease.