Andy Rowell, 24 April 2007 

For three decades, John Perkins lived and worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. No different from any international businessman, you could argue, but then Perkins decided to tell his dirty business secrets in a best-selling book called, “Confessions of an Economic Hit-man”. Perkins told the inside story of a “hit-man” working for the interests of US capitalism.

“Economic hitmen (EHM) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars” wrote Perkins. “They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder”.

Perkins and his literary agent concluded that “the major publishing houses were too intimidated by, or perhaps too beholden to, the corporate elite” to publish his damning expose. To describe this elite Perkins coined the term the “Corporatocracy” that refers “to the powerful group of people who run the world’s biggest corporations, the most powerful governments.”

Eventually an independent publisher, Berrett-Koehler, published the book. It was a story that people wanted to hear and read about. “Confessions” spent many months on every best seller list. It was published into 20 languages.  The book’s success still had nothing to do with the media. The major American media outlets all refused to discuss “Confessions”. The New York Times refused to talk about the book that was topping its own best-seller list.

Whilst the media blanked the book, the general public wanted to read about Perkins’ theory that there is “overwhelming evidence that the corporatocracy has created the world’s first truly global empire, inflicted increased misery and poverty on millions of people around the planet”. It has also turned the US, a country that was lauded at the end of World War 11 as democracy’s saviour into one that is feared, resented and hated”.

The response to Perkins’s book from many journalists was they wanted more evidence to back up his story. Inspired by the success of the first book, and determined to provide that evidence, Perkins’s publishers, Berrett-Koehler have just published a sequel, called “A Game As Old As Empire – the Secret World Of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption”.

Whereas Perkins’s story was essentially at the height of the “cold war” between Russia and America, the new book brings the story right up to date. “Today,” writes Perkins, “the EHM game is more complex, its corruption more pervasive, and its operation more fundamental to the world economy and politics. There are many more types of EHM and the roles they play are far more diverse. The veneer of respectability remains a key factor, subterfuges range from money laundering and tax evasion carried out in well-appointed office suites to activities that amount to economic war crimes and result in the deaths of millions of people.”

The new book covers “the dark side of globalization”, exposing systems that depends on deception, extortion, and often violence” writes Perkins. Examples in the book include “an officer of an offshore bank hiding hundreds of millions in stolen money, IMF advisors slashing Ghana’s education and health programmes, a Chinese bureaucrat seeking oil concessions in Africa, a mercenary defending a European oil company in Nigeria, a consultant rewriting Iraqi oil law, and executives financing warlords to secure supplies of coltan ore in Congo”.

 So who is the consultant who has been assisting in the re-writing of Iraq’s controversial oil law? It is Dan Witt, who runs the International Tax and Investment Centre that has been instrumental in formulating Iraq’s highly controversial Oil Law, a draft of which was approved in February.

The Oil Law is based on what are known as Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs), which ITIC has been pushing internationally. PSAs give much of the control, and profit, of oil exploitation to the multinational oil companies, rather than host governments.

Although ITIC says it is an independent consultancy, for over ten years, three of the four corporate member’s of ITIC’s Executive Committee have been representatives from Chevron, BP and British Gas. ITIC’s Iraq project –looking into how to exploit its oil reserves - has been sponsored by BP, Chevron Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Shell Total and Eni.

The Chapter on Witt is called “Hijacking Iraq’s oil reserves: EHMs at work.” It is written by Greg Muttitt from the research organization Platform, based in London. Muttitt is a leading vocal opponent of PSA’s, which formed the basis of ITIC’s influential report on the subject that was published in 2004.

Muttitt argues that perhaps the most misleading element of ITICs 2004 report was that its economic models ran up to only 2010. This time frame “masked the fact that oil company investments would be paid back in oil revenues once the oil started flowing”. It masked the fact that the oil revenues would be mainly going to the multinational oil companies and not the Iraqi people.

When Muttitt raised this fundamental fact with Witt in a radio interview, he “ducked the question”. When pressed by the interviewer, Witt left the interview. “I was amazed” recalls Muttitt. “Here was a man who spends half his time in the company of finance ministers and represents some of the most powerful corporations in the world. And he’d walked out because I asked him a simple question”.

No wonder Witt had walked out, though. Muttitt calculated that the PSA’s that Witt recommended using would lose Iraq some $74-$194 billion, compared to if the oil was kept in the public sector. It is also no wonder that the Iraqi oil unions are mobilizing against the draft Oil Law. Last month, former Iraqi oil industry officials, experts and lawmakers gathered in Jordon to express grave concerns over the Law.

Faleh al-Khayat, a former head of planning at the oil ministry, warned that “major foreign oil firms are greedy and will covet Iraq’s oil wealth” if the bill is adopted. MP Saleh Mutlak of Iraq’s National Dialogue Front echoed him: “We have no need for foreign companies. We are experienced enough to reap the fruit of our wealth.”

MP Ali Mashhadani also agreed. “Our oil wealth is black gold that must be kept underground until security conditions are appropriate to take advantage of it. It has been entrusted to our safekeeping by the people we represent. Iraq has sold 125 billion dollars worth of oil since the start of the US-led occupation.”

One of the biggest opposition groups to the law is the General Union of Oil Employees, organized by Hassan Juma’a. “From the start of the occupation, some union activists found it very necessary to form an oil workers’ union because such a union would protect the national economy, because we knew very well that that the Americans and their allies came for the oil”, he says. “The opinion of all [Iraqi] oil workers is that they are against privitasation. We see privatisation as economic colonialism”.

Dan Witt is a modern-day Economic Hit Man. Remember what John Perkins said: “Economic hitmen (EHM) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars”. This is what PSA’s would do to Iraq’s oil. Witt is proposing policies that would privatize Iraq’s oil industry to the benefit of the foreign oil companies.

Witt’s policies for Iraq are the continuation of the politics of exploitation that began with the British empire and that have been continued by the Americans.  But the struggle over Iraq’s oil is just one example of what is happening across the globe as America flexes her economic and political might. So what do we do about it?

“How you and I choose to react to this global empire in the coming years is likely to determine the future of our planet” writes John Perkins. “Will we continue along a road marked by violence, exploitation of others and ultimately the likelihood of our self destruction as a species? Or will we create a world our children will be proud to inherit? The choice is ours – yours and mine.”

To order a signed copy of the book go here