Death of Covent Garden chairman, 64
mainThe colourful Ian Taylor, a vigorous oil trader and ebullient chairman of the Royal Opera House, has died after a long bout of cancer.
He stepped down at Christmas from his ROH post due to ill health.
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The curious world of arts patronage:
“As CEO, Taylor suffered the most damaging hit to his reputation in 2007 after allegations Vitol paid about $13 million in “surcharges to the regime of Saddam Hussein to secure oil shipments. An investigation led by Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, exposed a world of illicit payments, secret bank accounts, and diplomats for hire. Vitol pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
“’We did a settlement to protect our own staff,’ Taylor said, suggesting that without the deal, U.S. prosecutors could have charged individual traders.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/oil-trader-vitol-says-former-ceo-ian-taylor-has-died
And there was Vitol’s dealings in the Libyan civil war.
Of course, the Iraq and Libyan embargoes, the Second Iraq War, and the Libyan civil war were all trumped up shams for the Anglo-american corporate worlds. With the US and UK governments, Hussein, Gadaffi, and commodities traders, it was a den of thieves all around. Just the thing for a quasi-feudalistic system of arts patronage, no?
And may he rest in peace, freed from this dark world.
“Of course, the Iraq and Libyan embargoes, the Second Iraq War, and the Libyan civil war were all trumped up shams for the Anglo-american corporate worlds.” Of course? “Do we have to do this again? “
Halliburton which made close to $40 billion on the war as one example, though there are many others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering#Iraq_War_profiteers
And we all know who was Chairman of Halliburton in the not too distant past when these contracts were being awarded…
Dick Cheney
It’s a vicious cycle of the same dirty, laundered money that flows from terrorists to corporations to government to the arts, it’s what makes the world go around, it’s what makes opera productions possible, it’s what puts food on the table, it’s what feeds the musicians, it’s what feeds the soul.
Can’t have one without the other, but make no mistake about it, it drips with someone else’s blood.
Can’t have one without the other? You think the war business is essential?
I vehemently disagree.
I would appreciate though, if in opera houses they would print in the program:
“This performance was made possible by blood money from war profits by XY Corp. That women in Iraq were bombed back into the stone age and children die like flies is a small price to pay for us here enjoying this tremendous performance and some Dom Perignon in the intermission. Enjoy!”
Sorry to read this. R.I.P.