Denis O’Brien says Europe must pay reparations for Caribbean slavery

The Irish billionaire said that when he meets prime ministers and ministers in the Caribbean, there is “always a deep-seated resentment” about slavery. This had led him to personally start a new campaign for reparations with the working title of the “Repair Campaign”.

He said that when Caribbean nations were given their independence, it was “an appalling injustice” that they “were left with the vault empty”, with no financial, social or investment resources.

“Former British slave owners in Jamaica were paid €19bn between 1838 and 2015,” Mr O’Brien said. “All the wonderful buildings, infrastructure and universities you see in Great Britain today were built on the back of slavery. The same in Belgium, the same in France, the same in Holland, and mostly Germany as well. It is to my mind reprehensible.”

Mr O’Brien said he had hired a team that included people who worked on the Jubilee/millennium sovereign debt forgiveness campaign that resulted in a number of developing countries getting debt forgiveness in return for their agreeing to invest the monies in social programmes.

“The EU and, of course, Great Britain need to fess up to what has happened,” Mr O’Brien said about historical slavery. “It starts with an apology, which, still after hundreds of years, has not been forthcoming.”

He said the European countries will be asked to create an investment funding arrangement for each country in the Caribbean affected by slavery and to grant-aid major social and economic programmes 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, with his campaign team already established in London.

He added: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

In a later interview with The Loop, Mr O’Brien attacked big tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Netflix for acting like “pirates” by using his Digicel network for their services without paying any fee. He described their business models as “amoral”.

Mr O’Brien, who is tax-resident in Malta, attacked the tech giants for not paying taxes in the Caribbean.

“Don’t forget, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook don’t pay any 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 wash 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” as Digicel’s customers were there.

The telecoms tycoon claimed the EU was coming close to ensuring big-tech helped pay for the costs of networks. He said he wanted Caricom, the Caribbean network of countries, to force big-tech to pay for the cost of rolling out 5G networks.