On August 16, Samuel Mébiame was arrested by U.S. federal prosecutors and charged with bribing African officials to obtain mineral rights to some of the continent’s most lucrative assets. Son of the late Léon Mébiame, a former prime minister of the Central African country of Gabon, Mébiame, 43, had made something of a career for himself as a fixer, operating in West and Central Africa, using his political connections to help secure mining rights.
根据美国政府的情况下,2之间007 and 2015 Mébiame worked as a consultant for a joint venture between a U.S.-based hedge fund firm and a Turks and Caicos–incorporated entity. In the complaint, filed in a federal district court in Brooklyn, the government alleges that “Mebiame’s job was to source and secure mining opportunities in Africa for the Joint Venture and one of its portfolio companies.” To secure these valuable assets, Mébiame was “routinely paying bribes to foreign government officials.” Using evidence provided by Mébiame’s hedge fund client — which is cooperating with the government — to support its case, along with records obtained through search warrants, witness statements, and Mébiame’s voluntary confession, obtained during two meetings with federal law enforcement in June 2015, the government has accused Mébiame of bribing government officials in Niger, Guinea, and Chad.
Mébiame certainly appeared to know that he was involved in something illegal. In a September 2009 e-mail to his clients, quoted by the U.S. government in its affidavit in support of his arrest, the Gabon native told the owner of the Turks and Caicos entity and an employee of the joint venture as much. “You sistematicaly [sic] used corruption in Africa to get the assets you have,” Mébiame wrote. He threatened to go to the press to expose the alleged misconduct if he did not get an ownership stake in a specific mining company. Mébiame’s attorney declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing court proceedings.
Mébiame只是一个复杂的网络中的一名球员，经营近十年，试图通过影响兜售，贿赂，以及在某些情况下，在非洲的一些最有利可图的资源中获得采矿权资源。腐败的非洲领导人所谓的财政支持。A key participant in this network for about five years, starting in 2007, was Och-Ziff Capital Management Group — the cooperating hedge fund in Mébiame’s case —the $37 billion, publicly traded firm founded by former Goldman, Sachs & Co. partner Daniel Och with backing from the Ziff Brothers Investments family office.
For years Och-Ziff has been one of the blue-chip firms in the $3 trillion hedge fund industry and has boasted such high-profile, risk-averse public pension clients as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the New Jersey Division of Investment, and the Florida State Board of Administration. Now shareholders, investors, and others are asking how such a seemingly upright institution as Och-Ziff became involved in so many backroom African deals. Some of these deals led to a five-year investigation of Och-Ziff’s investments in Africa and forced the firm to shell out $412 million — the fourth-largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) settlement in history — to settle bribery charges with the U.S. government, in a deal announced September 29.
The trouble does not end there, however. In the past few months, billions of dollars have flowed out of Och-Ziff’s funds. Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s have cut Och-Ziff’s credit rating. Its shares, which debuted in November 2007 at $32 apiece, were hovering around $3.20 in late October.
Mébiame起诉区近六周，Och-Ziff同意支付21300万美元的司法部刑事刑罚和1990万美元的证券和交换委员会决议，以解决贿赂费用。此外，SEC声称，Och-Ziff Ceo Dan Och和CFO Joel Frank违反了1934年“证券交易所证券交流法”的内部控制规定。OCH同意，不承认或否认内疚，个人支付民间制裁220万美元。弗兰克还同意仲裁股订单而不承认或否认调查结果。该公司的子公司OZ非洲管理层GP认识到一项违反FCPA的计数。
“在追求利润，OCH-ZIFF及其代理人在非洲的高级官员中支付了数百万，”案件中的一个检察官在Doj声明中宣布结算。
Och-Ziff is now hoping to put what its CEO has called a deeply disappointing episode behind it, yet recent events have been a blow to the 55-year-old Och’s reputation as a business builder and a leader. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he got his start on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs’ famed risk arbitrage desk and went on to become the bank’s head of equity and proprietary equity trading. It was Och’s luck — or prescience — to start Och-Ziff in 1994, at a time when hedge funds were beginning to transform from the private investments of the very wealthy to something that forward-thinking institutions, particularly foundations and endowments, wanted to be in. By the time of Och-Ziff’s 2007 IPO, investors included the likes of Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust, and CalPERS. Dan Och is now worth an estimated $2.6 billion. He and his firm declined to comment for this story.
