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TOTAL/Sanctions/Soros
Oct 17, 1997
Contortions Over Sanctions: Can U.S. Punish Russia's Gazprom for Deal With Iran?
New York Times,IHT
***
Friday, October 24, 1997
U.S. Weighs Curbs On France's Total/ AFP/IHT
***
re TOTAL and the US trade wars over Iran embargo, for those
interested. TOTAL couldn't be less concerned. Clinton is
still looking for ways to get even. Perhaps he may try
to squeeze out the French (Cogema/TOTAL) in Chinanuclear plant construction ...
Check out the twist:
"To make matters worse, it could
also mean going up against one of President Bill
Clinton's biggest financial supporters in last
year's campaign: Goldman, Sachs & Co.
The Wall Street firm, whose former co-chairman,
Robert Rubin, is now the Treasury secretary, is
underwriting the Gazprom bond offering."
So who is running the ubiquitous US government? TOTAL
must be laughing all the way to the bank.
metta,dawn star
euroburmanet, paris
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/total/
Worldwide TOTAL Boycott
ps WILL BURMANET PLEASE PULL THE ACCOUNT OF WHOEVER IS BOUNCING
BACK MAILS TO LISTSERVER!!!!
Oh, and here is another one, just follow the money, while Asia paper tigers
tumble, Soros puts his profits elsewhere.
October 17, 1997
Contortions Over Sanctions: Can U.S. Punish Russia's Gazprom for Deal With Iran?
David E. Sanger-New York Times,IHT
***
U.S. Weighs Curbs On France's Total/ AFP
International Herald Tribune
Friday, October 24, 1997
*********
WASHINGTON - In the next few weeks the Clinton
administration will face the first test of its
willingness to make good on a threat to punish
foreign companies that invest in Iran.
But the State Department is not exactly leaping at
the chance to teach a lesson to Russia's premier
private company, Gazprom, for a $2 billion deal
with French and Malaysian companies to pump natural
gas off the Iranian coast.
Instead, officials are discovering anew that
imposing sanctions on foreign companies that defy
American policy - in this case by doing business
with a country that the United States asserts
supports terrorism - raises numerous unforeseeable
problems.
The issue is not whether Washington can stop the
investment in Iran. That is clearly beyond its
reach. Instead, it is whether Gazprom should be
allowed to raise $1 billion in world financial
markets, including the United States, next month -
money that will go right into the company's coffers
just as it is preparing to write the Iranians a fat
check.
But stopping that deal threatens to unravel
delicate negotiations with European allies over
U.S. sanctions policy and to interfere with
Washington's efforts to stabilize the rickety
Russian economy. To make matters worse, it could
also mean going up against one of President Bill
Clinton's biggest financial supporters in last
year's campaign: Goldman, Sachs & Co.
The Wall Street firm, whose former co-chairman,
Robert Rubin, is now the Treasury secretary, is
underwriting the Gazprom bond offering. The company
fought long and hard to get Gazprom's business, and
many European investment houses would dance with
glee if Washington were to get in Goldman's way.
Even Stuart Eizenstat, undersecretary of state for
economics, business and agriculture, concedes that
if America tried to aim at Iran, the bullet would
ricochet everywhere.
''This is a matter which has important implications
for our policy to deter Iran from acquiring weapons
of mass destruction and supporting terrorism,'' he
said Wednesday. But it quickly becomes enmeshed, he
added, in ''our broader relationship with our
European allies, the Russian government and the
government of Malaysia,'' to say nothing of the
impact on Wall Street.
The origins of the diplomatic morass are relatively
simple.
When Conoco Inc. tried to invest in an Iranian oil
field two years ago, the Clinton administration
stepped in, issuing an order barring American
companies from major investments in Iran as long as
Tehran sponsored terrorism and was attempting to
acquire nuclear weapons.
Then the French company Total SA swept in and
signed the deal Conoco was forced to abandon.
