GoodWorks: not the road to salvation

By Ken Silverstein

Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story about the tenth-anniversary party thrown by GoodWorks International LLC, a “global advisory firm” founded by Andrew Young, a former civil rights leader and ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration, and Carlton Masters, whose background is in international banking. The party at the Georgia Aquarium had the theme “Do Well By Doing Good,” and Masters, wrote the Journal-Constitution, “said the company promotes transparency, governance, ethics and values in all the countries where it does business.”

You might be suspicious of any organization so intent on proclaiming its virtue—and in this case, your suspicions would be well grounded. Andrew Young's days of do-gooding have long since passed. Young, who did not reply to a request for comment, currently works as a door-opener for big companies (like ChevronTexaco, Coca-Cola, and Nike) that are looking to do business overseas, especially in Africa. His firm has offices in the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Angola, and Nigeria; the latter serves as GoodWorks' chief cash cow, and it's also one of the world's most corrupt nations: over the past fifteen years, Nigeria has exported more than $200 billion worth of oil, but the overwhelming majority of its people live in poverty.

Young's stock-in-trade is providing access to African government officials, most notably the overrated Nigerian president (and one-time dictator) Olusegun Obasanjo. Africa Energy Intelligence , a Paris-based newsletter, describes GoodWorks as “a key intermediary between U.S. corporations and Nigeria's leaders.” It mentions that the relationship between Young and Obasanjo is so friendly that several of the Nigerian leader's children have visited the Young family in Atlanta.

GoodWorks also employs two former American ambassadors to Nigeria, Howard Jeter and Walter Carrington. Carrington is so popular with Nigerian officials that, again according to Africa Energy Intelligence, he has a street named after him in Lagos and has received the Order of the Federal Republic, Nigeria's third-highest decoration.

Young has helped ChevronTexaco curry favor in Nigeria and greatly aided its business prospects there. According to a well-placed source with whom I spoke, when Obasanjo was running for the presidency in 1999, he came to the United States and traveled on a corporate jet provided to him by the oil giant. Young, I was told, was his frequent companion during this tour, which included stops in New York, Houston, and California, as well as much wining and dining—at least some of which, including hotel bills, was paid for by ChevronTexaco (which, like Young, didn't reply to a request for comment).

Young also milks his contacts with government officials in Angola, a country so unbelievably venal that Nigeria looks clean in comparison. “Angola's petroleum revenues, as they are currently used, are widely viewed as a curse,” explains a confidential 2002 report prepared for Royal Dutch/Shell Group. “Those ordinary Angolans who are aware of Angola's oil riches have grown to realize in recent years that this resource is managed for the immense profit of a very few, and the increasing misery of the many.” The report, which I obtained a few years ago when I was working at the Los Angeles Times, said that a “charitable” foundation set up in the name of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and heavily funded by foreign oil companies, seeks to “bolster the personality cult of [Santos] and to attempt to convince his compatriots that he cares about them.”

Young, though, is always available to help polish Santos's image. GoodWorks is a member of the U.S.-Angola Chamber of Commerce—a group that receives financial support from American oil companies and that is chock full of former American government officials, including five who previously worked at the State Department. The Chamber works hard to improve ties between Washington and Angola, and when Santos came to Washington in 2004 for the ceremonial renewal of a huge oil concession run by ChevronTexaco, Young was picked to host a dinner in his honor at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

The Journal-Constitution article quotes Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin saying that GoodWorks has proven that “public-purpose capitalism” is possible. If the “public” she refers to is composed of corrupt African leaders, their American cronies, and huge international energy conglomerates, she's right. But if she was trying to say that GoodWorks is living up to its name when it comes to fighting African poverty, she couldn't have been more wrong.