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At The Hand Of Man
- The White Man's Game
Raymond Bonner
Prince Bernhard and the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
The White Man's Game pp. 66-71
To attract donors, large and small, as well as media attention,
Nicholson, Scott and the founding fathers of WWF wanted the royal
family to lend their name. They approached Prince Philip to be
president. Philip was an avid outdoorsman and hunter-in January
1961 he had bagged a Bengal tiger in India-and he and Queen
Elizabeth had been to Kenya, on a safari best remembered because
King George VI died while they were watching wild animals and
Princess Elizabeth had become Queen. Scott sent Philip a draft of
the proposed charter. Philip read it carefully, replying that one
provision was "unctuous," and another "to wordy."
This careful reading was not what Scott hold expected. It is
"a great bore that he suggests so much alteration,"
Scott wrote Nicholson. The founding fathers had wanted the Prince
only as a figurehead. Philip agreed to head up the British chapter
of WWF, but he turned down the presidency of the International and
suggested his friend Prince Bernhard for the post. The men were
alike in many ways. Both had been born into European royal
families, but not very distinguished ones, and had acquired their
status and string of titles when they married-Bernhard to the
future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. The two men were handsome,
dashing, and staunchly conservative politically.
Scott, who liked consorting with royalty, made the pitch.
"Prince Philip (who was sailing with me at Cowes in the 12
metre 'sceptre' on Saturday) . . . told me that he was very keen
that you should 'head-up' the international Trustees," Scott
wrote to Bernhard. "Please may I ask Your Royal Highness to
say that you will be President of the Trustees of The World
Wildlife Fund.'' Prince Bernhard he eventually said yes, and he
served as president until 1976, when he was forced to resign after
it became public that he had solicited more than a million dollars
in 'commissions" from Lockheed in exchange for Lockheed's
receiving contracts to build warplanes for the Netherlands. (At
One point after the scandal broke, Bernhard said that he had
intended to give the money from Lockheed to WWF; a member of the
board at the time insists this is not true.
Bernhard remained active behind the scenes in WWF, but a couple of
years after he resigned, Philip became president of the
International, and though it was thought he would serve for only a
few years, he is still in power. The Prince is a committed
conservationist and he undoubtedly has given prestige and
visibility to WWF around the world. At the same time, however,
many in the Third World have questioned whether he is the right
person to head an organisation that does most of its work in
developing countries. At a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of
state, most of them from the Third World and black, Philip said to
an aide, "You wouldn't think the peace of the world rested on
this lot, would you'?" on another occasion, he referred to
the Chinese as "slitty-eyed."
WWF WAS SET UP to raise money, but in spite of the initial
successes, it did not prove very effective. Nicholson had said
that $1.5 million each year would be needed for conservation,
which Scott thought he could easily raise; indeed, he anticipated
coaxing $25 million from the rich. Scott discovered that
socializing with the elite was one thing, getting them to part
with their money quite another, and it was several years before
the total of WWF's revenues reached $1 million.