The outrage in Congress over Total's action led to
the passage last year of the Iran and Libya
sanctions act. Like the Helms-Burton act, which is
aimed at companies investing in Cuba, the Iran law
laid out sanctions that the president can impose
against foreign firms that invest more than $20
million in Iran's oil and gas industries, its main
source of revenue.
They range from minor punishments - cutting off
low-cost loans through the government's
Export-Import Bank - to far nastier sanctions,
including cutting off American bank loans exceeding
$10 million, in an effort to make sure that
companies flouting the investment ban in Iran do
not raise their funds in America. Until now, the
law has not been tested.
But two weeks ago, Total announced that it was
teaming up with Gazprom and Malaysia's state-owned
oil firm, Petronas, in the $2 billion gas project
in Iran
It was an important step: Iran's proven gas
reserves represent about 15 percent of the world's
total, second only to Russia's. ''Clearly, this is
a big test for us,'' a senior administration
official said. ''If Total and its partners get away
with it, every non-American energy firm on the
globe is going to race in after them.''
The administration's reaction was deliberately
muted. Mr. Eizenstat - fully aware of the explosive
nature of any sanctions threat in Europe - said the
State Department would take time to ''gather all
the facts'' on the gas deal.
Others hinted that sanctions might be waived if
France and the other countries made other
commitments to fight Iranian terrorism. A team of
experts was sent to Paris, Moscow and Kuala Lumpur.
Meanwhile the Iranians declared that the gas field
will earn them $450 billion over the next 30 years,
and said that the contract with Total, the lead
partner, went into effect Oct. 7.
The State Department's caution is understandable,
but the $1 billion debt deal seems likely to force
its hand. The transaction is Gazprom's first
venture into the world's capital markets with a
major bond issue, though it has sold its stock on
markets around the world and borrowed from Western
banks.
Goldman, Sachs says the $1 billion it is raising is
for ''general purposes,'' chiefly a major pipeline
project already under way in Russia. But clearly,
any cash the company can raise frees up money it
can invest in Iran.
While Goldman, Sachs will say nothing publicly
about the debt offering, a company official said
that ''this is a very important deal for us'' and
that Goldman's lawyers believe that the bond
offering does not violate the Iran-Libya sanctions
act, which makes no specific mention of debt
offerings. ''We are assuming it is not going to be
an issue,'' the official said.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
U.S. Weighs Curbs On France's Total
AFP
WASHINGTON - The United States has not ruled out
imposing sanctions against the French oil company
Total over its deal with Iran, a senior
administration official said Thursday.
A team of State Department experts is in Paris
''investigating with alacrity'' to determine ''the
facts of this case and to determine whether or not
this is sanctionable activity,'' said Stuart
Eizenstat, undersecretary of state for economic,
business and agricultural affairs.
''If it is, sanctions are certainly a viable
option,'' Mr. Eizenstat said.
Total, with Russian and Malaysian companies, has
signed a deal to pump gas off the coast of Iran.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Tues. October 21, 1997
Huge Soros Gift to Russia/Financier Offers $500 Million for Projects
Judith Miller-NYT/IHT
NEW YORK - George Soros, the Hungarian-born
American financier and philanthropist, has
announced that he will spend as much as $500
million over the next three years in Russia to
improve health care, expand education and help
retrain military personnel to take civilian jobs.
Mr. Soros, speaking Monday in Moscow, said his
initiative would cover eight fields.
This gift, following others for hundreds of
millions of dollars, would make Mr. Soros the
largest philanthropist and individual Western
investor in Russia.
In the last decade, Mr. Soros, who was born in
Budapest 67 years ago and emigrated to the United
States in 1956, has donated close to $1.5 billion
promoting what he calls ''open societies'' - the
expansion of civil liberties, a free press and
political pluralism - at home and abroad.
Since 1994, he has donated in excess of $350
million a year to his foundations in more than 30
countries, spending more than $259 million in
Russia alone.
This new gift would make his foundation in Moscow,
the Open Society Institute-Russia, his largest
presence in any country, including the United
States.
Mr. Soros's latest gift comes less than a month
after Ted Turner, the billionaire founder of Cable
News Network, announced that he would donate up to
$1 billion, or up to $100 million a year for 10
years, to benefit United Nations programs.
