MAURICE STRONG, 68, and his wife, Hanne, fancy themselves quite the environmental couple. He was chairman of the far-out Earth Council, earning the nickname Father Earth. In 1992 he orchestrated the United Nations Earth Summit, which called on the developed world to fork over, for its environmental sins, $600 billion to the Third World.
Together the Strongs run the private Manitou Foundation. A gathering place for religious sects (Hanne is into "spiritual interests"), it backs, among other things, research into ethnobotany-the interactions between humans and plants.
Odd stuff, yes. But odder still is Strong's business career, which has been marked by one misfortune after another. To many of those who know him for his U.N. and environmental work, Strong's business affairs are a bit of a mystery.
Nevertheless, Strong's a chap to be reckoned with. Congress says that without belt-tightening the U.N. can kiss good-bye $1.3 billion in back U.S. dues. He is the driving force behind a U.N. reorganization plan aimed at dealing with Congress' objections.
Strong's solution is hardly draconian: Add a layer of management, cut costs, and abolish redundant jobs through attrition. "Underwhelming," grouses Morris Abram, president of Geneva-based U.N. Watch.
While that controversy rages, Strong is up to his eyeballs in Molten Metal Technology, a busted handler of hazardous waste notorious for its flaky technology and ties to presidential hopeful Al Gore (FORBES, Jan. 22, 1996 and Apr. 21, 1997). A big contributor to Gore's campaigns, Molten Metals has surfaced in the Senate hearings on corrupt campaign financing.
A member of Molten's board, Strong sold some shares at around $31 apiece a month prior to the stock's October 1996 collapse. Today the stock is at 13 cents a share and Strong is being sued by San Diego class-action shark Milberg Weiss.
This mixture of do-goodism and obvious self-interest got his start in the oil business. By his 30s he had made millions in small energy companies, rising to become president of Power Corporation, a Montreal holding company. In 1976 he ran Petro Canada, the national oil company.
By 1981 he had moved on to Denver oil promoter AZL Resources, where, as chairman and the largest shareholder, he was sued for allegedly hyping the stock ahead of a merger that eventually failed. Strong says he settled for $4.2 million at the insistence of his insurance company.
Nonetheless Strong came out a winner. AZL, which owned a number of western ranches, merged with oil refiner Tosco Corp. in 1983. Tosco unloaded some AZL ranch land at fire sale prices, and Strong got the Baca Ranch-160,000 acres in south central Colorado. Today Baca houses the Manitou Foundation.
Back at the ranch he started American Water Development Inc. to grow high-protein grains. Soon the plan became a scheme to pump water from under Baca to Denver suburbs, an idea that the locals said would harm the ecosystem. Caught between his reputation as an environmentalist and his pocketbook, Strong bailed. "My partners called me softheaded," he says.
His next major business venture was equally controversial. In 1992 he became chairman of Ontario Hydro, North America's largest utility. One of his stranger recommendations: that Hydro buy a 31,000-acre Costa Rican rain forest. Why? Strong said the deal was fair compensation for the harm Hydro was doing to the local environment. By happenstance he owned a hotel that catered to ecotourists in the same country.
So how did Strong come to be picked to reengineer the U.N.? The way we hear it, former secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali wanted to recruit someone close to the current Administration. Strong, Al Gore's pal, fit the bill. Boutros-Ghali was tossed out last year, but his successor, Kofi Annan, allowed Strong to stay on.
Strong says he doesn't want the U.N.'s head honcho's job. His mission, he says, is to save the planet from industry's depredations. Will the real Maurice Strong please stand up?