Seeing that Brian Molefe mentioned Glencore’s role at Eskom during his fascinating story telling at the #StateCaptureCommission, I thought we should have a brief history lesson on the most corrupt company in the world - Glencore

Glencore’s founder (Marc Rich) was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for almost 20 years. We will learn why he was on the list further down in the thread.

Glencore was founded in 1974 by Marc Rich a Belgian-American commodities trader who initially named it Marc Rich + Co.

Rich defied international trade embargoes to do business with pariah regimes from across the political spectrum, including Iran during the hostage crisis, Libya under Ghaddafi, Chile under Pinochet, and apartheid South Africa.

Rich claimed that breaking the UN embargo of South Africa resulted in his “most important and most profitable” business deals.

No regard for laws

In the 1980s, Rich worked with the Israeli secret service, Mossad, to set up a secret pipeline to sell Iranian oil to Israel. In 1983, Rich was charged in the US with tax evasion, fraud, trading with the enemy and illegal business dealings. That was when he made the FBI list.

Bill Clinton pardoned Rich on his last day in office in 2001.

Glencore went public in 2011 listing in London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg.

In 2013, Glencore merged with Xstrata, which was the world’s largest coal mining company.

Glencore is not of using leverage and its model of borrowing money to carry out trades almost led to bankruptcy in 2015, when a crash in worldwide commodities prices left the company over-exposed and overwhelmed with debt.

There was no way it would've gone under

Glencore has done well to form partnerships with Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Qatar Investment Authority owns 8.2% of Glencore stock.

In 2017, QIA and Glencore bought 19.5% of Rosneft, Russian's state energy company.

CEO Ivan Glasenberg owns 8.4 per cent of Glencore stock.

Glencore "loaned" $45million to Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler for his help in obtaining mining concessions from DRC state-owned mining company Gécamines at a discounted price, saving Glencore $440m. Glencore paid Gertler a further US$960m to buy his stake in the mines.

Glencore does as it pleases.

What are fines to this giant?

According to Forbes, Glencore’s CEO Ivan Glasenberg is number 804 on the world billionaire list.

He’s currently worth $4.6bn (R70bn).

Glasenberg called in Tony Blair, a friend, to act as mediator for a day when Glencore and Xstrata negotiated their merger. Blair was paid $1m

Where does President Cyril Ramaphosa get involved with the most corrupt company in the world?

In 2005, Glencore chose Cyril Ramaphosa to be its black economic empowerment partner on the Shanduka Coal project.

They also invested together in the Optimum coal mine.

Ivan Glasenberg endorsed his former business partner Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential campaign in 2018 and saidhe would be he "would be a very good president for the country."

Glencore’s subsidiary Piruto and Cyril Ramaphosa’s Lexshell 849 Investments had agreed to buy 65.14% of Optimum and offer around R38 a share for the stake they did not own already.