Bill Clinton Leads Sinister Business Alliance in El Salvador
- Details
- Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
- Published: Thursday, 19 November 2015 11:26
Republished from: CISPES
On Monday, November 9, El Salvador was host to an unusual meeting of some of the continent’s wealthiest and most influential players: former US President Bill Clinton, notorious Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim, and Canadian businessman Frank Giustra, who has made a career out of major investments worldwide in mining, from gold and diamonds to uranium, among other industries.
The visit was ostensibly to promote a local project of the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP), which both Giustra and Slim finance with $100 million donations. In El Salvador, the CGEP supports the so-called sustainable development work of a key local figure: Carlos Callejas, owner of the Super Selectos grocery store chain who is widely rumored to be pursuing the 2019 presidential nomination for the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. Clinton, Slim and Guistra’s visit to El Salvador was effectively an early campaign boost for Callejas, providing enormous publicity for the Callejas Foundation, a recipient of CGEP funding, and the Super Selectos chain, while bolstering Callejas’ image for a 2019 presidential bid.
On Thursday October 22, the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining-MNFM and representatives of various communities and social organizations gathered outside the offices of the World Bank in San Salvador to express their firm opposition to metallic mining projects and to send a message to the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID which is part of the World Bank and where el Salvador is being sued for $301 million for not granting a mining licence. The law suit was launched by Pacific Rim, now OceanaGold, in 2009. In October 2014, the final arguments were heard by the panel but to date the final decision is unknown.
After days of uninterrupted rain, on Thursday October 22nd the sun came back to shine on hundreds of community members and organizations as they gathered for a protest in front of the World Trade Center in the elite Colonia Escalòn of San Salvador, where the office of the World Bank are located.
An official US government document, sent by the then American Ambassador in El Salvador Charles Glazer, and referred to the Department of State in December 2007, constitutes new evidence for the defense of the Republic, which is in conflict with Pacific Rim mining company before the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID. The defense wants the tribunal of the World Bank to re-consider the interim verdict that it reached in June 2012.
In an office in Washington, three arbitrators are about to decide on the lawsuit filed by the multinational mining company OceanaGold against El Salvador.