NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: In an audio conversation conducted by BBC Newsday presenter James Copnall with US peace activists George Clooney and John Prendergast, James was told about those profiting from conflict in South Sudan and that corruption is the driving force behind the atrocities in South Sudan. In my view, it could also apply to Sudan.
Here is a transcript I made from the audio originally released 20 Sep 2019. An undated copy was published at BBC Sounds online two days ago. Much of it applies to the situation today. Apologies if I mistakingly attributed any parts. The American accents were so similar I had to guess who said what.
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From: BBC World Service Newsday
Release date 20 September 2019
Re-released two days ago, circa 09 May 2024 - here is a full copy:
George Clooney tells Newsday about those profiting from conflict in South Sudan
The corrupt financial transactions between some government officials and foreign companies should be targeted as the most effective way to curb the violence in South Sudan.
This is the conclusion of research by The Sentry, an advocacy and investigation organisation based in the United States, which names individuals and businesses - including foreign state-owned oil companies - which it says have plundered the resources of the country for personal gain.
Newsday's James Copnall spoke to George Clooney - the film star who co-founded The Sentry - and the organisations director John Prendergast.
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Photo: George Clooney (R) and John Prendergast. Credit: Getty Images
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Transcript
JOHN PRENDERGAST: These war profiteers, these people who profit from human misery are extremely vulnerable in one way. They use the international financial system to move the proceeds of their financial crimes. When they do that in US dollars, and they do it in pounds, and they do it in euros, they become subject to the regulatory authorities and the banking systems, any money laundering efforts and we can work directly with governments and with banks to close those avenues, illicit financial flows off, and actually freeze and seize those assets so that it creates a real consequence, a real level of accountability for these kinds of crimes.
BBC: George, your activism has been around South Sudan and other issues too for many issues for many years was there something in particular that surprised you here?
GEORGE CLOONEY: Well, what’s an interesting thing, we’ve gone through a series of different versions of how we try to go after and stop these atrocities. We’ve tried putting satellite up in the air, we’ve tried, we’ve tried a lot of different things. Sometimes we’ve been successful, ultimately we’ve failed clearly because there’s an awful lot of violence that still goes on there. What became clear was that once we realised that we put on the front page of newspaper “troop build ups and mass graves” and nothing happened that they thought they could act with impunity [BBC: they could, couldn’t they? GC: they could and they have] but what’s also clear is if you sit down with a bank and you say well tomorrow I am going to hold a press conference that says you are laundering one hundred million dollars and I’m going to announce tomorrow that either you are doing something about it or not or you are complicit, it’s amazing how quickly they say you know what we don’t need to be in the business anymore of South Sudan.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: The whole system has been established in South Sudan to loot and if you can start to create a consequence for looting, you’re going to make a difference, you’re going to start to impact the calculations of folks that are making decisions about how they are going to run South Sudan.
BBC: [unclear] from Kenya, from Uganda, countries in the region, sometimes where the money goes, sometimes who may disagree with the conclusions you’re coming up with?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: So this is a really important point because the politicians left to their own devices in those neighbouring countries with business as usual. But Kenyans want the Kenyan banking sector to be the financial one-stop shopping for the entire region so they have to open themselves up to the international regulatory authorities, there is something called the Financial Action Task Force, we’ll put everybody to sleep if we talk about it, but the Kenyans are terrified if they get a bad grade from the Financial Action Task Force their whole banking sector is going to suffer. So suddenly they are like, okay yeah maybe we are in business with, some of our politicians are in league with these folks who are stealing from South Sudan but our entire future financial sector is at risk if we keep doing business. That’s a very significant counterweight and it gives us a chance to do something real.
BBC: Is it your contention that in the current situation people really shouldn’t be doing business in South Sudan at all because people will be saying this country needs people coming in?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: We want to encourage foreign investment, we want to encourage private sector development in South Sudan but if you talk to South Sudanese businessmen who aren’t on the take, if you talk to investors who want to do it clean they have no chance because the folks who are bringing suitcases full of money and putting it under the table and are hijacking these particular processes there’s no transparency.
BBC: [unclear] you cut out the financial dodgy dealing a big if ... there are still a lot of problems in South Sudan, ethnic tensions, political competition, this is a small part of a very big pond.
GEORGE CLOONEY: Except that the amount of money that’s coming in from and the kind of corruption, corruption is the driving force for these atrocities, you take away that giant piece of the puzzle and suddenly you know Salva Kiir doesn’t really have the same incentives and probably loses power.
BBC: Even in the context where soldiers aren’t getting paid, when the economy has been bled dry already?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Why are they not getting paid? Why is the economy being bled dry? Because of mass corruption. This is the cancer that eats away at the effectiveness, the potential effectiveness of the state. If you do not address it, which it has not been addressed, and then try to do things about everything else there is still this massive hole at the centre. And I think this is our argument. It is not a small thing, it’s not just a, it has repercussions for all these other things that makes everything else worse because the state has been captured and when you have a captured state and the objective of that state is to enrich the leaders of that, everything else that you are trying to do, supporting foreign investment, development, infrastructure, even child nutrition, even education, is being obstructed and undermined by the cancer of corruption.
BBC: So this is a conversation being carried out about international businessmen, about banking systems internationally, what about the South Sudanese guys sitting in a village in [unclear] listening to this on the radio, watching this on TV in Juba, what can they do in your view to change the system there?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Well, you’ve seen a great deal of opposition to the system in the form of, sadly, in the form of armed rebellion, in the form of development of militias whether they are defending their own territory or attacking wanting to change the system. Sudan right to the north has created this incredible model where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people kept demonstrating and kept marching in support of democracy and in support of peace despite tremendous repression and violence, state violence, against them. I feel like that the next wave in South Sudan in terms of people who are trying to make a difference because now if you try to make a difference if you try to challenge the system you’ll be killed or imprisoned. It’s a scary thing, people have to make choices. If you are going to take on the system you and your family will probably face severe repercussions but once the numbers get large and you start to see change as we’ve seen in Sudan and seen in other parts of Africa we may see a difference. I think that’s probably mass protest against war, against corruption, against dictatorship, is probably the thing that will make the biggest difference, it’s the people themselves that have got to take the reins and make the change.
BBC: You know what the South Sudanese government is going to say, don’t you, they’re going say, you going after us it’s regime change, western prominent personalities maybe backed by governments trying to bring us down, what do you say to that?
GEORGE CLOONEY: If you think about what we’re saying is we think we should stop corruption. If the answer by the South Sudan government is you want regime change then you are saying that you are corrupt. That’s basically what you are saying. We’re not saying that, we are saying that we should stop corruption.
Listen to the conversation here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07ntymp
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