Democracy Now! | “Vulture Fund” Company Seeks $40 Million Payment from Zambia on $4 Million Debt: "GREG PALAST: Speculators, the vultures, realized they could make massive profits off everyone else's generosity by diverting into their own pockets the debt relief meant for the poor.
UNIDENTIFIED 1: You look at an animal. The meat’s all been picked off. The country seems bankrupt. And these guys can double, triple or make even more of their money. Debt relief is actually just clearing a path for the vultures to walk in right behind them.
GREG PALAST: Here's how the vultures got Zambia. In 1979, Romania lent them $15 million. By 1998, Zambia was broke, so Romania offered to write off the entire debt for just $3 million. But before the deal was final, a vulture swooped in, and somehow snatched Romania’s cheap offer for his own company.
Michael Sheehan and his associates are now suing Zambia, not for the $3 million they paid, but for the original debt, plus interest: $42 million. But even bigger money is to be made in the US courtrooms, where Sheehan and others are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars from several desperately poor nations. "