Canadian oil company’s extraction pump and dump scam highlights criminal resource extraction in Namibia
Picture of the Recon Africa drilling site at the Mbambi Village in Kavango basin. No liner, in violation of safety regulations concerning the environment. Courtesy of Rob Parker.
Written by: Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba
Through interviews with key witnesses, along with documents and cables from key ministries in Canada and Namibia, The Canada Files has discovered the unlawful dealings behind a massive pump and dump scam from a Canadian oil company, Recon Africa. The project had the diplomatic backing of the Canadian government, ostensibly for ‘development’. Yet in reality, it was supported on behalf of a key Liberal ally, Will Adams, the former lobbyist for Recon Africa. The operation was saturated with corruption, political nepotism, and fraud on all levels.
Existing laws in Namibia were ignored outright to allow the project, human impact was shamelessly ignored, and whistleblowers who refused to take bribes were threatened and harrassed to the indifference (and tacit support) of the Canadian and Namibian governments. Even small-time investors in the project were defrauded.
ReconAfrica’s fraudulent Setup
The Canada Files reached out to consumer rights activist and Canadian Rob Parker, who has been active in dealing with the effects of the ReconAfrica project since the drilling began in March 2021. The Canada Files also reached out to Rinaani Musutua, a member of the Economic Social Justice Trust (ESJT), and Moronga Amnatenya Thomas, the head of the Okavango Conservancy.
According to Rob Parker, ReconAfrica was originally going to base their act of fraud on shale gas, using a fake media campaign headed by James Stafford. The project was going to be a search for shale gas in the Okavango basin in Botswana and Namibia, using fracking.
However, fracking was declined by the Namibian government, so Recon Africa ‘re-evaluated’ their claim in the region to an ‘estimated’ 120 billion barrels of petroleum, instead of shale gas. Yet the region they obtained the license for was the shallow end of the already explored region, making the possibility of finding any valuable resource in the region virtually nonexistent.
According to Parker and Thomas, Recon Africa obtained a petroleum exploration license to drill using an incomplete Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on a national holiday. This being Heroes’ Day, August 26th, the day Namibia was founded post-Apartheid.
On national holidays, all government offices, particularly commerce related ones, are supposed to be closed, making the timing rather suspect. Moreover, the Namibian government under the ruling SWAPO party is infamous for corruption scandals and collaborating with NATO’s colonial adventures in the region. All three of the people we interviewed suspected bribery within the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Tourism on that basis.
Moreover, the EIA was also supposed to include the local consultation results, according to Thomas. No license or certificate was supposed to be approved before that consultation occurred, and before it was clear that the people had given their consent. The Kavango basin for which the license was issued, in particular, of the larger Kavango region, was legally under conservation, and was supposed to be protected from any resource extraction under the Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1975.
The ‘Development’
In an interview, Rinaani mentioned that at no point had the promises from primarily Canadian resource extraction investments ever been realized. According to Rinaani, 80 per cent of mining companies in Namibia are foreign owned, and the vast majority of over 22 mining companies within that market are Canadian based.
ReconAfrica shamelessly promised hospitals, accommodation for those that had to leave their homes initially, infrastructure investments, education investments, and regular employment for the affected community of Mbambi village. Except for ‘employment’, none of the promises were even touched upon, according to Rinaani. The ‘employment’ turned out to only last at most two weeks, at 200 Namibian dollars a day ($17 CAD/day). Then the ‘employees’ were fired without notice, in contravention to the Namibia Labour Act. Some wages are still unpaid, according to Thomas.
Rinaani and Parker both suspected this was done to inflate employment numbers and prevent any residents from working there long enough to understand the inner workings of the drilling site. Inner workings including the numerous safety and environmental violations stipulated in the 53-page letter sent to the High Commissioner of Global Affairs Canada in South Africa, including illegal dumping of toxic fluids into the environment, among other things.
The agriculture of the region is also being negatively affected by the drilling. The vibrations are altering the elephants’ migration patterns. As a result, the elephants are now being diverted towards the crops of Mbambi Village, which are now undermining the real and tangible agriculture economy that the village relied upon, according to Rinaani, Parker, and Thomas.
