Devils Below

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe: Marange Blood Diamonds [Cost of Greed] 🌟 In June 2006, one of the most significant diamond discoveries of recent times was made in the rural Marange area of eastern Zimbabwe, offering its economy a unique development chance. 🌟 By 2012, Zimbabwe had become the world’s 4th-largest diamond producer, while Marange had become synonymous with blood diamonds and human rights abuses, drawing international attention, leading to sanctions against Zimbabwe and involvement of the global diamond watchdog. 🌟 At the heart of the tragedy was the government’s 2008 decision to expel individual miners from the deposit, even though in a burst of populism after the discovery it had initially declared the fieldopen to everyone. ✈️ Once the government itself wanted to capture diamond profits, the military was sent to the site. In helicopters. With machine guns. To drive out artisanal miners. 🔥 Unsurprisingly, this decision was a straight route to tragedy. During the three-week Operation "No Return," from October 27 to November 16, at least 200 people were killed, while the military established near-direct control over the deposit. 💵 The troops deployed to Marange set up labor camps at the site. Their control lasted until November 2009, when the government began issuing mining licenses. Of the 6 main companies that received them, only one was not directly owned by the government itself. 🌟 The massacre and forced labor drew the attention of the international community. In 2008-2011, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on companies operating there, including the state-run Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation. In 2009, members of the Kimberley Process banned the sale of diamonds from Marange. 🌟 Although human rights abuses continued after 2011, international concern soon faded, and over time both the sanctions and the ban on diamond sales were lifted. 🔽 This allowed the state-owned companies to extract diamond profits and use them for off-budget financing of the army and secret services — but that is a topic for a separate post. #CostOfGreed ➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Giant Evictions, Giant Profits 📄 The UK OECD bodyhas found the complaint by residents of eastern DRC over forced evictions to be well-founded and worthy of examination. The case concerns British company AngloGold Ashanti which, together with the notorious Barrick, owns the Kibali gold mine, one of the largest of its kind in Africa, in the northeast of Congo. 📍 Local residents first became an obstacle to gold mining as early as 2010, a year after the complex was launched. After the initial resettlements in 2010–2015, a cordon of so-called Exclusion Zones was drawn on the map around the complex. Living there was formally prohibited, even though the already existing settlements were also included into the zones. 🚧 At the same time, no significant work was carried out there and the zones were not fenced off – so, people who didn't spend their evenings reading municipal cadastral planscould not even have the idea that living there was forbidden. ⚠️ The turning point was reached in 2021, when the discovery of new deposits prompted the project expansion. "Waste dumps" needed to be created on the sites of the Exclusion Zones, and residents who still remained there began to be pushed out, while their houses were demolished. For locals this came as a surprise – far from everyone knew that their homes was part of some kind of special area. 🏘 The escalation turned into violent protests in the nearby town of Durba. On 22 October 2021 3 people were shot dead and 14 wounded by local security forces — which led to the suspension of resettlements. However, most houses had already been demolished by then, amounting to a total number of around 2,360 removed households. ⚖️ Since then, activists have been trying to achieve justice through local courts and foreign institutions. The initial attempt to go to court in Kinshasa went nowhere – the court ruled that the residents had not made sufficient efforts to resolve the dispute through dialogue with the miners. After that, activists lodged complaints with the non-judicial OECD mechanisms in Canada and the UK. ⏩ Unfortunately, their mandates only allow them to issue recommendations, which is what the Canadian body has already done and what the UK one is likely to do as well, despite having accepted the claims as well-founded. #CostOfGreed ➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Guinean Pride [ Cost of Greed ] ⚙️ Guinea-Conakry’s flagship industrial project may put its real treasure at risk 🥇 The railway from the Simandou iron ore project to a port on the Atlantic Ocean runs almost across the whole of Guinea, which has become a source of pride for the local authorities, some local patriots and the foreign beneficiaries of Simandou. However, many forget that the land on which the tracks lie did not belong to them alone. 🏷 A smidgen of background information: 🔴Simandou is Guinea’s flagship high grade iron ore project in the country’s southeast, the largest of its kind in the world. 🔴Simandou is so huge that it is being developed by two mining companies at once, the Chinese Winning Consortium and the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto. 🔴The infrastructure backbone is its 600 km railway, where Rio Tinto and Winning each hold 42.5% and the Guinean state - the remaining 15% stake. The corridor includes a new railway running across Guinea, plus new coastal port facilities around the Moribaya estuary near Senguelen. 🛑 A railway this long inevitably disrupts animal migration routes, including those of forest elephants, of which only about 60-140 remain in Guinea at all. Both the railway and the deposit itself have already led to a reduction in the natural habitats of rare species. In the area of the deposit alone, at least 4 protected monkey species live – or already used to. 🧬 Beyond the fact that elephants will no longer be able to walk back and forth, there are also problems that affect peopledirectly. Animals that can no longer find food in the forest now constantly come out onto farms and plantations, destroying crops. As a result, Guinea is losing not only its iron ore, but also its native inhabitants, who lived there long before rails were ever invented. #CostOfGreed ➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

