Oryx Fails To Protect Its Reputation
May 27, 04Journalists (and also NGOs) find it tricky to write about Oryx Natural Resources, as this controversional DRC diamond mining company seems to have a consistent policy of protesting even the smallest nuance it doesn’t agree with and doesn’t hesitate to go to court if it feels it has been defamed.
Nevertheless, the company continues to make headlines. According to the authoritative Africa Confidential, “Oryx Natural Resources has finally lost the legal battle to clear its name and dropped its libel action against the London daily The Independent, which accused the company of money laundering, diamond smuggling and lying about its links with the Zimbabwean military in an article in November 2002. It also accused Oryx of bribing Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Speaker, Emmerson Mnangagwa, now under investigation for corruption by the country’s ruling party. The Independent echoed many of the charges made against Oryx by the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Mineral Resources in Congo-Kinshasa, in October 2002.”
The newsletter states that “after vehemently denying The Independent and the UN Panel’s charges and claiming that they would produce documents to refute them, Oryx Directors Thamer al Shanfari and Geoffrey White agreed in February to drop the action against The Independent and pay £175,000 which will help defray the newspaper’s legal costs. Under Britain’s archaic libel laws, this represents a considerable victory for the newspaper. However, The Independent has had to wait for its money. Oryx’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, wrote to The Independent on March 2 apologizing for the delay in paying the settlement sum, enclosing a copy of a letter from Geoffrey White claiming Oryx had just exported 36,000 carats of diamonds from Congo to Antwerp to pay the debt. White promised to pay The Independent from his own account the following week.”
RAID, the acronym for Rights and Accountability In Development, the NGO that has been entrusted with investigating the UN Panel’s claims, will publish its final report within the next few weeks. Many pages are devoted to the various claims made by Oryx and RAID reluctantly concludes that “significant differences remain, at least in the public domain, between Oryx’s public defense of its conduct and the UN Panel’s allegations.” RAID is expected to say that it is up to the relevant NCP (National Contact Point) in the U.K. government’s Department of Trade and Industry to further investigate these issues.
It is unlikely that the British Government will ignore the RAID report.
If Oryx would have won the case against The Independent – or would have made a case by simply supplying the evidence to substantiate its claims -- it is conceivable that RAID might well have reached different conclusions. Geoffrey White is an astute businessman who recognizes the importance of reputational issues, especially in the diamond industry. The withdrawal of the claim raises many questions.
It is in a way amazing (and puzzling) that the company failed to convince RAID and failed to show the court certain basic things such as the history of the true ownership of Sengamines (the mining company in which Oryx now owns 80%), which according to the Panel was owned de facto by Zimbabwean military players. The UN Panel showed that the Zimbabweans received dividends - certainly an indicator of shareholding.
According to Africa Confidential, “Oryx’s legal defeat raises awkward questions about its stake in the Sengamines diamond company in Congo-Kinshasa, part of which it claims to have sold to the Libyan Arab African Investment Company. [Something that was first reported in Diamond Intelligence Briefs. Ed.] Oryx dropped its action after a London court ordered it to produce a share register for Sengamines showing a complete history of the ownership of the shares, and correspondence, including early drafts of audits, with its auditors (PriceWaterhouse Coopers) on the company’s accounts in 2001 and 2002.
Oryx was asked to produce documents proving its claim that the Zimbabwe Defence Force had given up its stake in Sengamines. Oryx declined to produce any of these documents but gave no reasons,” says Africa Confidential.
Why are Oryx and Sengamines of continued importance to the diamond industry? For as long as there are clouds over the mine and the company, diamond traders in Antwerp might hesitate to trade with the company. Banks may hesitate to finance the companies that purchase from Sengamines.
After all the publicity, the law suits, the UN Panel reports, and the forthcoming RAID report, there is a growing need for the diamond community to get the hard facts – not just through kind letters to editors. [We concede that in a normal situation, a letter would be sufficient. In the case of Oryx and Sengamines, the plethora of often contradictory claims needs to be substantiated.]
It surely should be in the very best interest of Sengamines and Oryx “to come clean” – and the company should have used the suitable setting of a court case to present its case unequivocally – if it has a case to present unequivocally.
Failing to do so raises the question why it started legal procedures against The Independent to begin with. We expect that the British Government, the DRC Government, the NGOs led by RAID and others will continue to look for answers. And we, of course, will continue to report on the findings – whatever they may be.
[We tried to contact Jeffrey White to get his comments on this article, but were told in Mbuji-Mayi that White had suffered an accident. Apparently, enraged Omani workers, who had been fired by White, took iron poles and beat him up severely. Reports talk