José María Figueres
José María Figueres | |
---|---|
Óscar Arias Sánchez | |
Preceded by | None |
Succeeded by | Luis Diego Escalante Vargas |
Personal details | |
Born | MPA) | 24 December 1954
Profession | Businessman and politician |
Signature | |
José María Figueres Olsen (born 24 December 1954) is a Costa Rican businessman and politician, who served as President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998. He also ran for president in the 2022 presidential election but was defeated by Rodrigo Chaves.
Figueres started his career as an engineer working in
In 2000, Figueres joined the
Biography
José María Figueres is the son of
Figueres grew up in La Lucha, a farm community his father Don Pepe founded in 1928. There José María attended the public school Cecilia Orlich Figueres, before going on to study at the Colegio Humboldt and later at the Lincoln High School, both in San José.
Figueres has three younger siblings, Christiana Figueres, Mariano and Kirsten. Christiana Figueres was Executive Director of the UNFCCC, responsible for international climate change negotiations. From the first marriage of his father, Figueres has an older brother, Marti, and a sister, Muni. Muni Figueres has held various public positions, and since 2010 she has served as the Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States.
José María has two children from his first marriage to former
Education
Figueres completed his undergraduate studies at the
Later, he continued his academic studies at the
Business career
Upon returning to Costa Rica after concluding his studies at West Point, he joined and later led the restructuring process of the deeply indebted family business, Sociedad Agroindustrial San Cristobal (SAISC) .[citation needed] Figueres helped return the business to profitability by disposing of non-productive assets, reducing leverage, improving the efficiency of many industrial processes, and focusing on expanding exports.[citation needed]
Years later, in 1990, Figueres co-founded Energía Global Inc. a renewable energy company with operations in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Chile. The business was later sold and today it continues to operate as a subsidiary of ENEL.[citation needed]
In 1999, Figueres joined the Board of Directors of Terremark Worldwide Inc, on which he served for five years. He then continued to be closely associated with the company in its international expansion projects. Terremark is involved in transforming and securing enterprise-class IT on a global scale, providing industry managed services, cloud computing, colocation and web hosting solutions for enterprise IT infrastructures from their data centers. In 2011, Terremark was acquired by Verizon.
In 2005, Figueres undertook a one-year assignment as Managing Director of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization, responsible for refocusing global consulting within the group. This group is the largest Arab group of professional services firms, headquartered in Amman, Jordan, with over 73 offices in 23 countries. From 2006 to 2009, Figueres served on the International Advisory Board of Abraaj Capital, the largest Middle East Private Equity firm with over $6 billion of assets under management. In 2009, he joined the Advisory Board of Grupo Arcano, an independent financial services firm based in Madrid, Spain.[citation needed]
In 2010, Figueres joined IJ Partners in Geneva, Switzerland, as a Managing Partner. IJ Partners was founded in 2009 during the global economic crisis, to provide financial services to private individuals and family offices investing exclusively in tangible assets.
Figueres served on the board of the
Political career
In 1986
Following his graduate studies at Harvard, Figueres returned to Costa Rica and declared his intention to seek the nomination of the political party he belonged to, the National Liberation Party. After a heated and much-disputed primary election process involving five candidates, Figueres won the party's nomination in 1993 and went on to the national election that he won in February 1994. José María Figueres Olsen was elected President of Costa Rica for four years at the age of 39, the nation's youngest elected president in the 20th century (Alfredo González Flores took office in 1914 at the age of 36. However he was not elected by popular vote but rather appointed by Congress.
Presidency (1994-1998)
According to Leonardo Garnier, minister of Planning and Economic Policy during the Figueres' administration, the latter promoted
Figueres reformed and reorganized many public institutions including the closing of some of them, such as Banco Anglo Costarricense (which was plagued with corruption charges) and the National Railway System (INCOFER) which after being re-organized several times was again insolvent. The latter decision was reversed by the following administrations, which actually invested in modernizing the railway, with apparent success.[5] The Figueres Administration contributed to the establishment of Intel Corporation in Costa Rica.
His administration also launched several initiatives to improve national education, including a constitutional reform approved by Congress to dedicate 6% of GDP towards public education; introduced English as a second language in public schools from the first grade up; consolidated the installation of computer labs in high schools.[6]
During his term, government created the EBAIS (Primary Teams of Basic Health Care) as a provider of preventive medicine in the communities, primarily by giving easy access to medical services.
He was also an early leader on climate change, putting in place the first price on carbon in the world in Costa Rica in 1995. In 1994, he proposed to the U.S. Government via the U.S. Department of Energy negotiation of a U.S. - Costa Rica bilateral agreement on climate change. This was the first such agreement in the world, was negotiated in 1994 and signed by President Figueres and U.S. Vice President Al Gore in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House on September 30, 1994. From then on, Costa Rica continued to lead on climate change, engaging other nations across the Americas and under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, helping to ensure the success of the Kyoto Protocol and since. Jose Maria's sister, Christiana Figures, played a leading role, advising President Figueres, negotiating the agreement with the U.S., and engaging other nations, eventually becoming Costa Rica's representative in the global climate treaty negotiations, and then the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Controversies
Chemise case
In 1991, when Figueres was seen as a possible contender for the presidency, brothers David and José Romero published a book accusing Figueres of having participated in the extrajudicial execution of a drug dealer named Jose Joaquin Orozco, known as "Chemise".
