infinite hope

I posted about this guy last week, but here’s more to cement his superdouche status:

JOHANNESBURG – The son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator of 30 years commissioned plans to build a superyacht costing $380 million, nearly three times what the country spends on health and education each year, a corruption watchdog said Monday.

The statement from Global Witness said that German company Kusch Yachts has been asked to build the yacht, housing a cinema, restaurant, bar and swimming pool, though construction has not yet started.

Global Witness has been urging Washington to institute sanctions against Teodorin Obiang, whose extravagant lifestyle currently includes a $35 million-dollar mansion in Malibu, California, a $33 million jet and a fleet of luxury cars, while earning a salary of $6,799 a month as agriculture minister.

The government press office in Equatorial Guinea confirmed that the president’s son had ordered the yacht design, but said he “then dismissed the idea of buying it.”

It said that if the order had gone ahead, he would have bought it with income from private business activities and not “with funds derived from sources of illegal financing or corruption.”

President Teodoro Obiang, who reportedly is grooming his son to succeed him as president, took power in a bloody 1979 coup. Forbes has estimated his wealth at around $600 million.

Teodorin Obiang justified his wealth in a sworn affidavit to a South African court questioning his ownership of luxury mansions and expensive cars in Cape Town in 2006.

He stated that public officials in his country are allowed to partner with foreign companies bidding for government contracts and said this means “a Cabinet minister ends up with a sizable part of the contract price in his bank account.”

The tiny West African nation may be oil rich, but U.N. statistics show that 20 percent of children in Equatorial Guinea die before reaching the age of 5, and the average citizen is unlikely to live beyond 50. The State Department report on human rights also has condemned killings by security forces and the torture of prisoners.

Meanwhile, writer Juan Tomas Avila Laurel is in the 17th day of a hunger strike demanding justice for the people of Equatorial Guinea, inspired by the popular revolutions that have ousted longtime leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and now threaten Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.

Avila Laurel, 44, left Malabo for Barcelona, Spain, amid fears for his safety the day he began his hunger strike Feb. 11. He joins one-third of the population living in voluntary or enforced exile, according to the U.S. State Department.

The government has reacted to the author’s hunger strike by denouncing “the web of gossip, lies and miserable maneuvers” surrounding reports about Equatorial Guinea.

“Nonetheless, we hope this person’s example also serves to silence many mouths who continuously speak of lack of freedom and respect for human rights in Equatorial Guinea since, as is more than evident, this person has acted at all times with absolute freedom,” it said in a statement on its website.

Recently, I was asked whether I thought Nigeria’s problems would be solved if only we managed to fight corruption effectively. I responded that this alone would not be enough. That while important for sure, other problems needed to be tackled as well. The next day a headline in one of the papers read “World Bank says corruption not Nigeria’s Bane.” After I had looked up what “bane” meant, I realized my response had been misunderstood.

Bane, also the name of one of Batman’s nemeses, means ‘spoiler’ in English.” Since corruption essentially entails those who have power stealing from those who don’t, I think it is reasonable to expect that Batman would fight the corrupt. Consequently, corruption must be Nigeria’s Bane. The fact that Nigeria and Batman have other enemies as well does not diminish the importance of fighting this terrible spoiler…

So if Batman also has to fight the Joker, does that make Bane less of an enemy? Clearly not. In fact, those who are familiar with Batman lore know well that Bane was resposible for breaking Batman’s back. The powerful who steal from the powerless are indeed a terrible adversary; Nigeria, like others, must fight them vigilantly to succeed. At the World Bank, we certainly try to do our part, both in our own programs where we have a policy of zero tolerance for corruption, as well as by working extensively with partners, including Nigeria, to support their fight against this brutal nemesis. 

I’m mostly posting this because OMFG, a World Bank Country Director is referencing Batman on his blog. 

Kenya could descend into violence worse than during the crisis that followed the 2007 election unless reform is speeded up and corruption tackled, a United States cable released by WikiLeaks on Thursday claimed.

Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, reported in a dispatch in January that the “old guard” at the highest levels of the political elite was hindering progress.

“While some positive reform steps have been taken, the old guard associated with the culture of impunity continues to resist fundamental change,” he wrote in the cable, revealed in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Most key reforms are yet to be carried out, and the future of the constitutional review process is uncertain.”

He added: “Failure to implement significant reforms will greatly enhance prospects for a violent crisis in 2012 or before — which might well prove much worse than the last post-election crisis.”

Resistant to change
The ambassador singled out the country’s president and prime minister as being part of the group which was resistant to change.

“Most of the political and economic elite [to greater and lesser extents] compose the vested interests that benefit from and support impunity and the lack of accountability with respect to governance, state resources, and the rule of law,” he wrote.