Corruption and Violation of Sovereignty
Despite a 53-page letter sent to the High Commissioner of Global Affairs Canada in South Africa detailing the fraud and environmental damage caused by Recon Africa, the government has refused to admit that the Recon Africa project as a whole is unlawful. Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae, even met with Recon Africa in Namibia to continue to take their misrepresentations and fraudulent actions at face value.
At the time of this writing, ReconAfrica is now 83 million CAD in debt, according to Recon Africa’s own internal audit. ReconAfrica founder Craig Steinke began preparing to sell more than half of his 10 million shares in March 2023 (reporting the sales on July 1), before the stock dropped to the current rate of $1.00 USD per share, which it’s resting at as of this article’s release.
New Democratic Party MP Niki Ashton, due to personal ties with the activists in Namibia, sent a letter requesting that ReconAfrica be removed from the Toronto Stock Exchange, which was denied by the Liberal Government.
The Liberal government’s collusion with the pump and dump scam can be attributed to their association with Will Adams, who lobbied for ReconAfrica from July 2021 until November of 2022. He was acting as chief of staff to the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, from 2011-2013. This ended up being a display of political nepotism at its finest.
Incidentally, Rob Parker and Thomas weren’t just ignored by Canada. Rob Parker, especially, is now forced to anonymize his messages because his emails have been hacked and accessed in locations as far as France. Thomas was also targeted for a smear campaign, and his colleague Max has been arrested repeatedly by the Namibian police acting on behalf of Recon Africa (pg. 12: Letter to High Commissioner).
We reached out to Recon Africa, and here was their response:
Hello M. Umucyaba,
“ReconAfrica is working collaboratively with – and at the invitation of – the national government of Namibia, as well as its regional and traditional authorities, to ensure we comply with relevant laws and regulations throughout all stages of the process.
ReconAfrica has not applied for, does not have the intention to apply for, nor been granted or given, permits to allow 'fracking' – a point which ReconAfrica and the government of Namibia have publicly confirmed.
The people of Namibia, through their traditional authorities, elected government, and regulatory agencies, will determine how they manage their national resources.
Regards,
media@reconafrica.com”
The response was diplomatic, short, sweet, and vague enough that future ‘commercial endeavors’ weren’t ruled out completely. It reminded me of Rob Parker’s comment when Recon Africa had previously been asked about whether fracking was really no longer an option or not:
“In several public statements since then, they've left the door open to fracking. ‘The people of Namibia will decide how best to extract this resource.’(Rob Quoting Recon Africa)...By the ‘Namibian people’ they mean the people they bribed.”
-Rob Parker
The Closing Thoughts of Africans and other Witnesses
The ‘democratic’ country of Namibia is under military occupation from the United States to protect Recon Africa and other primarily Canadian, but largely NATO assets.
It’s important to take the quotes from the people in Namibia directly and indirectly affected by the project, to see how they feel about how well the ‘democratic’ government of Namibia defended their sovereignty and independence, versus the ‘condemned’ military governments in Northern Africa:
“I feel like I’m offended by Recon Africa because as a Namibian, who respects the laws and the regulations of Namibia, seeing someone getting a license or a certificate on a public holiday, whereby it was a Heroes’ Day, which was meant for the heroes who fought for the liberation of this country, really, I’m having a wound that will never be healed because our parents did not fight for oil exploration. We cannot be disgraced by a company getting a license on a public holiday…disrespect from top to bottom…Recon Africa did not respect the laws and regulations of this country.”
– Moronga Amnatenya Thomas, Chairperson of the Okavango Conservancy
“How can this company come here and do whatever they want? So for me it was like, ‘This company comes here, does all these things, but they would never do these same things back in their original countries’. So why should they undermine us, undermine our sovereignty in that kind of way? So that's why I got involved. It was obviously the first reason why I got involved.”
“It turns out Canadian companies are the worst in terms of the environment and in terms of respecting human rights.”
– Rinaana Musata, Trustee of the Economic Social Justice Trust
Here is the closing dialogue this author had with Rob Parker:
Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba: “All of it comes together. This ends up being a beautiful corruption story. Back and forth with Global Affairs, a politician with high school nostalgia, and pockets being lined quite shamelessly. I’m very happy that this (investigation) can end up being quite a masterpiece in the end.”
Rob Parker: “Yes…it brings it all together. And it ends up where it belongs…the colonial fiction called Canada.”
ATIP referenced
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.
He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.
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