Religion
In the middle of Figueres' presidential campaign, anonymous allegations arguing Figueres was not
Alcatel
In 2004, Costa Rica's Attorney General opened official investigations against two other former presidents, for alleged financial misconduct. Both were placed under arrest. Shortly afterwards local media reports claimed Figueres had also received payments from Alcatel.[11] It was reported that Figueres had earned nearly US$900,000 for three years of consultancy work on telecommunications with Alcatel, initiated two years after his presidency, and while already working in Europe. Figueres disclosed all his financial affairs and requested the Costa Rican Internal Revenue Service to review his tax returns. Following this review, Figueres amended his tax filings to include income earned outside of Costa Rica, which is not subject to Costa Rican tax, and paid 67.2 million Costa Rican colones in taxes. On 5 December 2005 the Internal Revenue Service of Costa Rica notified Figueres of no financial misconduct with resolution number 5452000009594 dated 27 October 2005.[citation needed]
A Congressional Commission took it upon themselves to investigate the allegations. The Commission of Control of Public Revenue and Expenditure (Comisión de Control del Ingreso y el Gasto Público) summoned Figueres. On 6 September 2005, Judge Maria Morales of the First Circuit Court of Costa Rica pronounced a ruling in Figueres' favour, and against the Congressional Commission's procedures. The Commission also failed to register a report on the findings before the Congress, as stipulated in Congressional Procedural Regulations.
In the context of the allegations, Figueres resigned from his role as CEO and executive director of the World Economic Forum in October 2004.[12] Transparency International had highlighted this incident in their Global Corruption Report in 2006.[13] Figueres was never summoned nor charged by the Costa Rican Attorney General's office.[14] On 19 September 2007, the Attorney General formally announced that there were no grounds on which to press any charges against Figueres.[15]
Paradise Papers
In November 2017 an investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism cited his name in the list of politicians named in the "Paradise Papers" allegations.[16]
International awards
President Figueres has received international awards for his work and adherence to the tenets of Sustainable Development.
- Kew Gardens Annual Award, 1995
- Botanic Research Institute Texas, 1996
- State Botanical Garden in Missouri, 1996
- First recipient of the Global Prize from the World Bank's Global Environmental Fund for leadership and efforts for the environment, 1998
- Liberty Prize from the Max Schmidheiny Foundation and St. Gallen University in Switzerland, 1998
- Award of the Climate Institute, Washington D.C., 1998
- Order of José Matías DelgadoGrand Silver Cross from the Republic of El Salvador, 1999
- Sustainability Award in Switzerland, 2003
International work
Upon leaving government in 1998 President Figueres founded Entebbe (Costa Rican Foundation for Sustainable Development). The foundation started and developed pioneering programs, such as LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities), APVE (Clean Transport Alternatives) and CENTAIRE (Center for monitoring and evaluation of Air Quality in Central America). A large number of academic, social and communal organizations, as well as private sector partners contributed to the development of these programs. In the same field of deploying technologies to boost development, together with Nicholas Negroponte and Jeffrey Sachs, Figueres founded the "Digital Nations Consortium", a program overseen by the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1999 he was called upon by Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations to chair a working group on Information, Communication, Technology (ICT). He was later elected Chairman of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (ICT).
While leading the ICT Task Force, in mid-2000 Figueres was appointed Managing Director of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and independent international organization dedicated to improving the state of the world by bringing together world leaders to establish alliances that can influence industry, regional and global agendas. Three years later he was appointed the first CEO of the WEF. His responsibilities included coordinating the annual meeting of the forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brought together prominent corporate leaders, heads of State and government, as well as respected personalities from the academic, cultural and religious world.
Figueres resigned from the WEF towards the end of 2004, when consulting work with
Since having left government in Costa Rica, Figueres has served on numerous boards. He has served as a director of the
References
- ^ El Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones: Presidentes de la República de Costa Rica
- ^ "WEF director resigns over undeclared fees". SWI swissinfo.ch. 29 October 2004.
- ^ "American Girl and Costa Rican President Wed". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. 8 February 1954.
- ^ "José María Figueres Olsen". 8 February 2012. Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- ^ Jimenez 87 (8 April 2009). "Crtrenes: Incofer contrata más personal para operación de tren a Heredia*". Crtrenes. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "CONSTITUCIÓN POLÍTICA REPÚBLICA DE COSTA RICA". 24 January 2008. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- ^ David Romero and José Romero, El caso Chemise, D. Mora, San José, Costa Rica (1991).
- ^ Article by journalist Laffitte Fernández (in Spanish)
- ^ "Court of Appeals ruling (Spanish)". Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2007.
- ^ "CONSTITUCIÓN POLÍTICA REPÚBLICA DE COSTA RICA". 24 January 2008. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- ^ "The Tico Times Online Daily Page". 17 May 2009. Archived from the original on 17 May 2009. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- ^ "CEO resigns". World Economic Forum. 29 October 2004.
- ^ "Global Corruption Report 2006 - Transparency International, Page 147" (PDF). Global Corruption Report 2006 - Transparency International.
- ^ "Ex-President José María Figueres Olsen to head Liberation Party". 9 February 2015.
- ^ "DiarioExtra.com". 11 October 2007. Archived from the original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
- ^ "Explore The Politicians in the Paradise Papers - ICIJ". ICIJ. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ^ "Former Heads of State and Government | Club de Madrid". Archived from the original on 13 November 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
External links
- Carbon War Room Archived 1 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- Website - Jose Maria Figueres Olsen
- Dean's Alumni Leadership Council, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
- United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force
- Biography of José María Figueres by CIDOB (in Spanish)