How To Stage An Investment Coup...Without Firing A Shot

It’s a sorry end to a colourful career. Simon Mann, Old Etonian mercenary and would-be “liberator” of Equatorial Guinea has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for his part in the botched coup attempt in the west African country.

Mann and his cohorts were willing to risk life and limb to get a share of Equatorial Guinea’s enormous oil wealth. Profit Hunter readers can buy into this bonanza for just pennies.

Mann’s been given a 34 year jail sentence for his role in the 2004 coup attempt. You’ll find plenty of details on his sentencing in the mainstream press today, so there’s no need for me to rehash any of that here.

Instead, let’s just look at how the legendary war dog’s exploits touch the Profit Hunter portfolio…

How to buy into West Africa’s oil boom for just pennies

In 2006, a small AIM-listed company took control of a port in Equatorial Guinea that is fast-emerging as the central hub of the oil industry in Gulf of Guinea. This is one of the major reasons we like the company so much. This company hasn’t hit the mainstream headlines yet and you can still get in for just pennies.

But Equatorial Guinea isn’t the only place where this company’s interests overlap with Simon Mann though.

In 1993 Mann set-up mercenary outfit, Executive Outcomes (EO). This was probably the most-effective private army in the world back then. The company made a fortune protecting Western oil interests in war-torn Angola.

Mann’s company also provided military training to the Angolan army as they battled the UNITA rebel movement. The first areas secured by the government’s EO-trained forces were the country’s oil- and diamond-producing regions.

Mann’s intervention was crucial to ending the country’s civil war that had dragged on from 1975-2002, claimed half a million lives and displaced millions. That’s been great news for Angola. The country is now Africa’s biggest oil producer; and it’s a major exporter of diamonds as well. Its economy is expected to grow by 27.2% this year.

It’s been great news for our company as well. It has set-up major operations in Angola since peace returned: airlines, water bottling, logistics, and diamond mining (through an affiliate). All of these should pay back massively as Angola continues to grow.

Mann also went on to support the government in diamond-rich Sierra Leone against a rebel movement of its own in 1995.

Mann and his merry band showed a penchant for operating in resource rich regions. And access to natural resources were often part of the deal they struck with the regimes they were supporting...

Heritage Oil, run by Mann-associate, Tony Buckingham, gained oil-concessions in Angola. Another Mann-associated company, Branch Energy, was awarded a diamond concession in the Sierra Leonean territory where he was operating. Mann’s record makes his claim that his attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea was about brining democracy rather than grabbing hold of its oil a bit of a joke...

Another fantastic opportunity…on the other side of the world

It isn’t just in Africa that the PH portfolio crosses paths with Simon Mann. Another one of his “private security” firms, Sandline International, was hired by the government of Papua New Guinea to provide military support against the secessionist Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA).

One of the key goals of the operation was to re-open a giant Panguna copper mine on Bougainville island that was shut-down by the BRA. That mine is owned by a small company in our portfolio…

Once again, the mercenaries were drawn by more than just the cash they were being offered for the job. In fact, the Mann/Buckingham-PNG government nexus attempted to acquire a majority stake in this company.

But the use of foreign mercenaries didn’t go down too well with the Papua New Guinean armed forces. And Sandline was expelled from Papua after the army forced the resignation of the country’s prime minister, Sir Julius Chan.

It’s just as well for us that the mine didn’t end up in their pocket.

We bought into this company in January 2005 and so far so good.

Mann’s exploits made him a legend in Africa, but by the late 90’s he had a much more low-key profile. His return to the mercenary business with the Equatorial Guinea debacle looks like the final curtain for him.

You don’t need a private army to get what Mann was after

At the beginning of the decade, there really weren’t many options for getting into Africa as an investor. The Congo was being ripped apart by civil war. And Robert Mugabe and his cronies were looting the fabulously rich Congolese mines now controlled by another our portfolio companies.

The most effective way of getting your hands on the continent’s riches was to go in there with all guns blazing – literally…

Things on the ground have changed a lot since then. At PH, we’ve been able to uncover the sort of profit opportunities that you once needed a private army to get at.

It’s not quite as romantic as doing it the Simon Mann way, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense as a long-term strategy.

To find out more about the opportunities at Profit Hunter we’ve discussed in this article click here

Regards,

Manraaj Singh
Editor
Profit Hunter P.S. If you enjoyed this article then we encourage you to sign up for Profit Hunter. Track down exciting opportunities in the worlds’ emerging markets and always stay ahead of the curve.

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How To Stage An Investment Coup...Without Firing A Shot

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How To Stage An Investment Coup...Without Firing A Shot