Locusts threaten beleaguered Mali

Mali is bracing for an invasion of locusts as unrest in north and west Africa hampers efforts to control the crop-ravaging insects. Locust sightings have been reported in northern Mali, where families are already hard-hit by conflict and food insecurity, and where equipment used to control the swarms has been looted by armed groups.

As desert locusts approach northern Mali and neighboring Niger, national experts in Mali, who normally work on mitigating the impact, are hamstrung by unrest and a lack of access and equipment.

As of June 8, the Food and Agriculture Organization - the U.N. agency that monitors locust movements - classified Mali as a zone where surveillance and control “must be undertaken” where crops are threatened.

Oumar Traoré, head technician with Mali’s locust control center, which normally would carry out that surveillance and control, says most of the national center’s equipment was stocked in a warehouse in the northern town of Gao and everything was stolen when armed groups seized northern Mali.

When the groups swept into the region just over two months ago, they looted government buildings, hospitals, and the offices and warehouses of national and international aid organizations.

Most families in Mali’s extreme north depend on livestock, and locust swarms would destroy pastures that feed their animals.

Traoré says the worry now is that the insects could quickly advance farther south, where people live off farming.

As areas dry up, locusts move on and seek vegetation. Keith Cressman, the FAO’s senior locust forecasting officer, said sporadic rains in northern Niger and Mali could affect how the swarms behave.

"Of course not all areas have received these rains so there are areas in the north of both countries that are dry. So the locusts could overfly those areas and continue as far south as they can before they hit the southerly headwinds, Cressman explained, "but it could put them into the agricultural zones of the central parts of Mali and central and southern parts of Niger. The time they would be arriving would coincide with the planting of this year’s crops and we already know that in both countries [people] are very vulnerable this year to food insecurity because of last year’s poor harvest."

The U.N. World Food Program says that drought in the region has left millions of people hungry. The agency says the conflict in Mali has forced at least 300,000 people to flee, adding to the food crisis there and in surrounding countries.

The desert locust swarms threatening Mali and Niger are coming from Algeria and Libya to the north.

Cressman told VOA that normally locust control teams would be able to control the insects along the Algeria-Libya border, but given events over the past several months that has not been the case.

"Algeria made an estimate, saying that of the potential areas that are infested with desert locusts, the ground teams could only reach 15 percent of those areas, so that means 85 percent of the areas were unsurveyed and untreated," he said.

Cressman said the situation is likely similar on the Libyan side.

FAO says a small portion of an average swarm - about one ton of locusts - eats as much food in one day as 10 elephants or 2,500 people.

Mastro mystery: Aging ex-magnate nears 1 year on the lam

Michael R. Mastro celebrated his 87th birthday Friday.

The big question, of course, is — where?

It's been nearly a year since the onetime Seattle real-estate magnate and his wife, Linda, moved out of the $2 million house they had been renting in Palm Desert, Calif., and headed for parts unknown.

The couple left June 23, days after the judge in Mastro's massive bankruptcy case ordered them to turn over two giant diamond rings valued at $1.4 million. They officially became fugitives a month later when warrants were signed for their arrest.

But they remain at large, and there are just two plausible explanations:

Either federal authorities don't know where the Mastros are — or they do know, but haven't moved to apprehend the couple yet because legal complications stand in the way.

Denny Behrend, a retired deputy U.S. marshal, suspects it's the latter. His former colleagues in the Marshals Service are very good at finding people who don't want to be found, he says, but extracting fugitives from other countries can be legally tricky.

"I'd bet they're just putting all their ducks in line so that when they do move in, it'll go smoothly," says Behrend, now vice president of Lacey OMalley Bail Bonds in Seattle.

Mark Ericks, U.S. marshal for Western Washington, won't say if Behrend is right. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle won't say anything about the Mastros.

But all this silence hasn't halted rampant speculation about the couple's whereabouts.

