Drumcondra Mafia in Action: Bertie Ahern, Coillte, and expeditions to China

March 9th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

BERTIE AHERN’S CHINESE TAKEAWAY

The Phoenix
March 9, 2012

ONE reason why Bertie Ahern was looking so happy at the FF ard fheis may have been the big Chinese takeaway that he is planning for Coillte, the state’s € 1.6bn forestry business.

In 2009, the year after his resignation as Taoiseach, Bertie was appointed chairman of the International Forestry Fund (IFF), a joint venture registered in the British Virgin Islands. The following year came Bertie’s first visit to China since he left politics when on behalf of the IFF he met the Chinese Investment Corporation (CIC), a massive sovereign wealth fund with assets of over €300bn.

Strangely, Ahern denied at the time that the IFF had any intention of bidding for Coillte. Strange, because just a few months earlier IFF director, Paul Brosnan, told the Sunday Tribune,

“We would certainly have an interest in that regard …. We have always had an interest in Coillte”.

Last year Bertie visited China at least four times in various capacities, including one in which he played a role in Sean Mulryan’s Ballymore Group being invited to tender for a large project in the Anhui province of China. However, Bertie’s real purpose in visiting China so often last year appears to be the prospect of IFF purchasing Coillte possibly with Chinese participation. The Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs reported on the first three of these visits and a photo on its website shows Bertie along with two of his Dublin Central FF buddies, ex-TD, Cyprian Brady and constituency party treasurer, Dominic Dillane. And in an earlier visit to China last year, another of Bertie’s guys from the good old days, FF moneybags, Des Richardson, accompanied him.

The background to this flurry of Sino-Irish visits and exchanges carried out by the former Taoiseach is the inexorable process of privatisation of various semi-state companies or their assets, with Coillte being key amongst them. In 2010, a group chaired by Colm McCarthy was asked by the then finance minister, Brian Lenihan to assess the scale and value of various assets in the commercial state sector. McCarthy had already produced his Bord Snip Nua report on expenditure cuts, a report that also recommended that Coillte be sold off. That recommendation was made in July 2009 and Ahern was appointed chairman of IFF just a few months later.

In April, 2011, McCarthy’s group reported and among its key recommendation were the sale of Coillte’s timber (not its land). In the week after McCarthy’s report was published, Bertie was off to China again (he had been there in March) to meet Lou Jewei. In September last year, Brosnan, stated thai the IFF would only be interested in buying the timber assets (trees) of Coillte if it were split up – as recommended by McCarthy.

As Taoiseach, Bertie always had an interest in China and was the first Taoiseach to visit that country in 1998. prompting a visit from Chinese Premier, Zhu Rongji to Dublin in 2001. Two more visits from senior Chinese politicians – two vice-premiers – followed in the next few years and Bertie went again to China in 2005. By the end of Bertie’s reign as Taoiseach, trade between the two countries had soared to €7bn circa.

The International Forestry Fund is a joint venture between Helvetia Wealth AO which is based in Switzerland and Liechtenstein bin with a branch office in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin and IFS Assets Managers, based in Eblana House, Dun Langhaire. IFS directors are Paul Brosnan and Trevor McHugh who have extensive interests already in Irish forestry.

This article appeared in the print edition of The Phoenix magazine, (Vol.30, No.5, March 9 – March 22, 2012)

Flashback: Bertie Ahern is “a criminal element walking the streets”

Bertie Ahern, as minister for finance for 4 years was the main shareholder in Coillte on behalf of the public with 99 shares; its surprising how little he knows about the subject. As Taoiseach he would have appointed most of the directors to the Coillte board. His involvement with Helvetia Wealth, who have announced they are interested in acquiring Coillte, is a major conflict of interest and presents a harmful oppurtunity for the purchase of the largest land developing company in the country.

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