When a Canadian lawyer and corporate governance activist dropped in on an international mining conference in Cape Town last week, he thought it was an opportunity to gather information on dodgy business practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Instead he got a swift ejection, a six-month ban from the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and close scrutiny from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
Bryant Greenbaum says he went to the Mining Indaba to gather information on Canadian and South African companies accused of illegal business practices in a United Nations report.
After paying his registration, he spotted three ”big fish”: the Canadian government, the Toronto Stock Exchange and First Quantum Minerals (FQM).
According to the UN report, FQM tried to secure rights to the Kolwezi Tailings concession by offering the DRC government a down-payment of $100-million, with cash payments and shares for Cabinet ministers.
The company has also been named by Time magazine, which says it tried to evict thousands of Zambian peasants from areas it wished to mine, before the courts stepped in.
The company denies both allegations, but Greenbaum wanted to press them and videotape their response. He says CEO Clive Newall denied the allegations and threatened to sue him if he distributed ”harmful material”.
Greenbaum then questioned Toronto Stock Exchange representatives about whether their governance rules applied to Africa, and tried to arrange a meeting with Canadian government officials.
When security guards came to whisk him away from the conference area, they asked him what his religion was. ”’It’s post-9/11, you know,’ the guard said. I said I was Jewish, which might have relieved their fears that I was an Arab terrorist,” Greenbaum said.
Greenbaum’s videotapes of conversations with Newall and the Canadian officials were confiscated, on the basis that filming in the convention centre was banned for security reasons.
He was initially told they would be erased. Instead, the NIA decided it needed to review them.
Explained convention centre security chief Peter Bigger: ”I think they were concerned because African ministers were present. Mr Greenbaum was expelled after the organisers said they received complaints that he was harassing American delegates. I told him I’d try to return the tapes to him on Wednesday, but I have to get them back from NIA.”
NIA spokesperson Lorna Daniels said the tapes had been reviewed to establish whether threats had been made, and would be returned to Greenbaum. He said his tapes were returned on Wednesday afternoon.