Tanzanian-Style Terror [ Cost of Greed ] 🇹🇿💀 Barrick’s North Mara gold mine in Tanzania’s Tarime district has been one of the country’s major industrial projects since 1993. However, for the Kurya indigenous communities living nearby, the mine has also become a symbol of police terror. ⚙️ A 2016 inquiry launched by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals gathered evidence of 65 deaths and 270 injuries resulting from police violence in the area. Civil rights groups go even higher claiming 77 is the base of the death toll. 🛡 What makes the situation darker is the fact that under an official agreement Barrick in fact uses the police essentially as a private security company. 〰️ At the heart of confrontations lies a struggle for land and livelihoods. When big companies arrived in the 1990s and 2000s, villagers lost access to small-scale mining, their primary source of income. ➡️ Police violence occursin two main situations: either villagers gather in groups and break into the site, or vice-versa police demands unfair tolls from legitimate artisanal miners, who have permission to work at the site or nearby. 🏛 Since 2013, villagers have filed lawsuits in courts in the United Kingdom and Canada, accusing Barrick. One of the early UK cases ended in a confidential settlement with no admission of liability. New lawsuits filed in 2022 and 2024 are still pending. This case, like many others, shows how alliances between major corporations and state security forces — justified as “protecting investments” — almost always end up directed against ordinary residents, simply because no one is left to protect them. #CostOfGreed Devils Below

Yes, Indeed, “Local Partners”... [ Cost of Greed ] 🇦🇴 The Angolan government systematically requires companies that want to operate in the country to enter joint ventures with “local partners”. In reality, these “partners” are often members of the elite and well-connected oligarchs who divert oil revenues away from the population. 🌟 Perhaps the most notorious case came in 2009, courtesy of the entourage of José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s President from 1979 to 2017. Unfortunately, Angolan officials were not particularly inventive: the corruption scheme was a classic one — let a foreign company in on preferential terms, while demanding stakes in its subsidiaries for individuals in the ruling elite. 💵 To enter the Angolan oil market in 2009, the Swiss firm Trafigura aligned itself with one of the era’s key power-brokers and corruption figures, General Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento (better known as General “Dino”). 🤝 Trafigura and General Dino created the joint venture DT Group (DT = Dino and Trafigura). It secured a de facto monopoly on supplying all refined petroleum products to Angola and engaged in exporting part of Angola’s crude abroad. Through another company — Cochan, also tied to Dino — Trafigura built a nationwide network of fuel stations. ⚙️ This joint venture enabled Trafigura to set up one of its most lucrative arrangements. Upstream, Trafigura obtained crude oil from the state company Sonangol at preferential prices. Downstream, it supplied Angolans with fuel refined overseas through its service stations. 👁 Despite the mind-numbing simplicity of the scheme and its public exposure, the main actors walked away unscathed. After a change of leadership in 2017, General Dino simply exited the stage and vanished. Trafigura continues to operate in Angola today and even owns part of the railway connecting Angola with the DRC. 🔖 I first learnt about this case in The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy. #CostOfGreed Devils Below

