Pretty much anywhere you turn at any major private university in the United States you’ll see evidence of generations of benefactors who, through dint of accumulated capital and/or a forgiving tax act, have given scads of money to ensure that their wealth, if not their “accomplishments,” are recognized throughout the years. This recognition can usually be found emblazoned on the side of a building – the Carnegie and Rockefeller centres for this, the Guggenheim and Bloomberg centres for that, and, inevitably, the Gates centre for this and that.
While such benefaction in Toronto is not nearly as evident, a stroll along Devonshire between Bloor and Hoskin might suggest otherwise. The newly endowed Munk School for Global Affairs bookends the street north and south, occupying what were once, respectively, an engineering residence and the Department of Astronomy.
Munk, of course, is Peter Munk, whom in U of T’s announcement of his $35 million gift in May, 2010 was referred to as “an international entrepreneur who has built several dynamic businesses from start-up to success. He is chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation which he built into the world’s leading gold producer.”
Waxing grateful, the university’s president, David Naylor, was quoted as saying: “This is a great day for our university–and, I believe, a great development for Ontario and for Canada. This exceptional gift means that the new Munk School will significantly increase the scale of our university’s role in harnessing global opportunities, while tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges. As Canada reaffirms its position as leader on the global stage, the Munks’ extraordinarily generous gift means that many more of the next generation of leaders will come from Canada.”
None of this sloppy kissing would be the least bit surprising – this was, after all, the largest single donation U of T has ever received – were it not for the irony that Munk himself causes more than his share of the “world’s most pressing challenges.” Among the allegations: systematic human rights abuses aimed at a recalcitrant native population near a mine head in Papua New Guinea (gang rape and large-scale arson); catastrophic environmental damage causing long-term illness and death due to life-threatening levels of arsenic at a mine in Tanzania; fraudulent land claims and severe environmental damage (reducing a glacial field by 70 per cent) at a mine site on the Chilean-Argentinian border.
U of T accepted this donation knowing that a little over a year earlier Kristin Halvorsen, Norway’s Minister of Finance, announced (with typically deadening bureauspeak) that, “Pursuant to the Ethical Guidelines, the Government Pension Fund…should not invest in companies that cause severe environmental damages. In its assessment, the Council on Ethics concluded that Barrick Gold Corporation is causing severe environmental damages as a direct result of its operations. I have therefore decided to follow the Council on Ethics’ recommendation on exclusion of Barrick Gold Corporation from the investment universe of the Fund.” In plain English, the Norwegian government dumped a quarter of a billion dollars in Barrick stock from its half-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth portfolio because they didn’t like the way the company conducts its affairs.
Now, Norway made its money in the oil business, so its nitpicking about the ethical behaviour of its investments is a little like Mario Andretti handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. On the other hand, one supposes Barrick would have to be a pretty lousy corporate citizen to force the Norwegians’ hand. Which brings us back to U of T. Broadly speaking if, in taking the money, U of T is reflecting its core values–in this case, “harnessing global opportunities, while tackling some of the world’s most pressing blah blah blah” then, and maybe I’m being just a little on the Pollyanna side here, you’d think the optics would be better if the guy dolling out the dosh were more a part of the solution than part of the problem.
If, say, U of T had accepted Munk’s money to fund their department of mineral engineering (folks who understand that digging stuff out of the ground is by its very nature a dirty business) this might have had a less jarring effect than his founding an entire school devoted to the proper conduct of “global affairs.” There is precedent. In 2005, Queen’s University, returned a million dollar donation from Hollinger fraudster David Radler and scrubbed his name off the side of a building housing their business school. Radler committed a business fraud; accepting his money to fund a business school was, you might say, problematic.
For all that, in the face of their critics, U of T continues to treat Munk with kid gloves. In a recent open letter to the university community David Naylor wrote: “Personal attacks such as those we have seen on Peter Munk are a deplorable affront to the values of rational and respectful discourse that are supposed to characterize a university. To note but one of his many recent honours and awards, Peter Munk was highlighted by the Globe and Mail in late 2010 as a Canadian nation-builder.”