When he made his gift, Mr. Turner identified Mr.
Soros as the philanthropist he most admired, and
Mr. Soros returned the compliment.
Mr. Soros said in Moscow that he had spent the last
two weeks touring Russia. He stressed that while
the tour was ''rather strenuous and in some ways
frustrating,'' he believed that the Russian
government, led by President Boris Yeltsin, needed
and deserved Western confidence and assistance.
Acknowledging that rampant corruption and
mismanagement had created a ''precarious
situation'' for the Russian government, Mr. Soros
said he doubted it would collapse any time soon.
''But during the next three years, the government
must deliver if it wants reform to continue,'' he
added.
In addition to his philanthropy, the Soros Fund
Management, the principal investment adviser to the
Quantum Group of Funds, based in Curaçao, has
invested more than $2.5 billion in Russian
business.
Mr. Soros said Sunday that he intended to continue
investing in Russia as a sign of confidence in the
country's leadership, despite controversy among
rival investors stemming from his decision to mix
philanthropy and investment.
Mr. Soros has emotional ties to Russia, where his
father was held prisoner during World War I.
As a child in Hungary, he said in a speech in
Moscow, he came to know Russian culture and greatly
respected its literary traditions and the
determination of its people to survive despite all
kinds of oppression. He began his philanthropy in
Russia in 1987 during Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms,
before the collapse of Soviet rule.
He is an American citizen who eluded German
roundups while a Jewish adolescent in Budapest and
settled in the United States in 1956, after
graduating from the London School of Economics.
Mr. Soros's international investments have come
under fire, particularly from Mahathir bin Mohamad,
the prime minister of Malaysia.
The Malaysian leader has repeatedly accused Mr.
Soros of mounting politically motivated attacks on
Southeast Asian currencies, which Mr. Soros has
denied.
During the summer, Mr. Soros shut down his
foundation in Belarus after Alexander Lukashenko,
the popular but autocratic Belarussian president,
fined a Soros foundation $3 million on charges of
tax violations and seized its bank account.
In the United States, Mr. Soros has been harshly
criticized for programs that challenge the nation's
strong antidrug legislation and other controversial
programs.
But the growing pressure on Mr. Soros's
philanthropic empire - which stretches from South
Africa to Haiti, employs more than 1,300 people and
has regional offices in New York and Budapest -
appears only to have stiffened his resolve to
promote political pluralism and economic reform.
This year alone, he opened five new offices in
Central Asia and another in Guatemala and announced
plans for nine foundations in southern Africa,
which would expand to 40 the number of countries
with Soros foundations.
Given his growing personal fortune, which friends
estimate at $5 billion, although he has not
commented on his wealth, he says his efforts are
likely to continue at current levels for at least a
decade, and perhaps for two.
Mr. Soros said that details of the new programs for
Russia were still being worked out, but that all
the money, which will total a minimum of $300
million and as much as $500 million in the next
three years, would be channeled through his Open
Society Institute-Russia.
He was forced to restructure the foundation and to
replace its leaders last year after discovering
that employees were diverting funds into Swiss bank
accounts and using money to buy luxury cars.
Mr. Soros said that some of the health-care money
would be used to set up three to five demonstration
sites that would offer programs to detect and treat
tuberculosis, both in prisons and in the general
population.
Another new project will work to diagnose and treat
drug-resistant bacteria, a leading cause of death
in Russian hospitals and what Mr. Soros called ''a
major health threat not only in Russia but
throughout the world.''
Another of Mr. Soros's eight programs is to provide
funds for retraining members of the military for
civilian jobs.
He said his program was a response to a call from
Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov for help in
large-scale training of managers.
In education, Mr. Soros intends to expand a program
that provides selected libraries a choice of books
and periodicals at a much reduced cost. He will
also support library computerization.
Another program is aimed at bringing more Russians
into the computer age. In cooperation with the
government, Mr. Soros plans to establish Internet
centers in 33 provincial universities.