This included President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga — former rivals who signed a power-sharing agreement after the post-election crisis — and most members of the cabinet, he wrote.

The violence that broke out after the disputed presidential poll of December 2007 was Kenya’s worst since independence and left more than 1 500 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. 

A major agenda item for the upcoming Global Fund Board Meeting is a report by Office of the Inspector General (OIG) “on investigations on ‘fraud and abuse’ (investigations of potential fraud, misappropriation, corruption or mismanagement), audits on internal control processes, functional reviews and assurance validation.” A current article at the BBC provides a broader context in which these concerns arise:

The Kenyan government has said it could be losing nearly one-third of the national budget to corruption. Finance ministry officials told a parliamentary committee the losses could be nearly $4bn (£2.5bn) a year. They said individuals were taking huge sums meant for development projects.

In a 2006 article The Economist wrote cynically that, “scandals are as regular as Africa’s tropical rains,” when reporting on Kenyan scandals at that time. Often the same leader who vowed to fight corruption are later “exposed for theft and rotten dealings of his own.”

BBC noted last month after four Kenyan government officials were accused of several million dollars of fraud that, “Kenya, generally seen as one of Africa’s more stable and prosperous countries, is also one of its most corrupt.” and explained that the most recent corruption perception index from watchdog Transparency International (TI) shows Kenya placed a joint 154th, along with war-torn nations or those recovering from conflict such as Congo, Cambodia and Guinea Bissau.”

Then earlier this year the BBC reported that, “Kenyans are becoming increasingly angry with their politicians as corruption and deepening rifts in the coalition government threaten the country’s peace. International donors have suspended some funding because money is being siphoned off before it reaches the projects it is intended for.”

But back to the OIG … The OIG, which was set up in 2005, submitted a report dated September 2009 outlining a variety of problems with Global Fund operations that may not be actual acts of corruption, but leave the door wide open to the possibility of fraud. Such problems include conflict of interest among members of the Central Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs), lack of auditing, monitoring and oversight capacity and procedures by CCMs for Principal Recipients (PRs) and of Sub-Recipients (SRs) by PRs, procurement and logistics management irregularities, and excessive top-up salaries for PR and SR officials (who often are also government employees). Some of the OIG report findings on Kenya include …

• inefficiencies with in-country financial management systems resulted in significant delays in program implementation
• monitoring and evaluation systems were ineffective
• the CCM was not performing oversight functions properly
• non-transparent selection and funding of civil society organization recipients
• late and inaccurate reports

The Standard News was a bit more blunt about Kenya’s predicament earlier this year. Dann Okoth reported that, “Kenya stares a major health crisis in the face amid donor uncertainty, poor management, corruption and apathy. Possible grant freeze and shifting donor priorities could critically affect HIV and Aids, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria programmes and compromise millions of lives, it has emerged. But it is Kenyans’ own inefficiency, corruption and impunity that would be the final nail on the coffin of a well thought out health plan gone terribly awry.”

The Standard’s reporter also bemoaned the lack of transparency from either the Kenyan Government or the Global Fund about where the country should be in terms of funding and implementation of grants. He also observed that, “of 144 countries receiving the grants, Kenya is ranked 110th in terms of average grant rating as at November 2008.” This, he implied may not be unconnected to the rejection of Round 8 and 9 Global Fund applications.

The Human Rights Advocacy Forum highlighted the plight of TB patients who depend on Global Grants for their regular drug supply. They reported that, “The procurement by the ministry is fraught with irregularities, including not adhering to procurement regulations, procuring of goods not required and substandard goods at inflated prices,” and observed that “Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA), responsible for the procurement, storage and distribution of drugs on behalf of the government, was investigated for corruption and its CEO was sacked in October 2008.”

Obviously Kenya is not the only challenge to the OIG and the Global Fund. Other countries have had grants suspended including Uganda and Zambia. What is surprising is that such practices have been going on for so long with so little obvious response. Corruption kills just as easily as the viruses, bacteria and parasites that the Global Fund was created to fight.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States has dropped out of the “top 20” in a global league table of least corrupt nations, tarnished by financial scandals and the influence of money in politics, Transparency International said on Tuesday.

Somalia was judged the most corrupt country, followed by Myanmar and Afghanistan at joint second-worst and then by Iraq, in the Berlin-based watchdog TI’s annual corruption perceptions index (CPI).

The United States fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5 in the 178-nation index, which is based on independent surveys on corruption.

This was the lowest score awarded to the United States in the index’s 15-year history and also the first time it had fallen out of the top 20.

In the Americas, this put the United States behind Canada in sixth place, Barbados at 17th and Chile in 21st place.

Jointly heading the index — in which a score of 10 indicates a country with the highest standards, and 0 as highly corrupt — were Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore with 9.3. They were also at the top of the table last year.

