We have won the right to host.
My hope, don't allow the sky team anywhere near this. Please also read this c&p
Dick Berg and the Nairobi 4th All Africa Games.
The Sucker (s): The Government, the media, and if you believe his side of the story, Henry Kosgey.
You are a third world country, you want funds for a continental tournament. You need money, hire first world consultants, right? Sounds logical, yes?
Okay, reverse back to 1987 and you are the Minister in charge of Culture and related shenanigans under President Moi, a scandal is in the offing, of course. The taxpayer doesn’t pay enough and as an elected leader, it is your duty to correct the situation you ensuring you oversee at least one scandal.
The Ruse
Dick Berg convinced the government that he could procure a Shs 10 billion loan yet there was no record of his work, nor did he own or run a financial company…
Berg, claimed he had marketed World Cup tournaments in South America and Europe, and even the Olympics. Granted, this was more than a few years before the internet and before Google became everyone’s best friend, but still, someone should have done due diligence. To look legit, Dick Berg ‘rented’ an entire floor at one of the five star hotels in the city-don’t be fooled, the taxpayer paid for that too. He promised to bring in top American artists at the time and, to show everyone he was legit (when someone tries too hard, something is brewing) he brought in Jermaine Jackson.
Jermaine, for the lethargic reader, is one of the less famous Jackson brothers, and given that this was at the height of the Jackson years, no one really knew any other Jackson other than the one with an undecided skin tone and the voice of a fetus. We must give him one for effort though, his hook was quite legitimate. Because the GOK runs on a system of trust, goodwill, faith, gambling and other such systems of probability, it paid him Shs. 22 million as a commitment fee then after he disappeared claimed that there was no money to renew the maintenance service for the presidential jet.
The man disappeared after placing only one advertisement in an international magazine (One, a single one? You were cruel sir, you could have at least placed three, just to give us back some of the money). Henry Kosgey ‘launched a search for the man’. To date, nothing has been seen or heard of Berg, not that anyone ever expected him to be found. Which would not have been a problem if the entire floor mentioned earlier, and the Jermaine Jackson trip, were not all funded by the Kenyan taxpayer (US $2.6 million). On the bright side, at least they got a Jackson to visit, any Jackson was good enough, right? The bigger crime here is believing a man with a name that describes the entire male organ, okay, only one of the two ‘Bergs.’
The Dick Berg hoax was such a successful (although not new, Lustig had done it too before) con job, and elaborate that it has copycats in Uganda.