Oil-for-food in the Congo....

Claudia Rosett writes about another oil-for-food scandal, this time in the Republic of Congo (the country next to what was Zaire).

This past May, one of these private creditors, Kensington International Ltd., filed a civil suit in federal court in New York, seeking damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (known as RICO) against the national oil company of Congo; its former president, Bruno Jean-Richard Itoua, now Congo's Minister of Energy and Hydraulics; and a French bank involved in financing Congo's state-owned oil business, BNP Paribas. The complaint alleges that "starting with the creation of a new national oil company for Congo in 1998, Congolese officials, along with certain international financial institutions and oil traders, have conspired through schemes of increasing complexity to loot the Congolese national economy."

The complaint further alleges that under Mr. Itoua's leadership, the Congo national oil company, Societe Nationales des Petroles du Congo, or SNPC, from 2001-04 used a dizzyingly complex series of sham transactions and front companies to plunder the national oil wealth. The alleged intermediaries include a corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands with "its only identifiable place of business in a private residence in Monaco." The complaint further alleges that the result has been "the impoverishment of the people of Congo, a total and continuing default on all pre-existing unsecured Congo debt, the destruction of Congo's access to credit through legitimate sources" and "an increased burden upon the world community to aid Congo through debt forgiveness and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program, the enrichment of each of the defendants, the debasement of the nation's institutions and the entrenchment of a corrupt and predatory regime."

These are allegations only. No guilt has been established. BNP, Mr. Itoua and SNPC have all filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the U.S. courts have no jurisdiction, that the plaintiffs have no cause of action, and that this case is "an abuse of the RICO statute." Asked for details, a spokesman for BNP declined to comment.