A Corridor or a Berlin Wall? [ Cost of Greed ] How the US-backed Lobito Corridor will affect local lives — a report from the ground 🛤 In 2026, the Africa Finance Corporation plans to begin implementing parts of the Lobito Rail Corridor project — a US-backed initiative aimed at easing resource exports from the DRC and Zambia to ports on the Atlantic Ocean. Against this backdrop, the international NGO Global Witnesshas released a report focusing on the forced eviction of local residents whose homes stand in the way of trains. 🚩 In the DRC, researchers estimated that between 3,500 and 6,500 people could be affected by the reconstruction and expansion of a colonial-era railway from Kolwezi to Dilolo built in the 1930s and abandoned in the 1970s. Residents have already experienced first heavy copper trains passing through their backyards. 📃 Local officials orchestrating the relocation of people often resort to the argument that “they are living there illegally,” thereby dodging any compensation for displacement. 📌 Indeed, local residents have very few ways to prove their land ownership rights, especially since many houses were built chaotically and informally or on the basis of documents issued unlawfully. In one case, even DRC’s national railway operatorSNCC itself in a very feudal manner used to pay its workers in land near the railways. While some locals do hope for new investments in the communities along the railway following the projected revitalization of the road, there are serious concerns that the investments won't go beyond fences separating residents from the tracks. #CostOfGreed Devils Below

Côte d’Ivoire’s Hazardous Flying Dutchman [Cost of Greed] Twenty years ago, off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire, an event occurred in which no one drowned — yet it could easily overshadow the tragic sinking of the Titanic. In 2006, a multinational company called Trafigura faced an unusual problem: it had purchased an extremely sulphurous but cheap petroleum product known as coker gasoline, which needed to be somehow refined into regular fuel. ⏩ The goal was not only to refine the hazardous substance, but also to save as much as possible alongthe way.⏪ ⚓️Instead of hiring a proper refinery, Trafigura decided to process the toxic feedstock at sea — on an old ship called Probo Koala, using an outdated method known as "caustic washing", in which coker gasoline is treated with caustic soda. ☣️ The scheme worked, and the company sold the resulting fuel for $19 million — but what remained on board was toxic waste. 💵 And once again money was accorded priority: Trafigura rejected an offer to treat the waste in the Netherlands for $620,000, and the Probo Koala began wandering along the coast of West Africa in search of anyone willing to rid it of its poisonous burden. ⚠️ Eventually the company hired shady contractors in Abidjan for miserable $17,000. Upon arrival, after the ship unloaded the waste, the material was allegedly spread by subcontractors across the city and its surroundings, dumped in waste grounds, public landfills, and along roads in populated areas. In the weeks that followed, the BBC reported that 17 people died , 23 were hospitalized , and another 40,000 sought medical treatment . 🤝 For fear of prosecution, Trafigura agreed in 2007 to pay the Ivorian government around $200 million — for an indulgence that granted the company sweeping immunity from prosecution. Hazardous waste still lie in the soil underneath Abidjan. #CostOfGreed Devils Below

Ogoni Nine [ Cost of Greed ] 🌟 On 10 November 1995, in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, nine environmental activists were hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Barinem Kiobel, Baribor Bera, Saturday Doobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbokoo, Paul Levura, Felix Nuate, and John Kpuinen. How did it happen that the state executed not terrorists or even opposition politicians, but environmental defenders? And what did it have to do with oil major Shell? ➡️ Shell had been operating in Nigeria since 1938 and had developed strong ties with local elites. In 1993, protests erupted in Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, over endless oil spills and the exploitation of the country’s natural resources. In response, Shell approached government officials, asking them to protect its assets. ➡️ The main obstacle for Shell was the activist movement MOSOP. ➡️ To get rid of it, in 1994 the authorities accused its leaders of murdering four traditional chiefs. Who was actually behind their deaths — and whether it may have been a provocation — remains unknown to this day. ➡️ Nevertheless, the government extracted the “necessary” confessions, with Shell standing behind the entire process. In 1995, Brian Anderson, Shell’s head in Nigeria, received multiple assurances from the authorities that the activists “would certainly be found guilty,” and noted in internal memos that the company “must prepare for a sentence.” Although the Ogoni Nine were formally tried for the killings of the four chiefs, their real “crime” was that they organized a peaceful campaign against the destructive consequences of Shell’s oil operations in Ogoniland. #CostOfGreed Devils Below