WWF's financial fortunes began to change dramatically after a
hard-driving South African businessman, Anton Rupert, joined the
board. An Afrikaaner from the Cape, Rupert had already made
millions as the owner of Rothmans International tobacco company,
the foundation of the Rembrandt Group, his wholly owned business
empire. When Rupert expanded beyond South Africa, he bought
Dunhill and Cartier, and eventually he became one of the richest
men in South Africa, rivalled only by Harry Oppenheimer, the gold
and diamond industrialist. Rupert had long been interested in
conservation, including the restoration of historic buildings, and
in 1968 he joined the WWF board of trustees; he stayed on the
board for twenty-two years, ill spite of a provision in the
organisation's original incorporation documents that limited
members to two three-year terms, a provision that was routinely
ignored for the benefit of several other influential members of
the board as well. Rupert brought a considerable amount of his own
money to WWF, but, more important, he conceived a plan that would
raise millions
Rupert's idea was the "1001 Club" The "one"
was Prince Bernhard The other one thousand were wealthy
individuals who could be persuaded to part with $10,000. The
one-time donation brings lifetime membership, and the names of the
generous patrons are kept secret by the organisation. According to
these secret lists, American givers have included August A Busch,
Jr, of the beer company; Henry Ford II; Peter Grace; Nelson Bunker
Hunt, the silver trader; Mrs Geoffrey Kent, of Abercrombie &
Kent; Robert S. McNamara; Cyril Magnin; Lew Wasserman, of MCA;
Thomas Watson, of IBM. Many of the donors understandably wish to
remain anonymous (in part to avoid being badgered by other
charities), but it is also understandable why WWF does not want
the list made public. It has included many less savoury
individuals-Zaire's President Mobutu, Sese Seko, one of the most
corrupt leaders in Africa; Daniel K Ludwig, the reclusive American
billionaire, whose companies destroyed thousands of miles of the
Amazon rain forest; Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCC1); Robert Vesco, the
financier who fled the United States in the 1970s to escape trial
on charges of fraud, embezzlement and obstruction of justice;
Tibor Rosenbaum, founder of a Swiss bank that laundered billions
of dollars of organised crime money and who was accused of
embezzling Israeli deposits in the bank; Thomas Jones, who was
forced out as chief executive of Northrop after it was revealed
that the company paid $30 million in bribes to government
officials and agents around the world in exchange for contracts;
Lord Kagan, a British businessman convicted of theft and
conspiracy to defraud the British tax service; a Norwegian
shipowner convicted of taking a £1 million bribe; an individual
who was the conduit for the money from Lockheed to Prince
Bernhard.
There has been another remarkable feature about the 1001 Club-the
number of South Africans. On the 1989 list, at least sixty
individuals were from South Africa, including seven of Rupert's
relatives. Many were also members of the Broederbond, the secret,
conservative Afrikaaner society that has traditionally wielded
immense political power in South Africa. Only five countries had
more donors, and as a percentage of their population, South
African whites had three hundred times as many members as the
United States. It is easy to understand why so many South Africans
have been willing to part with $10,000 to Join the 1001 and not
all of it has to do with conservation. Not many international
clubs welcomed white South Africans, and membership in the 1001
provided them an opportunity to mingle and do business with
tycoons, as well as with Prince Philip and Prince Bernhard. What
else they may have gained from the membership is unknown, in part
because so much of what WWF-lnternational does is kept from the
public and even from the organisation's own trustees. Because of
the secrecy and closed nature of the WWF club, it is also
difficult to know the extent of the influence that so much South
African money has had on the organisation's conservation work.
There can be little doubt, however, that WWF-International's
initial opposition to the ivory ban reflected South African power
on the board-South Africa was adamantly opposed to the ban,
because its elephants were not being poached and it made money
from selling ivory.
One place where South Africa's clout has been felt is in the
office of the director-general, the man who runs WWF. Since 1977
that man has been Charles de Haes. Much of de Haes's past is vague,
which seems to be by design: he has chosen to reveal very little
about his background and some of what the organisation does say
publicly about him is at odds with the facts. On WWF's public list
of officers and trustees, de Haes is identified as being from
Belgium, and he was born there, in 1938. But as a young boy, he
moved with his family to South Africa. After graduating from Cape
Town University with a law degree, he got a job with Rothmans
International, Rupert's tobacco company. De Haes's Official
resume-that is, the one WWF distributes-makes a point of noting
that he went to work for the tobacco company "although
himself a nonsmoker." It then says de Haes "helped
establish companies" in Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
What it does not say is that these were companies that sold
cigarettes. Maybe de Haes didn't smoke, but he made money by
encouraging others to do so.
De Haes was brought to WWF through the back door by Anton Rupert
in 1971. He was first assigned to be personal assistant to Prince
Bernhard. One of his tasks was to implement the 1001 Club project.
He was tremendously successful. Ten thousand dollars was worth
even more back then, yet it took de Haes only three years to find
one thousand donors. Prince Bernhard provided the letters of
introduction, but de Haes was the salesman who clinched the deals.
Even de Haes's fiercest critics-and they are many-use the word
"brilliant" when describing his fund-raising skills.
