فساد لبناني طازج في الهيئة العامة للطيران المدني - الطاهر ساتي انت تتبارك

Quote: Lebanese immigrants began arriving in West Africa as refugees fleeing the hardship caused by the silk-worm crisis which struck Lebanon in the mid-nineteenth century. Among the earliest recipients of those immigrants were Senegal and Sierra Leone, then under European colonial rule. According to Lansana Gberie, a researcher who has written about the Lebanese connection in Sierra Leone's diamond trade, since the 1950s, "diamonds have been the linchpin of Lebanese business and a range of subterranean political activities". In her paper, "War and Peace in Sierra Leone: Diamonds, Corruption and the Lebanese Connection", published by the Diamonds and Human Security Project in 2002, Gberie describes the beginnings of the Lebanese trade in diamonds: "Diamonds were discovered in Kono District, in eastern Sierra Leone in 1930, and that same year, as word of the discovery spread, the first Lebanese trader arrived in Kono and set up shop, ahead of colonial officials who did not want to establish a district office there until two years later. They were also ahead of the British-owned Sierra Leone Selection Trust, which was granted exclusive diamond mining and prospecting rights for the entire country in 1935. From that time until 1956, when an alluvial diamond mining scheme was enacted, it was illegal for anyone not working for the Trust to deal in any way with diamonds. However, illicit mining activities were rampant, with many Lebanese subsequently settling in Kono and funding Africans to mine and sell their finds to them." In the 1950s, the illicit diamond mining and smuggling increased dramatically, and it was estimated that 20 per cent of all diamonds reaching the world's diamond markets were smuggled from Sierra Leone, largely through Liberia and mainly by Lebanese and Mandingo traders. In later years, civil war often revolved around the control of this illicit trade. In 2002, a UN Expert Panel reported that the then "interim" leader of the RUF, Issa Sesay, had flown to Abidjan late in 2001 with 8,000 carats of diamonds that he had sold to two traders of undisclosed identity, who were apparently using a Lebanese businessman to run errands for them between Abidjan and the Liberian capital, Monrovia. Some reports suggest that the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone may have also become involved in the RUF illicit diamond trading.