General matters

There are direct elections in the Congo, of course, for the president. The parliamentary elections, which took place at the same time, will be counted shortly and the results will come out in January. We should probably have no more confidence in those. That is a great shame. I urge the UK Government to take a very strong position. As time goes by it is hard to deal with such a Government. We give considerable international development aid. We cannot reduce that; it goes directly through NGOs, but I hope the Government will take a strong position in the coming weeks and months. I shall now segue into IPSA. The President of the Congo has a cunning ruse. It is not that cunning, actually. He simply takes national assets, sells them to a mate for a pittance and then his mate sells them on for a few hundred million dollars profit. He has done it many times now. I have stuck it on my website for all who may be interested to see it. He has done it to the tune of $5 billion or $6 billion in the past two years. One such deal involved a company listed in the UK, a company called Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, better known as ENRC. The deal is well known and has been extensively written about. I urge all Members to google it. It is an absolute shocker of a deal. It is quite clear that it was a very ropey and dodgy deal. One of the primary defenders of the deal is a man called Ken Olisa, who was a member of the board of ENRC. He said at the time, ““I wouldn't have joined the board if I thought there was anything ropey, if anything crooked was going on.”” That was just before he was famously sacked by the ENRC oligarchs who run it. He then changed his tune and is famously quoted as saying that the company is more soviet than City. This is a company that essentially enables the President of the Congo to rip off the people of the Congo. IPSA has five board members—very experienced individuals who draw on their own experience. There is an accountant/academic, a former judge, a former quangocrat, and even a former Member of Parliament, so a pretty good bunch, except that the business man on IPSA is none other than Ken Olisa. I find that absolutely staggering. When I spoke about the subject last time, I was not even aware of it. Someone tweeted, ““Perhaps Joyce ought to look at Ken Olisa's other job before he slags off Ken Olisa again.”” It is absolutely astonishing that that man should be on the board of IPSA, carrying out a function that we all agree is very important. I hope he may have the chance to reflect on whether his position on the board is appropriate.