"I was at a charity event recently and I had people come up to me and swear they'd seen Mike and Linda in South America, or Europe, or Canada, or Sun Valley," says James Frush, Mastro's lawyer. "It was ridiculous."

Frush won't say whether he's been in contact with his client-on-the-lam. When he's asked if he knows where the Mastros are, he jokes about one of their favorite restaurants.

"I tell people they're in the wine cellar at Canlis," Frush says.

Michael Mastro was a longtime and prolific real-estate developer and lender whose website alluded to his "billion-dollar career." But his highly leveraged empire fell apart when the market tanked.

Three lenders pushed Mastro into bankruptcy in 2009. The most recent estimate of his debt to unsecured creditors is $250 million, and court-appointed trustee James Rigby has said those creditors will be lucky to get back more than a few pennies on the dollar.

In the Mastros' absence, the $5,000-a-day fine that Bankruptcy Judge Marc Barreca imposed to persuade them to turn over the rings has continued to accrue. It now totals more than $1.5 million.

Ericks, the U.S. marshal, revealed last September that his agency had tracked the Mastros to an apartment in Canada in August — only to find they had left a day or two before.

If they are in another country, marshals can't bring them back without that nation's cooperation. And some countries are more cooperative than others.

About 70 — from Russia and China to Afghanistan and Somalia — don't even have extradition treaties with the U.S. But Douglas McNabb, a Washington, D.C., criminal-defense attorney who specializes in international extradition, says those nations hold little appeal for most fugitives.

"Any country that you could go to without an extradition treaty — they wouldn't want to live there," he says.

Extradition can be challenging even in countries with treaties, however.

For one, there's no indication the Mastros have been charged with a crime. Barreca issued the arrest warrants for them last July for contempt of court, a civil violation.

Extraditing someone on that basis is difficult, if not impossible, experts agree.

"They're not going to get to extradite him on a civil matter," says Jacques Semmelman, a New York lawyer and international extradition expert. "There has to be a crime."

John Strait, who teaches criminal law at Seattle University, agrees. "There might be some ways you could do it," he says, "but it wouldn't be easy, and it would take a lot of time."

Mastro is the subject of a federal criminal investigation. While the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle won't confirm it, Frush acknowledged the probe more than two years ago. It's still under way, lawyers for a Mastro associate who also is under investigation said last month in court documents.

If federal marshals know where the Mastros are, they could be waiting for a grand-jury indictment before they move to apprehend the couple. That would make extradition much easier, experts agree.

But they also say it's possible a sealed indictment already has been issued that hasn't been made public for fear of pushing the Mastros further underground. There could be new arrest warrants — also sealed — based on that indictment, they add.

McNabb suspects that's what has happened. The Marshals Service probably wouldn't have been pursuing the Mastros in Canada last year with warrants based only on a contempt citation, he says.

If Mastro has been — or will be — indicted, the government's success in extraditing him could hinge on exactly what the charges against him are.

One likely possibility is bankruptcy fraud — hiding assets from creditors. Rigby filed a civil suit accusing Mastro of that, and Barreca ruled in the trustee's favor last fall.

Experts differ on how easy it would be to extradite Mastro to be tried for that offense.

Some extradition treaties list specific crimes for which other countries will turn over a fugitive American to U.S. authorities. Other treaties are more general, authorizing extradition if the offense with which the American is charged also is a crime in that country.

Bankruptcy fraud is recognized as a crime almost universally, says Strait — if not by that name, then as a form of "theft by deception." Semmelman agrees.

But McNabb says it's not always that clear-cut.

One example: While Brazil's treaty with the U.S. authorizes extradition for "crimes or offenses against the bankruptcy laws," that country's Supreme Court declined in 1999 to extradite an American charged with bankruptcy fraud.

If foreign authorities balk at extraditing Mastro for that offense, McNabb says, the hurdle might be overcome by also charging him with other, possibly related crimes: perjury, mail fraud or wire fraud, for instance.

