Start Date 1995-00-00
Is Current no
Amount 30,000 USD
Notes In 1995, Paul Erickson, the former campaign manager of 1992 Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, obtained a $30,000 contract to lobby on Capitol Hill for six weeks on behalf of military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire (later Republic of Congo) during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. [During the genocide, the majority Hutu government in Rwanda ordered the army and government-backed militias to kill Tutsi people. Mobutu supported Hutu genocidaires based in refugee camps in Zaire, and was accused of allowing them to attack Tutsi. In a period of just 100 days, 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed.] Mobutu was banned from entering the United States because of his history of human rights violations and embezzlement from his own government (between $4 and $15 billion). He wanted Erickson and Jack Abramoff (who worked for Erickson’s lobbying firm and had produced films with him) to convince Members of Congress to ask the State Department for a change in policy so he could obtain a visa. Mobutu also employed David Keene, the chairman of the board at the American Conservative Union (ACU), for this purpose. Keene did this work through a private lobbying firm he started with his wife Diana in 1987. The combined efforts of Keene, Erickson and Abramoff were ultimately unsuccessful — the State Department rejected Mobutu’s request.
Updated about 3 years ago

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