Somalia scored 1.1. The watchdog group said its table was based on “different assessments and business opinion surveys carried out by independent and reputable institutions.”

U.S. “INTEGRITY DEFICIT”

Nancy Boswell, president of TI in the United States, said lending practices in the subprime crisis, the disclosure of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and rows over political funding had all rattled public faith about prevailing ethics in America.

“We’re not talking about corruption in the sense of breaking the law,” she said. “We’re talking about a sense that the system is corrupted by these practices. There’s an integrity deficit.”

Various financial scandals at state and city level had encouraged the impression that the regulatory oversight was weak and that influence could be bought, she added.

The index showed a number of countries — including Iran — climbing up the chart significantly from 2009, though TI said this could often be ascribed to the fact that different surveys were being used that offered no direct comparison to last year.

The fact that nearly three quarters of the countries scored 5.0 or less showed corruption was still a major global problem, said Robin Hodess, director of policy and research at TI.

However, the watchdog identified Bhutan, Chile, Ecuador, Macedonia, Gambia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kuwait, and Qatar as states where improvement had been made over the past year.

By contrast, it highlighted the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Madagascar, Niger and the United States as nations where perceptions had deteriorated.

From Human Rights Watch, excerpt:

(Washington, DC) - The government of Angola has not done enough to combat pervasive corruption and mismanagement, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Even though the oil-rich country’s gross domestic product has increased by more than 400 percent in the last six years, Angolans are not seeing their lives improve accordingly, Human Rights Watch said.

The 31-page report, “Transparency and Accountability in Angola: An Update,” documents how the government took only limited steps to improve transparency after Human Rights Watch disclosed in a 2004 report that billions of dollars in oil revenue illegally bypassed the central bank and disappeared without explanation. The report details newly disclosed evidence of corruption and mismanagement and includes recommendations for reversing the pattern.

“The government needs to take strong action to combat the corruption and secrecy that undermine Angolans’ rights,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “Here is a nation with a wealth of resources while its people live in poverty.”

Human Rights Watch said that a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), enacted in the wake of the global financial crisis and drop in the price of oil, offers some hope for improvement if its provisions are carried out.

The government has improved the publication of oil revenue figures, the Human Rights Watch report says, but human indicators in Angola remain abysmal and have not been commensurate with the rapid growth in Angola’s national wealth. Angola is the largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, yet millions of Angolans have limited access to basic social services. Angola ranked 143rd out of 182 countries in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index.

From the NYT, excerpts:

JOHANNESBURG — Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, has 20 children, three wives and a fiancée. Recently, the matter of how he supports this large and widely dispersed family has been vigorously questioned

Indeed, the finances of everyone in government are suddenly viewed with a skepticism that often drifts into contempt. Zwelinzima Vavi, a labor leader and longtime ally of Mr. Zuma’s, is calling for “lifestyle audits” of all senior officials to surmise who is on the take and just how much they are taking.

For years, people have noticed a mismatch between the income and the outgo of many within the governingAfrican National Congress. The A.N.C. is the party of Nelson Mandela, the organization that liberated the country from apartheid, the home of many heroes now struggling to get rich.

In his novel “Black Diamond,” Zakes Mda, one of the nation’s leading writers, wryly observed, “In this brave new world, accumulation of personal wealth is dressed up in militarism, as if capitalism is the continuation of the guerrilla warfare that was fought during apartheid.”

From IPS News, excerpt: 

WASHINGTON, Mar 16, 2010 (IPS) - Poverty is on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and various forms of corruption threaten to undermine the impact of investments made to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the continent, said the World Bank in a report released Monday on Africa’s development.

The report says the number of people who live on less than two dollars a day has doubled from 292 million in 1981 to nearly 555 million in 2005. 

Painting a gloomy picture of Africa’s state of development, the report says the SSA region presents the “most formidable development challenge” of the world. It says thousands of people are dying from preventable diseases on a daily basis, and HIV/AIDS and malaria continue to spread through the continent. 

The report also highlights “pervasive” corruption in Africa in a 29-page essay elaborating on the subject. It focuses on “quiet corruption”, a term referring to the “the failure of public servants to deliver goods or services paid for by governments” that do not involve monetary exchange. 

The report warns about quiet corruption’s “harmful long-term consequences” for Africa, saying it strongly marginalises the poor. 

Although “ubiquitous” in Africa, the Bank says, because it is less “salient” and “noisy”, quiet corruption draws less public attention compared to big corruption. 

As an example of quiet corruption, the report says that in some SSA countries, primary school teachers are not in school 15 to 25 percent of the time. 

The problem has spread to the health sector as well, with deadly consequences. In rural Tanzania, four out of five children who died of malaria had sought medical attention from the country’s health facilities, to no avail.