In 1975, with the backing of Rupert and Prince Philip de Haes was
named joint director-general of WWF, and two years later he had
the top position to himself. De Haes had no education or
experience in conservation, other than his few years at WWF, yet
he was now in charge of the most prestigious and influential
conservation organisation in the world. It was a position that
would have appealed to the most qualified and eminent individuals
in the field, yet no effort was made to recruit any of them.
WWF may have taken on someone without conservation experience, but
then, it cost the organisation nothing: Rupert agreed to pay de
Haes's salary-which, according to a British trustee, goes far in
explaining why de Haes got the Job. WWF never said at the time
that Rupert was paying de Haes, and it still tries to conceal this
fact. The organisation's chief spokesman, Robert SanGeorge, stated
emphatically during an interview in 1991 that de Haes had not been
seconded from Rothmans to Prince Bernhard and WWF during the early
years. But an internal WWF memorandum signed by the organisation's
executive vice-president in 1975 talks specifically about
"Mr. de Haes's period of secondment to WWF." What this
means, of course, is that de Haes was still employed by a South
African corporation while working for WWF. "I thought it was
a scandal," says a former board member from North America,
Who added that it was only by accident that he learned that Rupert
was paying de Haes. This board member did not like the arrangement.
"Who does the director general serve'? Is the interest of a
South African tobacco company synonymous with the world
conservation movement? Even more troubling to this director was
the fact that it was kept a secret. "lf it was such a good
thing, why weren't they willing to say so in the annual
report?"
In a similar vein, the organisation treats as a state secret the
question of who paid de Haes after he became director-general. It
was "an anonymous donor" SanGeorge says. Even board
members have been in the dark. When on occasion one asked, he was
told that the donor wished to remain anonymous.
It is unlikely that any other charitable organisation that depends
on public support operates with such little accountability and in
such secrecy as WWF has under de Haes. It is easier to penetrate
the CIA. And when WWF has been caught in embarrassing conducts it
has engaged in damage control and cover-ups of the kind that might
be expected from a company whose products have caused injury to
consumers and the environment. Under rules de Haes promulgated,
WWF employees are prohibited from talking to anyone outside the
organization about anything except what the organisation has
already made public; the obligation to secrecy binds the employee
even after he or she has left WWF. Few are willing to break this
code of silence-given their fear of de Haes and, in the case of
current employees, the generous salaries and pleasant living
conditions in Switzerland.
It may well be, as one senior WWF officer put it somewhat
defensively, that a dollar given to WWF is still a dollar well
spent for conservation. But, as this person added, "imagine
what the organisation could be with better leadership."
Over the years there has been increasing dissatisfaction with de
Haes's leadership. One of the most serious challenges to his rule
came in the early 1980s, when the heads of the WWF organisations
in Britain, the Netherlands and Switzerland began to discuss among
themselves changes they thought were necessary in the organisation.
These organisations should be able to effect change because they
provide most of the funds for the International-WWF-UK alone
contributes nearly one-third of the International's budget, and
Switzerland and the Netherlands rank second and third. The way WWF
was set up, two-thirds of the money raised by the national
organisations goes to the International, while one third remains
with the national organisation. The "dissident" leaders
of the three national organisations objected to this because there
was no accountability over how the International spent the money.
They also did not like the fact that the WWF-International board
of trustees doesn't represent the national organisations. The
board is a self-selected body-that is, those on the board decide
whom to place on it-and the national organisations, even though
they give the money, have no right of representation. In short,
the heads of the British, Dutch and Swiss organisations felt that
too much power was concentrated in Gland-the Swiss town where
WWF-lnternational's headquarters is located-and that the local
organisations should have more autonomy.
Sir Arthur Norman, the head of WWF-UK at the time, was
particularly disturbed by the manner in which WWF-International
set up chapters in other countries. He thought they should
"be triggered off by local people, local enthusiasm, and not
by someone in Bland saying "it's time".
The White Man's Game - pp78-81
Phillipson found that "a diligent auditor set among the
project account files in Switzerland would surely open a cupboard
full of skeletons." He was referring to the International's
field projects—from some there were no reports at all, and many
others had made no accounting of how the money was spent.
