Mauritius has been in the limelight following ‘many’ events that
were reported in international press.
Bad publicity does not exist, they say but nonetheless paradise-island
was somewhat hurt in what was relayed in the media. A bullet fired to our open wings. It does not
matter, we still remain one of the world’s best destinations and no one can
counter that. I think the island is
worth some praise, despite our internal problems and pains – who does not have
them?
The first scandal that hit us was the murder of Irish personality,
Michaela Harte. She was 27, murdered in a five-star hotel in Mauritius on her
honeymoon. International press did not miss it and soon whole Ireland was
against our island. Mauritians living in Ireland were victims of racial hatred
and discriminations.
Mauritian police had to act fast and find the culprits. In haste,
it got three persons in the nets. After weeks of trial, the jury found all
three of them innocent and they were released.
All of the three persons arrested were employees of the five-star hotel
where Michaela spent her fatal honeymoon.
These persons were at all times claiming their innocence and on several
occasions declared they were victims of police brutality. They were forced to admit
a crime they did not commit. Police was
tagged as incompetent and denied of the glory it was expecting.
Ireland felt that its child was denied justice and this was clearly
demonstrated by Irish Prime Minister’s declaration: “Justice is not done”. Then followed a systematic boycott against
Mauritius, legitimate maybe but definitely understandable. Some travel agency
displayed ‘No tickets to Mauritius’ on their windows. Mauritius was no longer
in their hearts, clearly and bluntly.
The Board
of Investment Scandal
One of the most reputed institutions of the country, the Board of
Investment (BOI), was recently hit by a unprecedented scandal. The BOI promotes Mauritius as a business and
luxury-living destination. It acts as a
one-stop-shop to regulate, facilitate and encourage foreign investment in
paradise-island. One of its core
services is to coordinate, supervise and recommend application for residency
permits submitted by foreigners who wish to invest or retire in Mauritius.
Apparently some of the BOI officers grouped themselves into a gang
and were racketing ‘poor’ foreigners.
The gang offered their own ‘services’ by delivering fake permits to
their victims. Blasphemy! Investors
applying for occupation permit through the official channel would be approached
by these corrupted officeials and were called to pay some additional fees for
an expeditious treatment of their applications.
Victims would never doubt the seriousness of the proposal since this was
being done on the premises of the BOI and by officers of the BOI. Enquiries led
to the arrestation of a couple of BOI officers and the whole network was dismantled. It appeared that this gang was a well-engineered
one.
This scandal almost blew away all the efforts done by the
Government to position Mauritius as a worldwide business and leisure
destination. We could sense the anger
around; among professional consultants, Ministers and all those who are working
hard to build the image of modern Mauritius.
We could not afford to bear with this one, surely not. But the bullet was already out of the barrel
and it had to cause harm. Whom do we
trust now if fake documents are being manufactured inside BOI’s walls? Has the whole system shown its limitations
and should it be pulled down?
I make it a point to mention that the Managing Director of BOI, Mr
Ken Poonoosamy reacted with the calmness and intelligence, so essential in
these types of situations. He did well; he reacted with a proper communication
strategy which, in my opinion, reassured the international community of
investors and professionals.
I’m not justifying the crime, but some brains & eyes cannot
limit themselves to their job when they see too much foreign currencies moving
near them. Some officers at the BOI (and
their gang members) thought it was legitimate for them to have a bite in the
foreign investments cake…maybe they thought that they were playing a very
important role in handling residency permit applications and they deserved a
greater share than their actual salary. The BOI, as an institution, did well do
dissociate itself from these worms.
Since then, much has been done to restore the image of BOI and
Mauritius as an investment hub. It all
seems to be back on track again.
Government announced recently that we are about to reach the Rs4bn
figure in foreign direct investment (FDI).
Arms
traficking
More recently, an American NGO, the Conflict Awareness Project
(CAP), reported that Mauritius was about to be used as an international arms
trafficking platform by Russian mafia. CAP has been very active in tracking
down illegal arms traffic and supports the United Nations in implementing an
international arms treaty to formalize and regulate arms trading.
