Abstract

"International Fraud and the End of Empire: Ghana in the 1950s"

Bianca Murillo, California State University, Dominguez Hills (bmurillo8@csudh.edu)

My research investigates the history of international fraud and scandal during Ghana’s post-independence years. As the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence in 1957, Ghana became a hot economic opportunity zone attracting businessmen and investors from around the world. Partly encouraged by President Kwame Nkrumah’s efforts to attract foreign capital for his economic agenda, and partly fueled by circulating ideas about Ghana—a newly liberated African colony, ripe with economic possibility— hundreds of businessmen, consultants, investors, and entrepreneurs flocked to the capital city Accra to pitch ideas and strike million-dollar deals with the country’s new political elite. While foreign finance funded much-needed industrial and infrastructural development, some of these transactions became entangled in scandal, lies, and various forms of economic deceit. This paper centers on one such case in 1958 when the Government of Ghana denied claims that it had granted all future mineral rights to Camp Bird Ltd., a London mining and finance house, and deported the company’s resident director Emil Savundra. The Ghana mineral rights dispute, coupled with Savundra’s criminal past, made international news headlines, produced anxieties among more established City of London financiers, and intensified on-going political tensions and rivalries in Ghana. By examining the multiple stories and people surrounding the dispute, this paper situates Ghana’s post-independence history within the world of international business and animates the history of global finance—an area of study which is often considered abstract and impersonal. It also suggests that men like Savundra and the fraudulent deals he directed were not unique. The paper explores connections between the end of Empire in Africa and the emergence of a new type of jet-setting global businessman, mostly from Western countries, who facilitated illicit financial flows around the world and successfully evaded authorities, laws, and state regulations.