现在一些och - ziff的投资者,至少一个portion of Och’s net worth, may be in jeopardy. Firmwide assets under management plunged from $48 billion on June 30, 2015, to $36.9 billion in late-October 2016, owing to a combination of lackluster performance, an industrywide backlash over hedge fund fees, and the firm’s legal woes. The day before the FCPA settlement was announced, the New Jersey State Investment Council voted to redeem $190 million from Och-Ziff as part of the public pension fund’s retrenchment from hedge funds. After the settlement Goldman Sachs pulled about $350 million invested in Och-Ziff through its employee retirement fund. (Both funds still retain investments with Och-Ziff, however.) The settlement may also hamper the hedge fund firm’s ability to manage corporate pension money, which is subject to oversight from the Department of Labor under ERISA, if it does not receive the necessary waivers.
Some investors who have spoken with Och say they feel reassured by the steps the firm has taken. Following the settlement Och-Ziff, which in 2014 had hired a former SEC general counsel as its chief legal officer, stressed that it had strengthened its compliance procedures; it has installed a monitor for three years to ensure that no future violations take place, per its agreement with the government. In a public statement about the settlement issued the day the agreement was announced, the firm laid much of the blame for its legal woes at the feet of two former employees: Michael Cohen and Vanja Baros. Och-Ziff said the two men “deliberately concealed their misconduct from other employees.” Neither Cohen nor Baros has been charged with a crime for any of their dealings in Africa. “We are confident that, when the facts are known, it will be clear that Michael Cohen has done nothing wrong,” Cohen’s attorney, Ronald White, said in a statement. Baros could not be reached for comment.
事实证明，Michael Cohen不是Och-Ziff的排名和文件员工。虽然私募股权分析师万家巴罗斯虽然是该公司的相对较小的球员，但科恩是Och-Ziff的欧洲办事处的合作伙伴和负责人。在1997年加入了来自富兰克林共同顾问的IPO的IPO之前，帮助建立了公司的五个主要资助合作伙伴之一，曾在U.K. Court Testimone作为Och的“Protégé”。1999年，在27岁时，科恩被派往伦敦，以帮助建立和运行U.K.和欧洲行动。当Och-Ziff公开时，科恩是第三次高度补偿的高管。
甚至在IPO之前，OCH也一直在改变公司，建立私募股权和交易台阶，转向更长的投资。该策略与液体合并套利型机会的策略非常不同，定义了Och-Ziff初期的型机会，并且在首次公开募股后，该公司更加热衷于扩大它的范围。该战略的一个关键部分是在全球范围内采取伙伴关系。一个这样的伙伴关系：非洲管理有限公司或AML。
AML, and the many entities that came to touch it, form an extraordinary web into which Och-Ziff invested hundreds of millions of dollars in client money. It has ties to the prisons of apartheid-era South Africa, the diamond mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and even the privatization of the former Soviet Union. The web extended over the shifting political landscape of a continent in transition, through public and private markets, and at offices in Johannesburg, London, Miami, New York, Paris, and Tel Aviv. The dealings of Och-Ziff’s African investment partners spanned numerous countries, including Chad, the DRC, Libya, Niger, the Republic of Guinea, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The network, worthy of a John le Carré novel, is only now starting to unravel.
但这一切都始于AML。Och-Ziff告诉其投资者，由Mvelaphanda Holdings和Palladino Holdings组成的AML将把资本纳入非洲的私人和公共市场，并偏向自然资源和相关业务。
土耳其人和基于凯科斯的Palladino Holdings由南非商人Olaf Walter Hennig拥有。亦称Mvela Holdings，Mvelaphanda Holdings是由商人和政治家Mosima Gabriel（东京）Sexwale拥有的南非集团，以及该国最大，最突出的黑人经济赋权团体之一。
“我们很高兴能够与东京性交，Mvela Holdings and Palladino合作，”Och于2008年1月在2008年1月宣布合资企业。Mvela Holdings Ceo Mark Willcox是担任AML的首席执行官。Willcox在新公司子公司，非洲管理层（英国）有限公司，与Och-Ziff员工Cohen和Baros和另外两名非Och-Ziff董事一起提供。
1953年，出生于约翰内斯堡，1953年，SoWeto南非镇，在动荡和种族隔离困难中长大。他加入了非洲全国代表大会的武装流动。最终被监禁在纳尔逊曼德拉，在服务11年后，在1990年被释放。In the 1994 elections, which officially ended the country’s apartheid regime and brought the ANC to power, he was elected premier of the new Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (now Gauteng) province before entering the private sector in 1998. He then formed Mvelaphanda Holdings.
“There were a group of investors and a group of bankers that have been known to get almost everything of value in Africa,” says Mahmoud Thiam, who served as mining minister for the government of Guinea in 2009 and 2010. Thiam says the group included Sexwale, Willcox, and Hennig. “Everyone thought that Tokyo Sexwale, with his ANC ties and South African connections, was getting special treatment,” he notes. Sexwale, Willcox, and Hennig have not been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with their business dealings.