Phillipson's conclusion that WWF's attitude engendered accusations
of "neo-colonialism" remained in the summary.
Occasionally other skeletons got out, and when they did, it became
clear that WWF had lost its ethical way, at least in carrying out
its conservation work in Africa. In the late 1980s, for example,
WWF provided Zimbabwe's Department of National Parks and Wildlife
Management with funds to buy a helicopter for its anti-poaching
operations in the Zambezi Valley, where the black rhino was on the
verge of extinction because of poachers. The department used the
helicopter to deploy anti-poaching units when it received reports
of poachers in an area. At least fifty-seven poachers were killed
in the helicopter-supported operations, and the WWF office in
Zimbabwe reported that the helicopter "has made an enormous
difference to staff morale and efficiency" in the wildlife
department.
That WWF was involved was not flown publicly until the environment
correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, Paul Brown,
broke the story. WWF responded with a statement saying that it had
provided the funds for the helicopter "on the strict
understanding that the helicopter would never be used as a
gun-ship," and that it was "official WWF policy not to
use any of its funds for purchase of arms or ammunition." The
truth is the organisation knew that the helicopter would be used
in operations in which poachers would be killed. Indeed, there had
been a long and fierce debate within WWF about the project, and
many on the staff were opposed because Zimbabwe's policy was
"Shoot first, ask questions later," as one of those
involved in the debate puts it. Providing the helicopter "made
the policy more effective," he said. As for WWF's statement
that it did not provide funds for arms or ammunition, the
organisation's internal documents show that it was doing precisely
that for at least one project in Tanzania in 1987.
De Haes and WWF-International had to work harder to cover up
another scandal in Africa, this one involving mercenaries,
intrigue, high level WWF officials and Prince Bernhard. The
mercenaries were former British commandos who worked for KAS
Enterprises, a company headed by Sir David Stirling, the legendary
founder of Britain's Special Air Services (SAS), Britain's most
elite commando force. Stirling, who died in 1990, engaged in
clandestine activities throughout the world, setting up ostensibly
private companies that were in fact covers for Britain's MI-5 and
MI-6. In Africa s conservation wars, in the late 1980S KAS, as
part of its arrangement with WWF officials, trained anti-poaching
units in Namibia, which was then still under the control of South
Africa, as well as Mozambicans in South Africa. (The South African
government was trying to destabilise Mozambique.) KAS also set up
a "sting" operation to catch traffickers in ivory and
rhino horn. The project was code-named "Operation Lock,"
Lock being the maiden name of the wife of a former SAS officer,
Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Crooke, who was in charge of it.
Some of KAS's anti-poaching activities were exposed in July 1989
by Robert Powell, the Reuters correspondent in Nairobi. Powell,
however, was unable to link WWF to the operation, and so WWF
remained silent when Powell's story appeared, and continued
working with KAS. But Powell's article provoked Stephen Ellis,
editor of Africa Confidential, a fortnightly newsletter published
in London, to probe further. Ellis, also a freelance journalist,
got an assignment from The Independent to write an article about
Operation Lock. In the course of his reporting he called WWF and
talked with Robert SanGeorge, the organisation's chief spokesman.
SanGeorge, an American, had come to WWF-International in 1940
along with his wife, a tough lawyer who became executive assistant
to de Haes. Without telling Ellis, SanGeorge, who has been seen
with a recording device attached to his phone, made a verbatim
transcript of their conversation, which he passed on to de
Haes-SanGeorge even noted when Ellis "paused to fetch a cup
of coffee he had left in another room.
A few days later, SanGeorge faxed a statement to Ellis. The
statement began: "it is, and always has been, the policy of
WWF not to engage in clandestine or covert operations which might
be considered unethical by governments, the public, or supporters
of WWF." The organisation then went on to lay the blame for
the covert operation on John Hanks, head of the Africa Programme
at WWF-International. It said that Hanks had initiated the project
"without the knowledge or approval of WWF-lnternational's
management." Six months earlier Hanks had been forced out of
WWF by de Haes and had gone to South Africa as director of the
Southern African Nature Foundation, the name of WWF's affiliate in
South Africa. Not wanting to cross de Haes again and being loyal
to WWF, Hanks signed a statement assuming responsibility for
Operation Lock.