Tax fraud is another possibility. Internal Revenue Service agents, as well as FBI agents, interviewed Mastro associates last summer, Frush says. One Mastro associate, Bellevue developer Winstron Bontrager, was indicted in March for tax fraud, including concealing income from a real-estate deal in which Mastro was involved.

But the people who know what charges Mastro may — or does — face aren't talking.

"You're trying to read the tea leaves," says Frush, "but the tea is just too murky."

There are a few shards of new information about the search for the Mastros that only raise more questions:

• In January, the Mastros' Bentley, Chihuly glass pieces and other household goods were auctioned off in Palm Desert. Auctioneer Tim Murphy observed a large number of hits on the auction website from Italy, and he speculated the Mastros might be staying there.

Murphy said recently that he allowed the FBI to burrow into his firm's computers to try to learn more, but he understands they hit a dead end. The FBI also asked for a list of people registered for the auction, he said.

• Last November, after Barreca ruled that Linda Mastro, now 62, owed her husband's creditors more than $1.3 million, her lawyer, Michael Gossler, filed an appeal on her behalf.

Did she authorize it? Gossler won't discuss whether he's been in contact with his client. Frush says Gossler could be acting in what he considers Linda Mastro's interests without communicating with her.

The last person who publicly acknowledged speaking with the Mastros was Gloria Plischke, Michael's sister. She said last September that he had phoned her several times. (Plischke couldn't be reached for comment for this story.)

Behrend, the retired marshal, says the Mastros almost certainly aren't communicating with family or friends now. They're probably living under assumed names, he says, and paying for everything with cash.

But "the Mastros are really not fugitive-type people," he says. "And being a fugitive is really hard work."

Authorities could be negotiating with the country where the couple are staying to extradite or deport them, Behrend says. Or marshals could be trying to lure the Mastros to a country where extradition might be easier.

Few fugitives remain at large this long, says Frush, a former federal prosecutor: They can't withstand the tug of home, family and friends.

"But once those ties are cut, at a certain point your life changes so much that you escape that pull," he says.

Ericks, the U.S. marshal, won't respond to all this speculation. "There's just things I can't talk about," he says.

"Just know that if we have the authority to get him, we're going to get him."

The Pacific gulf

Next year marks the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Pacific after Vasco Núñez de Balboa was lured by an Indian cacique’s promise of “another ocean, where there is plenty of gold.” Last week, four of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies renewed this quest for Pacific gold when they signed a “deep integration” pact. Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile, with combined economic output of $2tn, say the alliance will help them expand trade with Asia. It is another sign of how the world’s economic centre is shifting from the Atlantic.

The pact was signed, symbolically, at one of the earth’s most powerful deep space telescopes, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. That the observatory lies 2,600m above sea level also lent the ceremony a certain breathlessness. After all, there has been a lot of talk about regional integration over the past two decades, but far less action. The Mercosur trade bloc, forged in the 1990s by Brazil and Argentina, is foundering as both countries respond to economic problems by withdrawing behind trade barriers. The Andean Community has meanwhile been part dismembered by socialist Venezuela. The Pacific Alliance, with its talk of the free movement of goods, capital and labour, is a return to the liberal spirit of the past: a group of countries that believe the best route to development is open markets, foreign investment and free trade. Potentially, it also establishes a regional counterweight to Brazil.

In many ways, politicians are merely catching up with business. Chilean retailers operate in Colombia and Peru; Colombian utilities in Peru; Mexican companies in Colombia; and LAN, the Chilean airline, everywhere. The new pact faces formidable obstacles, though. Relations between Chile and Peru are dogged by memories of bitter 19th century border disputes. The pact’s countries meanwhile run for 7,000 miles from top to toe. MILA, an alliance between the Bogotá, Lima and Santiago stock markets, provides a cautionary warning: trade volumes have been sluggish since it was founded a year ago.