Even before the formation of AML, Och-Ziff lent more than $86 million to Hennig’s company, which Hennig used to secure mining rights in Chad and Niger — including, according to the SEC, “using a portion of the funds to pay bribes to facilitate the acquisitions.” In its case against Mébiame, the U.S. Department of Justice documents how in Niger the fixer allegedly used a series of bribes to officials on behalf of Hennig and Och-Ziff to obtain and retain the rights to certain uranium mining interests.
Mébiame was not the only character Och-Ziff dealt with in Africa. In 2008 the firm began working with Dan Gertler, an Israeli tycoon who had amassed his fortune through the DRC’s diamond mining industry. Gertler had developed a close relationship with the DRC’s now-president, Joseph Kabila. In an e-mail, quoted by the SEC in its September 29 order, from an Och-Ziff attorney requesting a background report on Gertler from a due-diligence firm, the attorney noted that Gertler “will be very easy to find . . . perhaps the impetus behind the movie ‘Blood Diamonds’” — a reference to the 2006 Leonardo DiCaprio film about profiteering in war-torn Africa. Through Gertler, Och-Ziff gained access to deals in the DRC and Zimbabwe. A spokesman for Gertler’s firm did not respond to requests for comment. In press reports Gertler has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings in Africa, and he has never been charged with a crime in relation to them.
A series of loans to Gertler-owned or Gertler-controlled companies doing business in the DRC resulted in the one criminal penalty for Och-Ziff’s subsidiary OZ Africa Management GP. Yet as the government’s ongoing criminal case against Samuel Mébiame shows, the net cast is even wider than the DoJ’s case against Och-Ziff.
Alpha Condé was elected president of Guinea on November 15, 2010. His win came as a surprise to some observers: Condé had received 18.2 percent of the vote in the first-round runoff, while his most popular opponent received 43.7 percent. In the final round, however, Condé won with 52.5 percent of the votes cast.
The Simandou mountains in southern Guinea are home to some of the world’s most valuable deposits of iron ore. Condé pledged to revise the country’s mining codes so that more of the wealth would go to impoverished Guinea — and less to corporations. In the process of this redrafting, one of the groups that came under pressure to pay more for its existing Guinean rights was an entity called BSG Resources, owned by Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz.
The government of Guinea ended up seizing BSG’s mines. BSG Resources is now seeking the return of those assets through an arbitration process at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Witness statements submitted as part of the arbitration testimony allege that Condé rigged the election with the help of Hennig, Mébiame, Sexwale, and others. In an eyewitness statement onetime BSG employee Asher Avidan recalls a March 2012 meeting at Hennig’s offices in London. There Hennig allegedly told Avidan that “President Condé had sought the help of the South African government to fund his election campaign, and asked that they loan $50 million in exchange for options and/or stakes in operational mines and exploration projects in the country.” Condé has not been charged with election rigging or any other wrongdoing in connection with the matter.
None of the evidence reviewed byII建议Och-Ziff参与了2010年的几内亚选举。但是，据称，AML合作伙伴Hennig和FixerMébiame据称根据世界银行仲裁机构和对Mébiame的投诉的证词，根据证词，涉及挖掘矿业代码的重新处理。
Subsequent to the election and the change in the mining code, Hennig, according to various court documents and reports, needed to raise money for a deal with the government of Guinea, whereby he would lend $25 million to a government entity, allegedly as a means of securing a share of a state-owned mining company that owned rights to the Simandou iron mines. The $25 million came from a stock transaction whereby African Global Capital II — one of the two funds managed by AML, the joint venture with Hennig and Och-Ziff — bought $77 million of shares in a publicly traded oil and gas company, Ophir Energy, from a Hennig-owned entity. Hennig had previously acquired those same shares for a much lower price from Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda Holdings. Hennig’s $25 million loan was collateralized by a subsidiary of the state-owned mining company; the alleged plan was for Guinea to default on the loan, leaving Hennig and his backers with the mines. The government, and Hennig’s company, have denied this, according to press reports.
