Tony Buckingham

Tony Buckingham (businessman)
Born	28 November 1951

Anthony Leslie Rowland "Tony" Buckingham (born 28 November 1951) is a British businessman of the hard school, equally adept at running mercenary operations against insurgents as prising oil and gems out of the ground in the most inhospitable climates.

Tony Buckingham was described as the "obvious heir apparent" to the great business buccaneer Tiny Rowland, who died in July 1998. Like Tiny Rowland two decades before, Tony Buckingham has made a killing by befriending and helping to power emergent Third World leaders. He even has "Rowland" as a middle name.

As with Tiny Rowland, Buckingham's rise to riches has not been without controversy. There was the Sandline arms shipments to Sierra Leone affair, which embarrassed the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook in 1998.

Then there were Sandline's abortive mercenary operations in Papua New Guinea in 1997 and the small mercenary army he organised in Angola in the mid-1990s.

Background

With a large house in Guernsey, which he shares with his wife, Bev, Tony Buckingham is a very wealthy man. He looks the part of the tough oilman, stockily built and with a pugilistic demeanour. Socially he has a reputation as a bon viveur:

"You could not get a more engaging lunch companion," said one acquaintance.

And like Tiny Rowland, Buckingham likes relaxing on his yacht. At weekends he can be seen sipping rum and coke on his boat, "Easy Oars", on the Solent.

Michael Grunberg, a former partner in the accountants Stoy Hayward, who helps Buckingham run his companies from their office in the King's Road, west London, said:

"I have worked with him for five years and he has been a loyal friend. He is a tough businessmen, but he is one of the most amenable people I have ever met."

Charles Jamieson, chief executive of Premier Oil, a major British oil company, who worked with Buckingham in the early 1990s, said:

"The trouble with Tony is he is a likeable rogue."

Tony Buckingham's roots are somewhat mysterious. Even business partners know little of his past. In company records he gives his nationality as British and date of birth as 28 November 1951. But there is no birth certificate for him in the public records on that date. He has not denied a special forces background, believed to be in 22 SAS - the territorial regiment. His business partner, Simon Mann, is also a former SAS officer.

Oil industry

As the archetypal frontiersman, Tony Buckingham got his first break in the great business frontier of the 1970s - the North Sea - as a diver. The small band of professional divers working on the offshore platforms could make good money. "It was here that he got his great love of the oil business," said a colleague.

In the 1980s, Buckingham moved into the business side of oil and spent much of his time abroad doing deals. Premier's Charles Jamieson said: "At one stage he worked with Bunker Hunt Oil in Pakistan and the Canadian Nova Corp in Africa."

In 1987, Tony Buckingham appears as a director of a company called Sabre Petroleum Ltd. On the board were the wealthy Jivraj brothers, who listed UAE Investment Ltd among their directorships at the time. His big business breakthrough seems to have come with his close friendship with Jack Pierce, the head of Ranger Oil, a well-known Canadian company in the North Sea business. In 1990, Tony Buckingham suggested that Ranger take a slice of the Angola offshore oil field and made the introduction to the Angolan government.

Ranger's executive, John Faulds (Mr Pierce died in 1992) said: "Tony was one of [the] business associates and this was Tony's original concept. Ranger wanted to diversify and this was the ideal project." The company got the concession in 1991 and it has produced a steady flow of oil since. Mr Buckingham's Bahamas-registered company Heritage Oil and Gas took a share in the profits.

When the rebel forces of UNITA captured the vital oil town of Soya in 1993, Tony Buckingham suggested to the Angolan government that it should hire mercenaries. He introduced officials to his friend Eeben Barlow, a former South African special forces officer and head of Executive Outcomes, whose hired hands recaptured the town. Although Buckingham remains a director of Ranger (West Africa) Ltd, according to Mr Faulds "He is no longer a working partner - he sold out."

By the early 1990s Buckingham was moving in influential circles. He became a close friend of Andrew Gifford, a founder of the lobby firm GJW Government Relations, that was at the centre of the Labour Party lobbyist controversy. Buckingham describes him as "a close friend who I have been shooting with." Mr Gifford was Lord (David) Steel's former adviser and at his behest, Lord Steel joined the board of Heritage Oil and Gas. He resigned just before the Papua New Guinea scandal broke. Heritage Oil Corporation has been listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 1999.

Tony Buckingham is the current CEO and major shareholder of Heritage, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2008. Buckingham has led the company through major exploration finds, including the hydrocarbon system in Lake Albert, Uganda and the M’Boundi oilfield in the Republic of Congo. This positive track record is expected to continue as a result of the recently awarded licences in Iraqi Kurdistan and Mali. In July 2013, Tony Buckingham told a London tribunal that he would not bend his evidence to protect his "great mate" Ian Hannam, the City of London dealmaker who was fighting a £450,000 market abuse fine in a case brought by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Minerals

It is however the mineral business that has been most lucrative for Tony Buckingham. Until 1998, he was a director of a publicly quoted Canadian mining company, DiamondWorks, which has projects in Africa and elsewhere. Buckingham runs Branch International the holding company for the Branch-Heritage group which in turn owns Branch Africa Holdings Ltd with associated companies in Algeria, Angola, Kenya, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sudan.

