Vulture funds await Jersey decision on poor countries’ debts | Global development | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/nov/15/vulture-funds-jersey-decision-debts?intcmp=122
The DRC should be one of Africa’s richest countries. It has a mineral wealth estimated to be around $24 trillion (£15tn). There are huge deposits of cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and 80% of the world’s supplies of coltan ore – a valuable mineral used in computers and mobile phones.
Yet 100 women a week are still dying in childbirth and 16,000 children under the age of five die every year. One in three children in the DRC will never get anything more than primary education.
One of the reasons the country has been unable to recover is that it is being pursued by international debt speculators, known as vulture funds, through offshore tax havens such as Jersey, for debts that were run up during 30 years of war and civil war.
