Investigative TV journalism on SEKAB - Eco Energy

Per Carstedt interviewed by investigative journalist Sopha Djiobaridis in Uppdrag Granskning

Yesterdays program of the weekly investigative Swedish TV program Uppdrag Granskning focussed on the involvement of the Swedish municipality Örnsköldsvik in the SEKAB/EcoEnergy business adventures in general and in Tanzania in particular. It disclosed how the municipilatity and other municipalities in the Swedish north invested SEK 700 millions in the land grabbing company SEKAB-Tanzania and so far have got nothing back. It focussed on the local political issues behind this scandalous business, but also interviewed Barabaig pastoralists outside Bagamoyo that had lost their land to the Swedish company and interviewed Melinda Fonnes Sundell whose name had been misused by SEKAB when they SEKAB changed an environmental impact assessment report but still kept the signatures of the original authors, among them Sundell. What became clear was that the former CEO of SEKAB continued to spend money from Swedish taxpayers during 2009 in the Tanzanian business, told Tanzania authorities that he would buy the company, while at the same time got money from SEKAB to find a buyer,  until he finally did buy the company from SEKAB for 400 SEK and turned it into Agro Eco Energy. When the company was sold at this cheap price the former owners, municipalities in the North of Sweden, were guaranteed a share of a possible future profit, but these agreements have been rewritten several times and it is now highly unlikely that the municipalities will ever get any money back. The programme clearly showed how the both the taxpayers of Örnsköldsvik and the evicted Barabaig pastoralists are loosers in this development.

What did not come of out the programme was the fact that SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) has recently decided to support Carstedts Tanzanian company Agro Eco Energy with loan guarantees. It remains a conundrum how a businessman which such low standard of ethics, as clearly shown in the TV programme, should be trusted to get support from from SIDA as a part of foreign aid.