Something Smelly In The Heart Of Darkness?

"The Horror, The Horror!"

From the cesspit of horror that is much of West Africa, with its endless brutal wars and endemic corruption fuelled by the rapacious thirst and demand for its resources such as diamonds, timber, oil, a beacon of light in the shape of a book by former diplomat Craig Murray, "The Catholic Orangemen of Togo" is shone upon some of the murky misdeeds perpetrated by the Great and Good such as Tony Bliar in his meddling in Sierra Leone.

And oooo-errrr, missus, what's this that emerges stinking into the light of day?

Well, well, it's Baroness Valerie Amos, linked to a Nigerian Private Equity Fund, where she is now a director. The stench arises from the £15 MIILION grant given to this company by a quango in the ownership of the Department for International Development whilst the never elected politician was in charge of that very Department.

Not the first politician to have suddenly turned up in a lucrative post with close links to their former sphere of influence, there's a depressingly long list.

But Mr Murray claims in his book that a representative of the Equity Fund told him that they were getting the grant because of Baroness Amos already being a director.

That stinks.

The Penguin