Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana is currently under investigation by the FBI for allegedly taking bribes from a company seeking business in Nigeria and, as I reported last week, the feds are apparently also looking at his ties to São Tomé and to some Americans doing business in that African country. | São Tomé. Until this very moment I thought São Tomé was one of Mel's cousins. I learn something new every day at the 'Burg. |
It all starts in 1997, when ERHC—despite having no revenue and just a single full-time employee—won extensive energy rights in the tiny island nation of São Tomé. In exchange for a $5 million payment to the government for the right to market the country's oil potential, ERHC was awarded a minimum of four oil fields, exempted from all taxes, and granted half the future profits in STPetro, a state oil company created by the deal. Noreen Wilson, a lobbyist who helped negotiate the deal for ERHC and who became a major shareholder, was appointed to STPetro's board and made ERHC's chief financial officer.
In 2003, I wrote about ERHC's agreement in São Tomé for the Los Angeles Times. “Was the deal a little rich?” Wilson said in an interview. “Yeah, it probably was, but who else was going to take the risk back then? They couldn't give their oil away, let alone get someone to pay them for it.” But Andrew Latham of Wood Mackenzie, an energy-consulting firm in Edinburgh, Scotland, said the original deal was far out of line with industry standards and said he'd never seen a company “get a stake like ERHC obtained in São Tomé.”
In São Tomé, plenty of people have questioned the deal. A December 2005 report by São Tomé's attorney general said that the country's lead negotiator on the agreement, Carlos Gomes, a nephew of the prime minister, was awarded an executive position at STPetro and a salary of thousands of dollars a month paid by ERHC. The report said that Mateus “Nando” Meira Rita, a former São Toméan Secretary of State, became STPetro's general manager and also received a generous salary as an ERHC consultant. SEC records show that in 1998 ERHC named Rita as its Vice President of International Affairs and granted him 500,000 shares of company stock valued at $158,203.
| More at the link. Run the bath while reading... |
| But my laptop's getting all soggy... |