Still, at least its members have gone about negotiations in a businesslike way. Early talks, for example, were conducted via video conferencing, rather than the usual grandstanding summitry. Although there is a risk of over-categorisation, the contrast is striking between the pact’s liberalising attitudes and that of the more protectionist and sluggish Brazilian and Argentine economies on the Atlantic seaboard. They should take note; others have. A EU-style free trade area without the countless petty regulations and requirements imposed by Brussels would position South America as a powerful economic competitor to its neighbors north of the Rio Grande.

Cube Capital enters Myanmar

Cube Capital is believed to be the first western asset manager to launch a fund investing in Myanmar since the easing of economic sanctions on the south-east Asian state.

The London-based alternatives group, with $1.3bn under management, last week launched the Cube Asia Frontier Fund, which will invest in real estate in Myanmar, Mongolia and Vietnam.

Myanmar was off limits to western investors until April this year, due to sanctions imposed in the 1990s. Those sanctions are now being eased or suspended following progress by Myanmar’s military leaders towards democracy, clearing the way for foreign investors to seek exposure to economic growth estimated by the Asian Development Bank to reach 6 per cent this year.

Tom Holland, managing partner of Cube Capital Asia, said Cube would be working with local companies in each of the countries it is targeting.

In Myanmar, Cube is partnering with SPA (Serge Pun and Associates), an arm of Singapore-listed Yoma Strategic Holdings, which has until recently been one of the few ways for western investors to access Myanmar. Cube already has experience of real estate private equity deals in Mongolia, Vietnam and Myanmar. In Myanmar it is in the process of exiting a residential development aimed at Yangon’s upper middle class. The deal was struck on a private basis for a family office.

Its initial pipeline of projects is focused on “cleaning up the past”, said Mr Holland, with Cube seeking approval to finance developments that had been mothballed after running out of money.

Cube aims to raise $150m for the closed-ended fund, which is targeting an investment period of about two years and a “harvest” period of five years. The target minimum investment is $5m. The Cayman Islands-based fund has a 2 per cent management fee and a 20 per cent performance fee with an 8 per cent hurdle rate.

This kind of distressed project financing is typical of the kind of deal Cube invests in, but it also involves itself in “greenfield” developments such as CentrePoint in Vietnam, for which it put up 90 per cent of the equity.

Despite the excitement about Myanmar, Mr Holland said Cube’s experience of operating in frontier markets had been behind the decision to avoid setting up a single country fund. The multi-country approach means the fund will be less vulnerable to sudden policy reversals or other events in any of the target markets.

The fund will invest no more than 50 per cent in any one country and no more than 25 per cent in any one real estate deal. Cube uses offshore structures where possible, or otherwise foreign investment channels where foreign exchange has been approved.

Under British administration Myanmar, or Burma, was one of the wealthiest nations in south-east Asia and the world’s largest exporter of rice. It is now one of the poorest nations in the region despite being rich in oil, gas, timber and other resources.

Swiss minister sees U.S. tax deal by November

U.S. officials seem to want an end to a dispute over wealthy Americans with hidden Swiss offshore bank accounts before the U.S. presidential election in November, the Swiss finance minister said in a newspaper interview on Saturday.

"My impression at the moment is that the U.S. wants a solution by the elections. Both sides endeavour to find a solution in the foreseeable future," Switzerland's finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Basler Zeitung.

Eleven Swiss banks - including Credit Suisse and Julius Baer - are under investigation by the United States for aiding U.S. citizens suspected of dodging taxes with the help of offshore bank accounts.

Switzerland wants the investigations dropped, in exchange for payment of fines and the transfer of names of thousands of U.S. bank clients. At the same time, Switzerland is seeking a deal to shield the remainder of its 300 or so banks from U.S. prosecution.

The talks appear to have stalled in recent months. A visit by Widmer-Schlumpf to Washington in April brought no breakthrough.

The U.S. prosecutor most closely linked with piercing the veil of Swiss bank secrecy, Kevin Downing, quit to join a law firm earlier this month, a move which experts say won't hinder U.S. efforts to pursue Swiss banks.