Corruption-linked Capital Flight Sinks Africa

[Judi Lynn]

2006-04-09 16:54 KST
Corruption-linked Capital Flight Sinks Africa
Transparency International tells Western governments to help Africa recover stolen money

The anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) released a report in Nairobi, Kenya, April 7 calling on Western governments to assist Africa retrieve part of the money swindled from the continent and invested in Europe and America. TI says it is "immoral" for Western governments to allow such funds to freely circulate in their respective countries while Africa was sinking under the weight of debt and poverty. Transparency International puts the amount of traceable "stolen" money at US$140 billion.

Resource-rich African countries have been plagued by poverty-related problems due to decades of bad governance, graft and chronic corruption. The net effect of these ills has been the illegal outflow of money from the continent to the secured private bank accounts of dishonest African elites and their allies in the West.

To appreciate the enormity of what TI is saying, one needs to make a simple comparison between one African country and any European one. At independence from Belgium in 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo was seen as one of the richest nations on earth based on a survey of the natural resources she had. Years of misrule by the late president Mobutu have pushed the country into abject poverty, indebtedness and civil war. Today, more than 70 percent of Congolese live below the poverty line compared to Belgium's near-zero percent. Congo's GDP per capita is $120 compared to $29,000 in Belgium. In Belgium life expectancy is 79 and it is 49 in Congo, while the number of persons per physician in Belgium stand at 260 compared to Congo's 20,000.
(snip/...)

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=284596&rel_no=1

[Trillo]

1. For some reason, the article is hard for me to understand.

It's premise seems to be that western countries are likely complicit with the looting under Mobutu's misrule. How does his misrule with the alleged direct causal capital transferences by his country's elites rise to the implication of western complicity?

Is the UN, or TI, suggesting that international capital flows should be discouraged?

What aspects of banking secrecy have been agreed to be abridged by UN treaty?

[acmavm]

2. Well, Pat Robertson better hope that they don't keep looking for

'misbegotton' money. He should be coughing up quite a few bucks if he's truly the man of God that he (fraudulently) tries to make people believe that he is.

[cantstandbush]

4. I agree. Those diamond mine deals made Pat wealthy. n/t

[MGKrebs]

3. Dang, I thought those emails were a scam.

[Igel]

5. A link to the source material's always good.

The article's not equivalent to the original report, but certainly complementary.

http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2006/07_04_06_nairobi_declaration

It helps alleviate at least part of the weirdness with a poorly written article--and that doesn't include the author's own spin on the report.