In yet another example of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson losing control over US foreign policy to a rival foreign policy apparatus inside the Trump administration led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the final decision to add the Republic of Chad to the US visa ban list was made by Kushner and the Zionist extremist US ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
While the deputy chief of Exxon, Tillerson was involved in a oil royalty payment issue with Chad that saw the oil firm ordered to pay billions of dollars by a Chadian court, however, that was not the key issue at play in adding Chad, a US military ally, to the visa ban list. The decision was pressed by the Israeli government over Chad’s reported secret relationship with Iran and Syria. Jared Kushner is a favorite Trump administration interlocutor for both Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Netanyahu and Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate.
In 2016, Israel attempted to re-establish diplomatic relations with Chad, which has a population that is 55 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian. Chad-Israeli relations were broken in 1972 by Chadian President Francois Tombalbaye. The State of Palestine opened an embassy in Ndjamena, Chad in 1988.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold paid a rare visit to Chad in August 2016 to patch up relations between the two countries. The meeting between Gold and Chadian President Idriss Deby, a one-time ally of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, in Ndjamena, the Chadian capital, was to set the stage for a side meeting at the Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York the following month between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Chad’s Deby. Netanyahu did meet with some 15 African leaders in New York, but Deby was not one of them. Deby was seen as key to the Israelis, since he served during 2016 as the chair of the African Union.
Relations were not re-established with Chad to the dismay of Netanyahu’s government, which had embarked on a major diplomatic mission to curry favor in Africa.
Chad was clearly blindsided by the Trump administration’s decision to ban tourist and business travel to the United States. President Deby, clearly trying to forge closer ties with US allies in Africa, decided to attend the fourth Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa in November 2017, a conference hosted by Senegal’s President Macky Sall, The Senegalese president met Trump at the July 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg and, once again, at the UN General Assembly Plenary Meeting last month. Deby may assume that Sall maintains good offices with Trump and that attending the “Club of Dakar” may boost currently frayed Chadian-American relations, however, that is a big assumption, given Trump’s racist oft-demonstrated attitudes toward people of color in the United States and abroad.
In July 2016, Netanyahu attended a summit with a select group of African leaders in Uganda, a meeting held under the auspices of the Ugandan dictator, Yoweri Museveni. Present, in addition to Museveni, were the leaders of Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia.
A planned Israeli-African summit planned for the Togolese capital of Lomé for the end of this month was canceled after protests broke out around Togo during the summer against Togo’s dictator, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe. Delegations from 54 African countries, including Chad, were invited to meet with the Israelis in Togo, however, Israel claimed that the summit was canceled because the Palestinians, acting through Morocco and South Africa, pressured Togo to cancel. Gnassingbe visited Israel last month to request that Israel “postpone” the summit.
Kushner, Friedman, and other Israeli agents-of-influence within the Trump administration wanted to demonstrate to Africa that there are consequences for refusing to deal with Israel. Chad was the country selected as the African country, currently lacking relations with Israel, for which an example would be made.
Trump held a meeting with African heads of state while attending this year’s plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly. One of the leaders Trump went out of his way to chat with was Guinea’s president, Alpha Condé. After telling the Guinean president and the other African leaders, “I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich.,” Trump paid special attention to Condé. Among the brigands who are getting “rich” in Africa are business associates of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his family.
Kushner’s business partners include the billionaire Steinmetz family of Israel. Beny Steinmetz, Israel’s second-richest person, was arrested in August of this year by Israeli police in a major investigation of global money laundering. Steinmetz’s BSGR, headquartered on the isle of Guernsey, has been the subject of the Justice Department’s criminal probe of bribing officials in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa for lucrative mining concessions, particularly the Simandou iron mine concession. The Justice Department’s investigation is focused on Steinmetz’s violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Beny Steinmetz’s nephew, Raz Steinmetz, is a real estate partner of the Kushner Companies in the Trump Bay Street tower in Jersey City, New Jersey. The Steinmetz and Kushner families also co-own 15 buildings in Manhattan. In early 2017, Kushner Companies and Steinmetz jointly purchased, under the corporate name “Gaia,” a Brooklyn pasta factory for $56 million.
Condé, whose government initiated a criminal investigation of Steinmetz companies, much to the chagrin of Jared Kushner and his family, may have received a signature Mafia-like “strong-arming” by Trump during their brief encounter in New York.
Another one of Kushner’s business partners is the firm Stonehage Fleming, a wealth management firm that oversees a $40 billion fund for 250 of the world’s wealthiest people, many of whom are Trump’s “friends” who have staked various claims for Africa’s natural resources. The Fleming side of the firm was founded by relatives of James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming, himself a one-time British MI-6 intelligence agent. Before its merger with Fleming Family & Partners in 2014, Stonehage, a South African firm, maintained offices in South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Luxembourg, British Virgin Islands, and the US
Trump and the Kushners see Africa as one huge “get rich quick scheme.” Trump’s rhetoric about his friends getting rich in Africa came as music to the ears of the African grifters—presidents like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Côte d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara—who were present at the New York UN luncheon and who have also made certain that their offshore bank accounts are flush with bribe money paid by Trump’s rich pals.
One of First Daughter Ivanka Trump’s close friends and business associates in her diamond retail businesses—Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry and Madison Avenue Diamonds LLC—is Moshe Lax, a rather problematic character prominent in the Orthodox Jewish diamond trade in Manhattan. Lax has been involved in lawsuit after lawsuit in New York, mostly for his failure to pay his bills or defrauding business partners. Manhattan’s infamous 47th Street “Diamond District” has been a center for numerous illegal operations involving the smuggling of “blood diamonds” from Africa’s killing fields in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, and Guinea-Bissau, among other nations.
When it comes to Trump’s policy on Africa, the quench for diamonds, gold, rare earth minerals, and oil has seen the policy co-opted not only by Jared Kushner and Trump’s “rich friends,” but also the most unsavory of the deplorables.
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
