Soros at centre of coup bid claim

DID multibillionaire philanthropist George Soros really claim that Benny Steinmetz, chairman and principal shareholder in leading Israeli-based diamonds and minerals company Benny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR), organised an assassination attempt on Guinean President Alpha Condé? The attempt was alleged by Soros, according to a summons issued by Steinmetz in London yesterday, to have taken place in July 2011.

The allegation, along with a litany of others, is contained in a 26-page particulars of claim served yesterday on Lord Mark Malloch-Brown KCMG, Privy Councillor, and on FTI Consulting, an NYSE-listed advisory group, which he recently joined as chairman of Europe, the Middle East and Africa business. Malloch-Brown, a former UK government minister in one of the Blair administrations and a deputy United Nations secretarygeneral, was once reckoned to be among the 100 most influential people in the world.

Malloch-Brown is known to have been particularly close to Soros for many years, which the former minister has never denied.

Steinmetz, meanwhile, runs a diversified international mining company, employs 8,000 people and has been involved for the last 15 years in mining across Africa. His BSGR is the 49% stakeholder in an iron ore joint-venture known as Simandou and Zogota in Guinea in which its partner is Vale, the Brazilian mining house Anglo American once tried, and spectacularly failed, to buy. The joint venture is known as VBG.

Put bluntly and briefly, the BSGR hired FTI to respond to a series of allegations made against it over some years, most of which were alleged to have originated with Soros. When Malloch-Brown arrived to take up his position at FTI he told the team there that the relationship with BSGR “would end up being a conflict for us … at several levels”.

However, sadly for MallochBrown, not everything was, according to yesterday’s summons in London, going his way. It quotes one John Waples, senior MD and UK head of strategic communications at FTI, as having said that “Mr Soros had a personal obsession about BSGR and is determined to ensure that VBG’s mining licence is withdrawn/ cancelled by the GOG/Government of Guinea.” According to the summons, a senior Waples colleague, a Mr Brewerton, said FTI was “defending BSGR from a smearing campaign that is orchestrated by George Soros and NGOs associated with him”.

Later in the summons, MallochBrown is quoted in an e-mail addressed to various FTI executives, as saying “Mr Steinmetz’s and/or BSGR’s inside Africa transactions” are “corrupt”. And he allegedly added later that “the reputation of BS (Benny Steinmetz) among policy, MGO (sic) and media circles is so bad that that is condemnation for many in its own right”.

Around December 2010, the new Guinean government appointed a committee, according to the summons, funded by Soros who also funded the services of UK law firm DLA Piper, “which write the material, in the name of the committee, that formed the basis of the committee’s allegations against BSGR”. “The committee has also been supported by Tony Blair’s African Government Initiative.”

The upshot of all this is that FTI has fired the Steinmetz Group as its client, leaving it “up a creek without a paddle”, according to the summons. The VBG project is stalemated, with neither mining partner willing to do anything until the matter of the mining licence is resolved. The extent of Soros’s apparent deep dislike of Steinmetz and his involvement in African affairs may, if it exists, come out in the wash.

But it should not pass notice that Condé is deeply unpopular. He achieved the presidency in the most peculiar circumstances. Having won 18% in the first round of voting against the 47% of the man first past the post, Cellou Dalein Diallo, he then won the run-off with 53% a few months later, in 2011.

E-mail: david@gleason.co.za Twitter: @TheTorqueColumn