CAP’s report was full of lies and baseless allegations. It hurt Mauritius, going as far as treating
our country as an ideal host to arms traffickers willing to pursue their
business in the post-September, 11 era. CAP put international media to its
service and the information was relayed, verbatim, in some of the world’s most
reputed columns. Local media was hooked along.
Our local “do-everything to sell
more papers” reporters had a scoop!
Because it came from the US, it had to be true. CAP blamed a well-known Mauritian family of
lawyers to be part of the ploy, accusing one of the members of this family (an
actual Minister) to have played a game of influence and helped Russian mafia in
reaching to their goals. Come on!
Gibson & Hills Ltd (yes, yes!), according to CAP is a company
founded by Russian mafia to host their dark business in Mauritius. I thought I founded Gibson & Hills Ltd,
but somehow because CAP is American, local press gave more credit to her words!
LOL! Those local press reporters did not
verify any of the information contained in the CAP report, and yet such
information is readily available at the Registrar of Companies. A simple check would have revealed that
Gibson & Hills Ltd was created by Nadeem Mosafeer (Me) in January 2008, and
the Russians set foot in Mauritius only in 2011. I had to show those reporters
my blogs with their 25,000 readers and ask them ‘you think that’s part of the Russian’s gameplan?’ . Many understood that it was all about a
sensational lie from the director of CAP, Ms Kathi Lynn Austin… but many still
had to be convinced.
We then issued a counter-report and blew away all those ugly,
dirty and blatant lies that Ms Austin wrote in her report. We revealed the
actual gameplan of Ms Lynn. She claimed
that the Russian investors (our clients) were lieutenants of Viktor Bout, the famous
arms dealer. In her report, she tries to
defend a crook (a Mauritian) who was arrested for swindling the Russian
investors of more than Rs10 million. Ms
Austin went so far as accusing local police of incompetence, and claiming she
held a truth that Mauritian authorities did not care take into consideration:
The crook was a gentle and innocent guy, the victims of the crook were the real
big bad wolf! Guts and foolishness.
·
CAP had
to show that even harmless countries like Mauritius could play an active role
in arms trafficking. Therefore it was
essential to implement an Arms Treaty.
·
CAP was
about to make itself known to the world with a brilliant work, a sensational
report revealing hell business in paradise-island.
·
CAP shows
that it is a very serious NGO and this can bring further blessings from
investors.
As
for the Mauritian crook, he would see all those legal entities held by the
Russian collapse and he would no longer be held accountable for the massive
frauds he committed. Obviously, we came to know that Ms Lynn and the Crook were
actually friends on facebook and it was clear that :
The Crook gave biased
information to CAP, and CAP would play in favour of the crook.
Now here is the real story.
The Russians wanted to invest in a charter airline business to serve the
islands of the Indian Ocean. The crook
informed them that he was holder of an Air Operators Certificate (AOC) and
could help them set their planes take-off faster than they planned. The crook took over USD400,000 in the
process, but never showed the original(AOC to the investors. When the Russian enquired with competent
authorities, it was discovered that the AOC was a fake one. Russian complained to police, crook
arrested. Crook humiliated, crook seeks
vengeance. Crook hooks CAP and CAP gets traps in a sensational but false
story ! Full-stop, that’s what happened.
CAP and director Kathi Lynn are nowhere to be found. They have been called to answer on different
parts of their report by local authorities; no signs of life on Mars.
All of the above events had a serious impact on the image of
Mauritius. Still, the hard-work and
endurance of the Mauritian population in general outplayed those negative
impacts. Mauritius will continue its progress;
its leaders have a vision and are determined to work towards our goals. We will
succeed. As one of the top performing
economies of Africa, paradise-island will not abandon the playfield. For those who are not aware, we successfully
shifted our economic pillars from agriculture to textile, we had the same
success when we implemented tourism & textiles… and now we are moving
towards being a leader in worldwide finance and services industry.
What upsets me is that those who are doing everything to hinder
progress will be the firsts to claim a share of success, when success will be.