Ellis wrote his story, and the day it appeared, SanGeorge sent a
memorandum to all WWF national organisations. The memo reiterated
what SanGeorge had told Ellis, and emphasised that Operation Lock
"was initiated without the knowledge or authority of the
Director General" and that "no funds for the Operation
were channelled through WWF International's books." It was a
carefully crafted statement, befitting the work of a lawyer who
wants to keep his client out of Jail. But it was hardly an honest
explanation befitting a charitable organisation.
The truth, which has never come out publicly, is found in a series
of communications from Frans Stroebel, executive director of WWF's
South African affiliate when Operation Lock commenced and the man
who had introduced Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke to senior police and
conservation officials in South Africa. Stroebel wrote Prince
Philip:
I have given Mr. de Haes a number of comprehensive briefings on
the project since I first became involved. In May 1989, I gave him
full details. He then went to HRH Prince Bernhard to confirm that
Prince Bernhard was indeed the sponsor. Mr. de Haes satisfied
himself with the developments, and in subsequent discussions with
me he never expressed any concern about my involvement, or, for
that matter, the covert programme itself.
As for the funds for the operation, Stroebel said, in another
letter, "The funds for Operation Lock were actually WWF funds."
The money had come to WWF-lnternational, then was channelled back
out to Bernhard for Operation Lock in a series of strange
transactions. First, in December 1988, Sotheby's auctioned two
paintings owned by Bernhard-The Holy Family, a seven-by-five-foot
oil by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, and The Rape of Europa, a
four-by-five-foot oil by Elisabetta Sirani. Together they brought
in £610,000. On Bernhard's instructions the proceeds were donated
to WWF-International; Sotheby's had noted in its catalogue that
they would be. But if the buyer-who remains anonymous—thought
the money was going toward WWF's general conservation work, he was
mistaken. Within a few weeks after the sale, Bernhard called the
administrator of the 1001 Club and asked her to transfer £500,000
from the 1001 Club account to Queen Juliana's (his wife's) account
in the Netherlands. The £500,000 was needed for Operation Lock,
according to Stroebel, and de Haes "agreed to the use of
these funds as requested." (Bernhard told WWF it could keep
the remaining £110,000, which at the time was worth a little less
than $200,000.)
After Ellis's story appeared, many Western conservationists
working in Africa were embarrassed, because Operation Lock had
been exposed-not because they thought it was wrong to engage in a
covert operation to stop the illegal trade in rhino horn and
ivory. Indeed, the possibility of covert operations had often been
discussed by elephant and rhino specialists. On one occasion, at a
meeting attended by conservationists from WWF, AWF and other
organisations, Hanks outlined what he had in mind and the general
response, as described by a person who attended, was "Get on
with it. Don't tell us what you're doing, but get on with
it." Government officials in Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya did
not feel quite the same way. They declined offers of assistance
from KAS.
That there was a schism as big as a canyon between the approach to
conservation taken by the Africans on the one hand and the
conservation organisations on the other was not surprising, not
when one looked at the conservation organisations: they were the
monopoly of white Westerners. Whites headed them, hired whites to
staff them, and implemented programs that reflected Western values.
WWF-International has its headquarters in Gland, a quintessential
Swiss town-small, quiet, neat, and white. It carries out programs
around the world, most of them in the Third World, yet one has
rarely seen other than a white face in the Gland offices.. For
thirty years, not a single African, and only a handful of Asians
and Latin Americans, were ever hired by WWF-International. Only
one black has ever held a professional position in the Africa
section of WWF-US, and he was not hired until 1991. In the
field-that is, in Africa-walk into the organisation's offices, and
it is like colonial days: white at the top, blacks in the inferior
positions. WWF's major presence in Africa has been its regional
office in Nairobi, which in various incarnations has existed since
the 1960s; it has always been headed by whites, and not until 1989
was there a single African in a professional position. Only one
WWF program anywhere on the continent has ever been headed by an
African.
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