至少，奥恩·赛德的巴斯意识到Hennig需要在几内亚交易中获得资金。来自第二届9月29日的证据表明，从威尔科克斯说，来自阿姆尔首席执行官Willcox的电子邮件，威尔科克斯说，“我们如何获得AGC [非洲全球资本]将50米进入几内亚？”据称巴罗斯然后开始研究奥蒙会能源贸易。Mébiame告诉AML合资合作伙伴，他独家获得几内亚采矿机会。SEC带来了OCH-ZIFF，并对OPHIR-Hennig贸易进行了自我处理。委员会还表示，巴罗斯和科恩隐瞒了交易的真实性质。
几内亚的情况与津巴布韦在ARM的长度上，与och-ziff如何参与其中。A U.K. charity, Rights and Accountability in Development, is among the groups that have documented how in 2008 a U.K.-registered company that traded on the London Stock Exchange — Central African Mining and Exploration Co. — loaned $100 million to a new CAMEC Zimbabwean subsidiary. The subsidiary used the loan to pay off certain obligations it had to the Zimbabwean government of President Robert Mugabe.
At the time, Mugabe, who has ruled in Zimbabwe since 1980, looked likely to lose his bid for reelection. It has been widely alleged that the $100 million loan funded a state-sponsored campaign of violence in which as many as 200 people were killed, 5,000 more were beaten and tortured, and 36,000 were displaced. Mugabe subsequently won reelection.
Och-Ziff没有被判犯有与津巴布韦有关的任何刑事不法行为罪。然而，秒确实发现了非洲全球资本I，其他AML管理实体的证据表明，在以色列大亨的敦促的敦促Camex中投资Camec。该委员会还将2008年6月的订单列入Willcox的案件，即Cohen转发给巴罗斯，表示，“将4次武器转变为Zim [Babwe]，并从中国租用船只。”（中国是武器到津巴布韦的主要供应商。）根据SEC的秩序，巴斯和科尔森在Och-Ziff的情况下，他们都没有告知任何其他人。他们也没有停止与长者的生意。
CAMEC was subsequently acquired by Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. A now privately held metals and mining company, ENRC was formed in the 1990s as part of the privatization process of Kazakhstan. In addition to owning CAMEC, ENRC, which listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 and de-listed in 2013, acquired some of Gertler’s DRC mining interests.
来自几内亚的BSG案例的成绩单表明，RENC被讨论为Hennig和他的支持者所承诺的Simandou资产的可能收货人。最终，Hennig从未有过他的Simandou矿山。在U.K.Press中的消极文章后，政府所有的实体偿还了2500万美元的贷款。
In March 2014, Och-Ziff announced through a regulatory filing with the SEC that “beginning in 2011, and from time to time thereafter, we have revived subpoenas from the SEC and request from the U.S. Department of Justice in connection with an investigation involving the FCPA and related laws.”
Not long after the government’s investigation began, in July 2012, Cohen, Baros, and Willcox resigned from the board of Africa Management (UK) Ltd. That firm’s principal client also changed, from AML to Hennig’s Palladino Holdings.
As Africa Management (UK) Ltd. was being rolled up under Hennig, change was also under way within Och-Ziff. In 2013 both Cohen and Baros left the firm. Cohen resigned from the board of Och-Ziff Management Europe in March 2013.
那么Dan Och知道什么，他什么时候知道它？证据和其他人的证据表明，Och-Ziff的非洲代理商以及科恩和巴罗斯经常是自主行动的。然而，尽管已经“意识到与DRC合作伙伴在投诉中的交易中的腐败风险”，但敦促该公司引用了敦促该公司的och，以敦促公司与Gertler推出潜在的交易。提出他的法律和合规团队的建议。“根据来源的说法，OCH被告知DRC交易是高风险但不是非法的。秒发现OCH没有意识到贿赂。
Och-Ziff has continued to lose assets, its troubles exacerbated by ongoing underperformance of its funds. To date, apart from Mébiame, no key individuals in Och-Ziff’s African orbits have been charged with a crime. Mark Willcox continues as CEO of Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda Holdings. In November 2014he married his fiancée at a luxurious South African estate那serenaded by John Legend.
In February, Sexwale, who served from 2009 to 2013 in South African President Jacob Zuma’s government as minister of Human Settlements, withdrew his bid to become president of the global soccer oversight board, FIFA. Sexwale, Hennig, and Willcox could not be reached for comment.
As recently as September, Gertler’s firm, Oil of DR Congo, was reported in the press to be in negotiations with the Tanzanian government over an oil pipeline. According to reports, the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office is still looking into a deal Gertler struck to sell DRC mining assets to ENRC.
撒母耳Mebiame is being held without bail. In his angry September 2009 e-mail to Willcox and Hennig, he wrote, “If I am not given the money that i have work for several years turning a [mining company] with 0 assets to a Multi million dollar company, including giving your companies top African network that you are today using for free. . . . i can assure you that you will also loose [sic] a lot, because I will let the world know what kind of international crooks you are.” Mébiame is believed to be cooperating with authorities. •