Beny Steinmetz Beny Steinmetz at centre of investigation over $2.5B Guinea mining deal Tel Aviv Internet
BEWARE OF Beny Steinmetz !!! Israeli tycoon Beny Steinmetz at centre of investigation over $2.5B Guinea mining deal !
An international investigation into a mining conglomerate controlled by secretive Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz and a deal involving a mountain of iron worth $10 billion in the impoverished African state of Guinea, has spread in recent days to Britain, France and Switzerland.
Swiss police last week raided the Geneva offices of a company linked to Steinmetz following a request by the U.S. Justice Department and Guinea's government regarding allegations of bribery involving the widow of Guinea's late dictator, Lansana Conte.
Also last week, French police raided the home of a director of Beny Steinmetz Group Resources, the mining arm of the tycoon's business empire, registered in the British-ruled Channel Islands, an offshore tax haven.
Scotland Yard's Serious Fraud Squad and the Financial Investigation Unit in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands that lie off France, began an investigation Wednesday into how Steinmetz acquired rights to extract half the ore in Simandou Mountain in remote southeastern Guinea.
Among the allegations was a claim that a BSGR official offered Conte a diamond-studded gold watch and that the company agreed to pay the president's fourth wife, Mamadie Toure, a commission of $2.5 million for helping swing the Simandou deal.
Steinmetz, who had made his fortune dealing in African diamonds, pledged to invest $165 million to develop the iron mine, one of Africa's richest untapped mineral deposits.
Federal agents arrested a Frenchman named Frederic Cilins, a Steinmetz associate, in Jacksonville, Fla., April 14 on charges of tampering with a witness, obstructing a criminal investigation and destroying, altering or falsifying records in a federal investigation.
Her phone was tapped and she wore a wire at three meetings in Florida with the Frenchman, who, his indictment states, subsequently offered her $5 million to "urgently, urgently" destroy documents linked to the Simandou deal.