Word: mobutu
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...whose bloody regime was eventually toppled. In Malawi, Israelis reportedly may even be training government squads that practice torture. (11) And news stories about the recent visits of Israeli defense officials to Zaire to set up arms and training arrangements often did not mention that Zaire's dictator, General Mobutu, is considered by some to be one of the most ruthless (and most corrupt) heads of state...
...President, Mobutu Sese Seko, also hopes to see Gaddafi's advance halted. Last month Mobutu sent 2,000 paratroopers to Chad to help guard strategic points in the capital, freeing Habré's troops for the battle against the rebels in the north. In Washington for talks with President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz last week, Mobutu promised to send more troops to Chad. U.S. officials praised him for his "courageous action...
Worse still, corruption percolates through the regime. "It is widely accepted," a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report completed in March noted, "that he [Mobutu] has managed to amass a legendary personal fortune at the nation's expense." Kickbacks are the order of the day, with the President's cronies controlling significant slices of the economy. "It's the greed of a handful at the top that keeps this country in an economic mess," says one Belgian businessman. Complains one of Zaïre's former financial advisers: "We had great hopes, but they...
...secret report he wrote to IMF Managing Director Jacques de Larosiere early last year. In it, Blumenthal describes refusing high officials' requests for bundles of cash of up to $50,000, finding a government payment of $4 million to a Belgian professor who was the guardian of Mobutu's son, and uncovering a discrepancy of $32.6 million between what was supposed to be in the government's bank accounts abroad and the money that was actually there...
Blumenthal left Zaïre in 1979. But he continued his investigations in Western Europe, obtaining from former Zaïrian Prime Minister Nguza Karl-I-Bond, now living in exile, the estimate that Mobutu's private fortune exceeds $4 billion. Most of it was said to be held in Swiss bank accounts, a point that may explain why the Swiss have been receiving fairly regular payments on loans owed them...