The world according to me

I came upon this guy when I went to our neighborhood beach bar, a little shag a few hundred meters down the road. He seemed to be part of the place even though I hadn't seen him before. I asked him for cigarettes and he sold me a packet. He had a strong German accent, curly hair that stopped short just above his shoulders. He hadn't shaved for a day or two. His skin was clean, but it looked like he had some of these diseases you get as a child. The ones that leave you with little craters from infected wounds and pimples. Only later, when he told me about it, did I remark the little black dots that were spread over his legs and arms. They had the size of a pinhead and looked like fainting tattoos. He was a nice guy, no matter the weird story he told me. So I decided to call him the ladybug man. I had always liked them. Whenever I found one, I used to count the dots on its back. This time no counting though; I just listened. I will stick to the name anyways, the whole thing was just too unreal for anything else.

The ladybug man’s real name was Wolfgang, a plain German name without any hint of adventure. But an adventure, he had been through. He had just come back from Burkina Faso, and he was more than happy about the fact that he could still speak of it. His words came like a summer rain and I can't recall every detail anymore. It was like he hadn't spoken German for a long time. It all came pouring out of him. Not in any particular order that is, but in a very fascinating crazy prose. I will try to give you an account of what it was in general, but keep in mind that I just relate his story without knowing if the least bit of it actually happened. All in all, it is quite a story and that’s reason enough to go through the exercise.

The ladybug man had worked in Burkina Faso as some shady sort of consultant for a Burkinabe granite pit that was in fact led by a bunch of alcohol loving Libyans. About his past, I know little. He had made some money in the 90s buying NVA barracks. They weren't worth anything. They just tore them down and invested in social housing projects. For all the Non-Germans: When the wall came down, property of the GDR government was transferred to an organization called Treuhandgesellschaft. Much of it was later sold for a symbolic price to investors from Western Germany. There was quite a lot of talk about corruption and the whole affair got a bit of a shady image. Well, he was there at the time, so it did seem fit to find him now navigating in murky waters here in Western Africa. Some kind of a logical succession.

What brought him to Ghana, I don't know. He is a friend of Garrison, the owner of the bar we met in. The guy, an Indian American who speaks fluent German, will get his own chapter sooner or later. His story is definitely worth being told. Anyway, the ladybug man had been hanging around in Ghana since the mid 90s and just went to Burkina to see a friend. The friend introduced him to a bank manager and our story got started.

The bank had invested millions into a granite pit. Three years had passed and still the pit was nothing more than a hole in the ground. The ladybug man was meant to assess the granite pit and deliver a report about its current status plus a business plan for the next years. Only after some months did he realize that he had become a pawn in the feud between the Libyan businessmen and the bank manager.

The Libyans didn't want him to finish his job. They had been milking the pit for three years declaring high costs for machines and all and cashing in on the difference to the real price paid. But the money wasted was provided by a branch of some West African Development Bank. The bank in turn had based the loan on guarantees from the Libyan government, in short Gaddafi. So, the Libyans running the pit were cheating on their own government. The bank manager had come to realize that they never wanted the pit to work properly, because then it would be harder to take out money. The money was gone, he knew that right from the start, but he needed somebody from outside to prove that his hands were clean. That's where the ladybug man came in the picture.

When I met him, he was totally fed up of Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital. "There is nothing there but heat and dust", he told me. The only thing left to cheer you up was alcohol and women. And that's what the Libyan fraudsters were into. Once they had gotten the taste of it, there was no way they would go back to Tripoli with its no alcohol policy and strict laws. So they tried to get the ladybug man on their side. First he was treated to lunch and alcohol; maybe women too, he didn’t say. But he kept on checking the books and asking questions, so they started to put some pressure on him. "At a certain point, I just went out of the house with two boys. When the Italian was killed, I didn't go back at all. I slept at friends' places." In the end, even this seemed too dangerous and he left the country. He had handed in his report, but never received any money. "I didn't even ask for it", he said. "I just wanted to get out."

I learned after some questioning that the Italian engineer, in its livelier days, had worked for a company that provided machines to cut the granite. He was there to teach the workers how to use them and supervise their installation; but there where no workers to be taught. Sometimes, there weren’t even machines to start with. His presence must have been some kind of a nuisance to the Libyans. They started to blackmail him at his company base in Italy. He was drinking, they said, spending his times with whores and the like. At a point, his wife came over to see what was happening. The charges, it turned out, where unsubstantial. But the engineer was pissed. He would go back home and blow the whistle, he said.

A few days later he was found dead in his Jeep, just a few blocks from his hotel. The police labeled it as a case of armed robbery. But the ladybug man could never figure out why robbers would go through the somehow irritating routine of breaking their victim’s legs before killing it, while leaving money, passport and mobile phone in the car.

But that’s not the end of the story. You might wonder why the Libyan government would want to invest in a Burkinabe granite pit, while there is no granite market to speak of, at least not in Western Africa. Of course, the ladybug man had an explanation, and a fascinating one as you might image at this point of the story.

Gaddafi had renounced terrorism and all after 9/11 and, weary of an ever growing front, Americans and Europeans alike had made their peace with him. Most of the trade limitations had been lifted. Still, there where sanctions on advanced weapon systems that hampered Libya’s wish to upgrade its army. The problem for Gaddafi, and that is an interesting point, was not getting the weapons. Once you have the cash, they are out there in abundance, the ladybug man said. All you need is hard currencies like Dollars or Euros. Thanks to high oil prices, Libya was receiving a steady stream of them. But Western intelligence agencies were still suspicious of the revolutionary leader of old and kept on monitoring financial streams into the country. So oil money was off limits for secret weapon deals. Money laundering was the answer.

Most parts of the world, the ladybug man said, where not suitable for such kind of business. In fact, it seems that nowadays the world is a fairly well run place, at least when it comes to financial transactions and investments. One of the few places left for big style money laundering could be found in parts of West Africa, he said. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries around and bribing high ranking officials a seemingly minor problem. That is why a 100% state owned Burkinabe company could be run entirely by Libyans.

That answers the question why this story took place in Burkina Faso. But why a granite pit? Well, first of all there is not much in Burkina Faso you could invest in. So even a granite pit could seem reasonable. And secondly, I was told that if you are interested in serious money laundering, return on investment is of minor importance as long as there is at least some income. Fortunately, the granite pit turned out to be one big hole in the ground that was good for nothing besides swallowing money. Unfortunately, an Italian engineer lost his life while he was trying to make sense of the hole affair.

That’s it. I left out some details, but the big picture is there. You definitely won’t see me going to Burkina Faso to find out if there is anything to it or not. But the ladybug man is real. He is one among the many drawn to this land. They are refugees, business men, aid workers, miners, missionaries, diplomats, travelers – you name it. And I just can’t stop listening to their stories.

# posted by Thilo @ 2:18 PM