Angola and Sierra Leone

Tony Buckingham, became the controlling shareholder and director of DiamondWorks when the company acquired a private company, Branch Energy Ltd, based on the Isle of Man for US$24.4-million in 1995-6. Branch Energy Ltd was granted a mining lease on the diamond bearing Koidu property in Sierra Leone on 22 July 1995. In the early 1990s, Buckingham's military consultancy was retained by Sierra Leone and Angola to provide mercenaries to improve security conditions for foreign mining companies which included his Executive Outcomes (EO), who provided protection to DiamondWorks and shared offices in London with Sandline International, another military consultancy. London-headquartered, Johannesburg-based diamond exploration company DiamondWorks Ltd (TSX: DMW) was one of three junior mining firms that traded on the Canadian stock exchange, (along with Toronto-based AmCan Minerals and Rex Diamond) that contacted Sierra Leone's President Momoh in the early 1990s when the president was seeking new investors. DiamondWorks was "an outgrowth of Carson Gold and Vengold, companies promoted by Robert and Eric Friedland. DiamondWorks and Branch Energy became "the subject of widespread interest because of their apparent but much-denied connections with two major international security firms, Executive Outcomes and Sandline International." It has been argued that "regardless of Executive Outcomes' own purpose, its involvement in Sierra Leone was in a good cause. EO successfully protected a democratically elected government against a brutal and illegitimate rebel force." Buckingham resigned from DiamondWorks in 1998 retaining a 25 percent share.

Namibia

Branch Energy (Namibia) Pty Ltd owns a number of companies, including Indigo Sky Gems, in Namibia. This company and its subsidiary, Camelthorn Mining Ltd, have the concession to prospect for tourmaline at the Neu Schwaben mine in Namibia. In June 1998, Indigo Sky Gems were reported to have evicted local "small" miners - indigenous diggers operating alone or in small groups - who had been engaged in an illegal, but unchallenged free-for-all in their search for tourmaline, a semi-precious gem stone. At Neu Schwaben, the tourmaline equivalent of a gold rush had sucked in 1,000 diggers. Namibians were joined by miners from across southern Africa; somehow rumours of rich tourmaline deposits had spread as far as Zaire and Mozambique. One of the evicted miners, Lucky Metirapi, insisted that Indigo Sky Gems, its sister company Camelthorn Mining and Tony Buckingham were to blame for the squalor. And he accused the Namibian government - the former black liberation force the South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO), which took power in 1990 - of helping Indigo to move against the workers:

"The company promised the government it would keep us on the mine to win its licence" he says. "But when they got it they came up with an excuse to evict us. And the government has done nothing to help."

None of the miners has met Tony Buckingham but they all know his name, and amazingly, given their resources and isolation, they have an Internet printout about his links with mercenary companies Executive Outcomes and Sandline International:

"Madam [Mary Braid], can you get me a picture of Tony Buckingham?" asks Lucky. "So we can know who we are fighting. He has been to Namibia but never come to visit, though I'm sure he knows our situation."

In the leather-chaired lounge of the Kalahari Sands, one of Windhoek's top hotels, Russell Hay, an English businessman and director of Indigo and Camelthorn, shrugs off Namibian newspaper reports that the government is investigating allegations that his companies lied about their connections, through Tony Buckingham, with mercenary outfits.

"The government is welcome to investigate," says Mr Hay, a long-time SWAPO supporter, who says his government connections have led to a host of company directorships. "We have nothing to hide."

Russell Hay also dismisses rumours that Sandline is to provide security at the troubled Neu Schwaben mine. Hay denies there are links between Indigo, Camelthorn and Sandline and EO, adding that EO has been "a force for good in Africa". For a man who championed the cause of black Namibia against oppressive white South Africa in the 1970s, he has an unsentimental view of the evicted workers, with whom he says there was never any promise to keep:

"We are perfectly within our rights to kick them off," he says. "And to tell the deputy minister and the Mayor to stay away. Tourmaline was being smuggled out left, right and centre and we were offered the rubbish."

Indigo Sky Gems had promised to set up a US$1m (pounds 620,000) cutting and polishing plant in Windhoek to process gems from all over the country. The absence of such a plant in Namibia boosts the illegal flood of gems across its borders. The government was, therefore, delighted by Indigo's promised investment. Indigo's critics ask what has become of the plant. But Russell Hay says the Neu Schwaben mining dispute - a "PR disaster" - is preventing the company fulfilling its promise:

"The long-term objective is to establish Namibia as the centre of the gem industry," says Mr Hay. "But that needs order."

In August 1998, there was deadlock. More than 400 miners in the roadside squat have been issued by Indigo with passes to mine. The foreign miners have gone. But Indigo is not buying from those still digging. Meanwhile, the government speaks with many voices. Jesaya Nyamu, the Deputy Minister for Mines and Energy, has said the government is investigating allegations that Indigo and Camelthorn provided misleading information about their links with EO and Sandline. But Hidipo Hamutenya, the Minister for Trade and Industry, has defended the companies, insisting it was unreasonable to expect them to honour their promise of a factory when workers were defying Namibia's mineral and mining laws. Hamutenya has said that when Indigo set up in Namibia, Tony Buckingham's "extra Namibian activities" were not a preoccupation. The government was reassured by his association with Ranger Oil in Namibia and his investment in the Soyu oil installation in Angola.

Sailing

Tony Buckingham is an avid and accomplished sailor, competing on behalf of Great Britain on many occasions. He has won trophies at various regattas including Cowes Week and won the Commodore's Cup in 2000.

External links

• Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror, by Robert Young Pelton (ISBN 1-4000-9781-9)
• Hunter Hammer and Heaven, Journeys to Three World's Gone Mad, by Robert Young Pelton (ISBN 1-58574-416-6)
• Michael Bilton "The Private War of Tumbledown Tim", London Sunday Times Magazine special investgiation and cover story, 2 July 2000.
• Mercenary boss evicts gem miners in Namibia
• Heritage Oil Corporation
• Tullow Oil
• The Wonga Coup from an African Perspective

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