Greed and corruption

On Friday, October 14, 2011, the White House issued a written statement to Congress revealing that on Wednesday it had started deploying combat equipped troops to Central Africa to assist in the hunting down and capturing or killing of the head of the Lord's Resistance Army, a group that has been causing havoc in that region for the past two years. It seems odd that after two years of terrible human rights violations the U.S. would suddenly take military action. Odd, that is, until you start to look at the relationship between Obama appointee Kase Lawal, member of the  Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiation, and his involvement in a gold smuggling operation earlier this year in Central Africa. Kase Lawal is the owner of CAMAC International, which loaned a private jet to a man named Carlos St. Mary who used it to fly to Central Africa with Mukaila Aderemi 'Mickey' Lawal, brother of Kase, under the pretense of buying gold from a seller in Kenya, the birthplace of Obama's father. In February, the jet was impounded and its passengers and crew were detained by the Congolese government in Central Africa. Officials there accused Lawal and St. Mary of smuggling gold from rebel territories in the nation's eastern provinces. St. Mary's company, Axiom Trading Co. Ltd, issued a statement through their attorney, Mike Adrovett, denying any wrongdoing and insisted that the $23 million worth of gold had been legally obtained. The governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya began a joint investigation; subsequently the lead investigator of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) was brutally gunned down in front of his home in view of his wife. The KRA had also been investigating the theft of more than 475 ingots of gold valued at 1.6 billion shillings  from a warehouse that was intended for sale to Mickey Lawal. The investigation had uncovered that the gold was Congolese gold, which is illegal to trade. After almost two month of detention, Lawal and the other participants were levied a fine and released.

Carlos St. Mary's company, Axiom Trading Co. Ltd, is currently attempting to finalize a rare earth mineral deal in Angola on behalf of Black Fire Minerals. Drilling is scheduled to begin in November, but the chaos caused by the Lord's Resistance Army has delayed drilling operations. Axiom Trading Co. Ltd is also serving as Corporate Advisor to Predictive Discovery, which recently issued its initial public offering (IPO) and began trading on ASX. Predictive Discovery is primarily focusing on gold exploration in Africa.

Convoluted? Yes. Discouraging for those of us who would still like to have faith that our elected officials are somehow above illegal and sordid behavior? Absolutely. Business as usual? Probably.