The Globe and Mail? As, per Naylor, let’s take a closer look at the particular public record. The Globe’s the national newspaper and no matter how self-appointed that title, it’s generally conceded to be the Canadian organ of record (to the extent that notion is even conceivable today). The paper ran two profiles of Munk in the last four months or so. The first by Richard Blackwell, in support of Munk’s status as a “nation builder,” is entirely laudatory. Not a single word about the Norwegian decision or any other controversy concerning Munk’s corporate activities. The last sentence reads: “Mr. Munk says he will further his nation-building work by pumping more of his fortune into these institutions in the coming years. His vision, he says, is simply to ‘give more money away.’” Over and out.
Six weeks later, the paper ran another profile, this time by senior features writer Michael Posner. Here, at least, there’s balance in that Posner notes some controversy (though, oddly, not Barrick’s environmental record): “Meeting with his Barrick board of directors this week, Mr. Munk told them that he didn’t need any councils of corporate standards or well-intentioned non-governmental organizations to advise him on ethics. ‘We were providing funds for the education of miners’ families even before there were NGOs.’ Although a few Barrick workers in Papua New Guinea were recently implicated in a gang rape–leading to accusations that the company was violating human rights–he said it would be impossible to police the behaviour of 5,550 employees, particularly in countries where ‘gang rape is a cultural habit. Of course, you can’t say that because it’s politically incorrect. It’s outrageous. We have to pretend that everyone’s the same and cultures don’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s not that way.’” Despite this obvious opening, neither Munk’s contention that he doesn’t need “advice on ethics” nor that gang rape is a “cultural habit” were challenged by Posner.
Earlier in the piece, Posner reported that “the indefatigable Mr. Munk is busily supervising the development of the world’s largest super-yacht harbour, a $400-million playground (with waterfront hotels, condominiums, retail stores, etc.) at Porto Montenegro, a former naval base on the Dalmatian Riviera.” The Financial Times reported on December 2, 2010 that Montenegro has a well established reputation as a haven for smuggling and organized crime and that, furthermore, “Brussels has raised a giant red flag over the (state- sponsored) sale of passports. Tomaz Saunik, a Balkan analyst, says, ‘Despite the new veneer of regular processes, the authorities are creating yet another opportunity for graft.’” This is on top of the fact that Montenegro recently provided citizenship and a passport to the former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra despite his having been sentenced in Thailand to two years in prison for corruption and new charges of terrorism over the ‘red shirt’ riots that left thousands injured and 88 dead last year.
All of which could suggest that there might be something other than entrepreneurial zeal and boating enthusiasm driving Munk’s investments in Montenegro. In London, sources inside the financial industry report that sophisticated institutional investors have been researching the feasibility of “complex trust arrangements” which would allow Munk and other of his wealthy partners to shield their wealth from their domestic tax authorities (so much for “nation building”). Munk’s partners, as detailed on Wikipedia, include his son Anthony, Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, Nathaniel Rothschild, Jacob Rothschild, LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, and Eastern European developer Sandro Demijan. It’s also been widely reported that, in 2009, Munk, along with several of his fellow investors, attended a birthday party in Montenegro for Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi. Gaddafi’s involvement with the London School of Economics led to the resignation earlier this year of that formerly renowned university’s director Howard Davies.
Most of this information is public record and yet, a lack of critical oversight by mainstream media (as evidenced most noticeably by the Globe, who happen to co sponsor Munk’s high-end debating series) and the veneration of compromised institutions of higher learning, allows Munk the confidence to tell his board that he doesn’t need to take any advice from “well-intentioned” NGOs.
Of course, Munk is the subject of those same NGOs’ critical interest. (There’s an entire website run by lefty grassroots types devoted to tracking his alleged corporate malfeasance: www.protestbarrick.net) But the fact remains that his power, money and influence have to date inoculated him from the depredations of a critical mainstream press. So much so that Munk can treat damaging facts as the ravings of ideologically tainted advocates with an anti-capitalist agenda (see Klein, Naomi; McQuaig, Linda) while at the same time holding the Damoclesian prospect of a SLAPP suit over the heads of prospective critics without the resources to fend him off –as was the case with publishers Talonbooks in Vancouver and Ecosociete in Quebec both of whom had to restrict the publication of books critical of Barrick.
That Munk meanwhile continues to bestow his largesse on institutions supposedly devoted to the unfettered pursuit of the truth (free even from the grimy commercialism that sullies Grub Street) is an irony almost too rich to bear even in a city and nation well known for its satire.
