RAID is today issuing a call to action following the arbitrary arrest and detention of Boniface Umpula Nyembo, of the respected Congolese human rights organisation Action contre l’impunité pour les droits humains (ACIDH), a long-standing partner of RAID.
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RAID wrote to several US public pension funds and the Transport for London pension fund over a year ago asking them about their investments with hedge fund Och-Ziff. A UK mining company had done a deal with the Zimbabwean regime to buy platinum assets using money from Och-Ziff, thereby financing President Mugabe’s violent campaign to subvert 2008 elections.
The UK security contractor G4S has been accused of failing to meet international standards and committing serious human rights violations in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers detained at an off-shore processing centre in Papua New Guinea, operated on behalf of the Australian Government.
RAID wrote to CalPERS back in July 2013, again in November 2013 and most recently in September 2014, asking the fund about its investments with hedge fund Och-Ziff, in the light of serious questions concerning the use of Och-Ziff money to back a mining deal in Zimbabwe that ultimately funded Mugabe’s violent subversion of 2008 elections (more details here).
Several press reports have followed from RAID’s April 2014 report on Och-Ziff, the New York hedge fund currently under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice (under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).
Killings at a British-owned gold mine in east Africa have alarmed a group of MPs, lawyers and human rights campaigners, who have called on the British government to intervene.
In a report published on 29 April 2014, Och-Ziff, Mugabe’s “Bagmen” and the underpricing of African assets, RAID calls on the US authorities to investigate a number of questionable transactions in Africa by Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (‘Och-Ziff’), a $41 billion US hedge fund listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Report