by James A. Bacon
Consider the odd case of Mamadi Diané. The former Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board member, whose term expired last year, was cited, though not by name, in two recent letters during the General Assembly imbroglio over Virginia’s representation to the tri-state authority.
The McDonnell administration was lobbying Del. David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, among others, to support emergency legislation that would reform the board representation of MWAA in accordance with recently passed federal law. The bill would increase Virginia’s representation on the board and would terminate members’ service at the end of their term rather than allow them to serve until their replacements are seated. (See “Why the Opposition to House MWAA Bill?“)
In a letter to Toscano dated Jan. 16, Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton referred to an incident that occurred in early 2011. “These amendments are a direct result of a number of recent controversies involving the Board. One example is a Board member voting on matters while under house arrest in Africa even though his term had expired and he had not attended an MWAA meeting for two years.”
Another letter to Toscano, from Tom Davis, MWAA vice chair, and Rust Conner, chair of the MWAA finance committee, dated the same day, made a similar point. “Current law allows [board members] to cast a deciding vote for the hiring of the new CEO, from the Ivory Coast, although he had not attended a meeting in two years and had not taken part in any of the interviews conducted to fill the position.”
(Read the two letters on the House GOP Caucus’ unofficial blog.)
Holy moly! What a story! A guy casting a vote while under house arrest… in the Ivory Coast… after his term had expired? It sounds like the MWAA was totally out of control. No wonder the McDonnell administration wanted to rush through emergency legislation to reform MWAA’s governance! I, too, have been critical of MWAA’s governance, and this was just too good to pass up. I resolved to find out more. Who was this mysterious board member?
After making some inquiries, I found that the board member in question was a certain Mamadi Diané, who had been appointed by the mayor of Washington, D.C., and who, according to his MWAA bio, was the founder and CEO of AMEX International. AMEX describes itself on its website as a small business that for 25 years has provided “quality consulting, shipping and procurement services to US government agencies, foreign governments, international institutions, and private corporations worldwide.”
Diané became briefly embroiled in controversy in February 2011 when the MWAA board was considering the appointment of a new CEO for the authority: Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., the head of San Francisco’s municipal transit agency. While Ford had excellent credentials, concerns emerged over back taxes owed and allegedly lavish use of company credit cards. The issue made the Washington Post when one board member, H.R. Crawford, suggested that critical questions posed to Ford, an African-American, were racist. According to the Post, he also wielded a “proxy” from Diané , who could not attend, tipping an informal board vote to 7-6 in favor of Ford. The board subsequently decided to start the CEO search over.
Diané, according to WaPo reporting, had attended “only one meeting in two years; his most recent absence was because he is stuck in a hotel in Ivory Coast because of post-election political unrest.” Another article noted that “Mr. Diane spends much of his time overseas” and had met neither Ford nor the other leading candidates.
According to the BBC’s Asia Africa Intelligence Wire in 2002, Diané had been naturalized as an American citizen “several years” before. The report described him then as “a fund-raising specialist for the Democrats in Washington,” and he was in fact an active contributor to Democratic candidates. The report also described him as “well-known in American political and financial circles.”
One of his pals, according to this article in the Times-Picayune, was disgraced Rep. William Jefferson, the New Orleans congressman whose freezer was infamously found stuffed with cash. Diané was instrumental in linking Jefferson with Vernon L. Jackson, the Kentucky telecommunications executive who subsequently was convicted of paying more than $400,000 in bribes to Jefferson to gain help in obtaining business deals in Africa. Diané and a business partner, Jack W. White, had encouraged Gates to broaden his company’s horizons to Africa. Diané was never accused of any wrong-doing.
Diané ‘s consulting work frequently got him involved in African politics. According to the Times-Picayune, Diané once served as the unofficial Washington spokesman for former Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was exiled in 1997. In 2002, according to the BBC, he created an organization aimed at fighting President Lansana Conte’s dictatorship in Guinea. In 2010, he was still active in that country. Voice of America quoted him as objecting to election irregularities there. In February 2011, the Ivory Coast, where Diané was supposedly detained, was locked in a stalemate when the losing candidate Laurent Gbagbo, refused to relinquish office.
That much can be gleaned from the Internet. I tried contacting Diané via his AMEX office in Washington, D.C., but was told that he was out of the country and could not be contacted by email. But his brother Mori Diané, AMEX vice president, did return my phone call. Their father was from Guinea and mother from the Ivory Coast, said Mori. He does not recall exactly where his brother was in February 2011, he said. Mamadi travels frequently to the Ivory Coast and might well have been there. But Mori insisted that his Mamadi was never “under house arrest” there, as described in Connaughton’s letter. Mori also said he did not recall his brother having been “stuck in a hotel” as described by the Post, although he was less emphatic in his denial. He also said that, to his knowledge, Mamadi never acted as a spokesman for Mobutu. Mori said he knew nothing of his brother’s activities on the MWAA board.
Mamadi Diané was appointed to his first term on the MWAA board in February 1999 by the then-mayor of Washington Anthony Williams, and reappointed by Williams in 2003. He served on the Audit and the Planning & Construction committees. His term expired in 2009 but he remained on the board because the mayor did not replace him. When I asked MWAA spokeperson Kimberly Gibbs about his attendance record, she replied by email that he had attended “multiple meetings in 2008.” Her narrowly worded response did not contradict the claim in Connaughton’s letter that Diané “had not attended an MWAA meeting for two years,” which would have encompassed 2010 and 2011.
Regarding Diané’s “proxy” vote, Gibbs sidestepped my question of whether an informal vote had taken place. Rather, she stated, “Formal votes by Board members must be made in public and the Members must be physically present.” It’s not clear that “casting an absentee vote,” as the Post put it on the basis of anonymous sources, is an accurate description of what took place. The vote may have been more akin to a straw poll, indicating sentiment going forward. In such an instance, it would not have been inappropriate for Crawford to express Diané’s sentiment. The exact circumstances remain murky.
However, it is clear that Diané remained a MWAA board member long after his term expired in 2009. He didn’t drop off until March 2011, when he was replaced by Shirley Robinson Hall. That was an eight-year gig — two years beyond the normal six. Presumably, MWAA board members Davis and Conner speak from personal experience when they say that Diané attended no board meetings in the last two years. Other than the Post‘s assertion that he had attended only one meeting, I have yet to see any evidence to contradict the assertion.
Bacon’s bottom line: While some of the particulars of the Connaughton and Davis-Conner letters probably were inaccurate, they got the most important point right: An MWAA board member remained on the board for two additional years even though he had largely ceased performing his duties. It is entirely reasonable to require MWAA to remove from the board members whose terms have expired. Whether that rises to the level of emergency legislation now that Diané has been replaced is another question for another blog post.
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