Denis O’Brien has called on Europe to “give up” and make reparations to Caribbean countries for historic slavery, while announcing the creation of a new campaign group in London.
peaked last week in Miami at a conference on communications and technology in the Caribbean, Mr. O’Brien (effort) said he believed the campaign would take two to three years to bear fruit.
The Irish billionaire said when he meets prime ministers and ministers in the Caribbean there is “always a deep-seated grudge” about slavery. This had led him to personally launch a new reparations campaign with the working title “Repair Campaign”.
He said that when Caribbean countries gained their independence, it was “a terrible injustice” that they “emptied the vault” with no financial, social or investment resources.
“Former British slave owners in Jamaica were awarded $19 billion between 1838 and 2015,” O’Brien said. “All the beautiful buildings, infrastructure and universities you see in Britain today were built on the backs of slavery. The same in Belgium, the same in France, the same in the Netherlands and especially in Germany. It is, in my opinion, objectionable.”
Mr O’Brien said he had hired a team of people who contributed to the Jubilee/millennium public debt forgiveness campaign, which resulted in some developing countries receiving debt forgiveness in exchange for agreeing to invest the money in social programs.
“The EU and of course Britain have to admit what happened,” O’Brien said of historic slavery. “It starts with an apology, which has still not come out after hundreds of years.”
He said European countries will be asked to create an investment financing scheme for any country in the Caribbean affected by slavery and to provide support for major social and economic programs over a 25-year period.
Mr O’Brien promised that a study would determine the allocation of these funds to each country. “This is not a solo run. I am consulting with three prime ministers in the region and I have their support,” he said, while his campaign team was already based in London.
He added: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
In a later interview with the loopO’Brien attacked major tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Netflix for acting like “pirates” by using his Digicel network for their services without paying any compensation. He described their business models as “amoral.”
Mr O’Brien, who is a tax resident of Malta, attacked the tech giants for not paying taxes in the Caribbean.
“Remember, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook don’t pay taxes in Jamaica,” he said.
“They contribute nothing to your health services, to the education of the people of the Caribbean or Jamaica, and they are laundering all their money in a tax haven.”
Mr O’Brien said that as an investor in Haiti and Jamaica, he was “absolutely proud” that he paid taxes in those countries because it was “the right thing to do” since Digicel’s customers were there.
The telecom mogul claimed the EU was getting close to making sure that big tech helped pay for the costs of networks. He said he wanted Caricom, the Caribbean network of countries, to force the big tech to pay for the cost of deploying 5G networks.