Debt Vultures Shot for Chanukah

[babsbunny]

Liberia is saved, but the predators are not done.
By Greg Palast

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6696/debt_vultures_shot_for_chanukah

We got’m. I can hardly believe it.

Yesterday, the financial vultures, the carcass-chewers who were preying on the dirt-poor African nation of Liberia, gave up.

Refresher: In February, for BBC Television Newsnight and In These Times, our team hunted down a predator with a Ph.D., Dr. Eric Hermann, who, for a couple pennies on the dollar, secretly bought the right to collect a $6 million debt owed by Liberia.

Hermann and his flock of vulture partners demanded Liberia pay $43 million—a devastating sum for that nation—or he would, in effect, block aid funding for that nation’s recovery from civil war. The nation was now Hermann’s economic hostage.

[leveymg]

1. Hope Dr. Hermann visits Monrovia some time soon. He'll get a warm welcome!

What a nice man. He sure has built up a lot of good will. Good karma.

[Catherina]

2. May they rot

I was investigating the strange links between Hermann and a company named Hamsah Investments; it smelled of fraud. Tipped off that I was about to arrive with a camera crew to question Hermann about this, his giant hedge fund operation in Harrison, N.Y., unbolted the company signs from the office building wall, locked their office doors and required their staff to hide inside in silence.

...

Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), hearing our first report on vultures in 2007, personally confronted George Bush in the Oval Office demanding he put an end to the ransom demands of the vultures—who happened to be the Republican Party’s top donors.

...

Liberia is saved, but the vultures are not done. The number one donor to the Republican Party in New York, Paul Singer, is demanding $100 million from the Congo (Brazzaville); and his fellow vultures are still circling, looking for carcasses of nations devastated by war or famine or corruption.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6696/debt_vultures_shot_for_chanukah