Flashback : NYSE's Grasso Met With Colombia's FARC
CBS.MarketWatch.com : June 27, 1999

BOGOTA, Colombia - It was an unusual pitch by the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, delivered in Colombia's steamy southern savannah to a senior commander of the hemisphere's oldest and largest leftist insurgency:

Make peace and expect great economic benefits from global investors.
"We are very aggressive in trying to pursue international markets and opportunities," NYSE chairman Richard Grasso explained in an interview Saturday night at his Bogota hotel.

Aggressive enough to fly deep into guerrilla-held territory in southern Colombia earlier Saturday and discuss the promise of capitalism for 90 minutes with Raul Reyes, head of the international commission of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The trip was arranged by the government of Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who has been vigorously seeking international support for a peace initiative with rebels that has yet to show significant progress.

Grasso said he stressed the support of the world financial community for the peace process and tried to make Reyes appreciate "the opportunities capital markets will present to Colombia when a peace is achieved."

He said he also invited Reyes to visit Wall Street.

"I extended to the comandante the opportunity to walk the floor of the exchange with me - and he seemed reasonably intrigued," Grasso said.

Getting FARC leaders to Wall Street could be difficult, though.
The 35-year-old guerrilla group is on the U.S. State Department's list of international terrorist groups; its chief revenue sources are ransom kidnappings and the "taxing" of illegal cocaine and heroin production.
In March, the Clinton administration broke off all contacts with the FARC after one of its factions killed three Americans who were in Colombia helping out an indigenous group.

new relationship :

Grasso stressed that his visit was "in the spirit of a private sector exchange" but told reporters he nevertheless hoped it would "mark the beginning of a new relationship between the FARC and the United States."

Critics of the FARC's peasant-based leadership say it is out of touch and needs to better grasp the international economy as it prepares for formal peace talks that are to begin July 7.

The FARC was formed 35 years ago by Communist guerrillas and controls some 40 percent of the Colombian countryside. Although ostensibly Marxist, its ideologists say they don't oppose foreign investment or free-market mechanisms as long as social justice is guaranteed.

Grasso said he found Reyes "knowledgeable of the process of investment."

The NYSE chairman was accompanied to Saturday's unusual meeting by Finance Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo and government peace commissioner Victor G. Ricardo.

It is true that only two Colombian companies -- Banco Ganadero (BGA) and Bancolombia (CIB) trade on the NYSE, Grasso said when asked how the country had attracted the personal attention of the exchange's chief. President Pastrana was the key to the visit, he said.

"I'm impressed with his vision. He is a merchant of change. He is really going to be a catalyst for a peaceful Colombia being a very important part of the economic bloc of the Americas and we want to be a partner with him," Grasso said. End of Story

Newpatriots.net note: Raul Reyes, the leader of the Marxist narco-terror group; FARC, was recently killed in a US-backed Colombian military incursion into Ecuador. Back in 1999 the same Reyes was met by the head of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Grasso, who, with US gov’t blessing, tried to get Reyes to invest his FARC drug money in Wall Street.