Barrick Gold
Corporations  Africa  Congo

Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chair of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers.

[2006] Behind the numbers. Untold Suffering in the Congo By Keith Harmon Snow & David Barouski  Several multinational mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, which operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts to survey and inspect their mining interests.
    George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chair of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers.
    Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta, is a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is also a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.
    Barrick Gold’s mining partners have included Adastra Mining—formerly named America Mineral Fields (AMFI, AMX, other names), formerly based in Hope, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s hometown. Adastra had close ties with Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest diamond brokerage firm in the U.S., whose president, Maurice Tempelsman, has been an advisor on African Affairs to the U.S. government and has been the U.S. Honorary Consul General of the Congo since 1977. 
    Maurice Tempelsman accompanied Bill Clinton during his African tour in 1998. He serves on the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange and is a director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a “scientific” front for his offshore diamond mining—raking the seabed into oblivion.
    Adastra also purchased a diamond concession on the Congolese-Angolan border from the Belgian mercenary firm International Defense and Security (1998) and currently has cobalt and copper concessions in Congo’s Katanga (Shaba) province. Adastra is a member of the Corporate Council on Africa, along with Goodworks, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing, Raytheon, Bechtel, and SAIC—the latter two being secretive intelligence and defense entities involved in classified and supra-governmental “black” projects.
    In April 1997 Jean-Ramon Boulle, a co-founder of Adastra (then AMFI), received a $1 billion dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (AFDL) before they were even officially in power. The AFDL were even allowed to use Boulle’s private jet. Directors of Adastra are also former directors of Anglo-American. Other Clinton-connected founders of Adastra include Michael McMurrough and Robert Friedland—both involved in shady, criminal, offshore businesses in Indonesia, Africa, Burma, and the Americas.
    Barrick sub-contracts to Caleb International, who has also partnered with Adastra in the past. Caleb is run by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh, the former General of the UPDF. When Uganda withdrew from the Congo in 2002 following a so-called “peace” agreement, Saleh began training paramilitary groups to act as proxies to sustain the flow of minerals into Uganda.
    Salim Saleh is a shareholder in Catalyst Co. of Canada which has a 100 percent interest in Uganda’s Kaabong goldfields. He is part owner of Saracen, a private military company created by the mercenaries-for-hire firm Executive Outcomes. The UN Panel of Experts on Illegal Exploitation of Congo’s Mineral Resources recommended Salim Saleh be put on a travel ban and have his assets frozen, but nothing was done.