Fraud plagues global health fund (66% of grants eaten up by corruption)

[The Straight Story]

Fraud plagues global health fund

GENEVA – A $21.7 billion development fund backed by celebrities and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations sees as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption, The Associated Press has learned.

Much of the money is accounted for with forged documents or improper bookkeeping, indicating it was pocketed, investigators for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria say. Donated prescription drugs wind up being sold on the black market.

The fund's newly reinforced inspector general's office, which uncovered the corruption, can't give an overall accounting because it has examined only a tiny fraction of the $10 billion that the fund has spent since its creation in 2002. But the levels of corruption in the grants they have audited so far are astonishing.

A full 67 percent of money spent on an anti-AIDS program in Mauritania was misspent, the investigators told the fund's board of directors. So did 36 percent of the money spent on a program in Mali to fight tuberculosis and malaria, and 30 percent of grants to Djibouti.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110123/ap_on_re_eu/eu_aids_fund_corruption

[snagglepuss]

1. This reminds of either a BBC or ITV documentary I saw in the 1990's

about corruption in the WHO. Shocking is an understatement. Opulent headquarters in Switzerland opulent conferences on exclusive islands resorts are just several examples ot the misuse of funds but the most shocking was a tour of an African refugee camp given by a pompous African WHO official with an Oxford English accent. When the correspondent asked the official why there were no latrines as children could be seen playing in open sewers, the reply was that "common people aren't bothered by open latrines".