What institutions can you trust these days with your donations? The Associated Press reported today that the $21.7 billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a fraud where at least two-thirds of the funds were "pocketed," and donated medicines were sold on the black market for profit.
The prestigious development fund is backed by celebrities like Bono, politicians like French president Sarkozy, and a cool $150 million from Bill and Melinda Gates. The AP wrote, "The fund has been a darling of the power set that will hold the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain village of Davos this week."
Although many of the contributors to this fund likely had good intentions for their donation, it seems that funds of this size are too-big-to-succeed and are ripe for corruption. The fund spokesman, Jon Liden, said, "We would contend that we do not have any corruption problems that are significantly different in scale or nature to any other international financing institution."
In other words, their benchmark is staying on par with the corruption levels of other major institutions around the world, which, more than anything, is an indictment of any large organization run by the establishment.
Seeking to save their reputation, the fund's general inspector John Parsons claims that it is safe to donate to them above other charities because they have a corruption investigation mechanism where others do not. So, we should donate our hard-earned money to them precisely because they are proven fraudsters, versus others who successfully hide their fraud.
In a stunning reversal of blame, the article ends with Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the World Bank, chastising people who withhold donations: "But just simply withdrawing donations, I do believe, would condemn millions of people who are not involved in the corruption to terrible fates."
15 comments:
"But just simply withdrawing donations, I do believe, would condemn millions of people who are not involved in the corruption to terrible fates."
Translation: How can they keep stealing if you don't donate?!
Please send me your donations and I promise to give 2/3rds to charity and I'll only keep one third.
You have to be a fool to donate one cent to anything Bill Gates is associated with, the man who rammed the biggest POS operating system down billions of throats. Bono is just another low talent jerk trying to justify his useless, overpaid existence.
The article seems to be discussing retail fraud. It doesn't add up to the billions that appear to be leaking out, which might make this charity another tax dodge. Avoiding taxes is a preoccupation for a certain group of people who see themselves as apart from the rest of the nation and spend a fair amount of energy figuring out how to isolate their economy from everyone else's. The Gates and Buffetts should have been taxed to keep them from becoming their own sovereigns, which seem to help themselves much more than they help the little people on any continent.
Cynicism beyond belief.
For the greedy, there is Never Enough.
Well, look into the yes of those two reptiles!
It will show you their real personalities!
SNAKES EYES & forked tongues!
Congrats on writing up the worst article I've ever read. yes I'm serious.
It's not an article, moron... it's an intro to this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/23/global-health-fund-fraud_n_812801.html
check out www.treasureislands.org Book by Nicholas Shaxson on the offshore tax-dodgers and their outernets. He estimates for every dollar we give to the 'developing' world we extract ten.
I'd say thats a generous estimate.To the donors.
Just as with the cancer funds, there are no intentions of curing these diseases. If cancer were cured, the WORLD economy would collapse. People are worth FAR more sick than healthy.
Anything with Gates' name on it has my immediate suspicion.
Susan Komen is no more 'for the cure' than Goldman Sachs is for the homeowner.
reader at 6:50,
Thanks for the link.
Agree,no money in a cure!
Google Gates and Eugenics he appears to be in favour of less of us dumb ordinary folks.
Also reported as funding geoengineering on a large sccale.(think chemtrails).
As for the operating system, USE LINUX its free faster and better. For home use you wont have to pay a penny for all your application software.
I’m writing from (RED) and want to correct a few inaccuracies in this article.
There have been recent news reports of incidents of fraud found in grants the Fund administers around the world. It is important to note first that the Fund has zero tolerance for fraud and corruption. It was the Global Fund themselves who identified these issues, published them publicly and took steps to stop them and recoup the lost money. Your claim that ‘at least two-thirds of the funds were ‘pocketed’” is absolutely wrong. Through its own auditing process, the Fund’s Inspector General’s office found instances of corruption in just four countries – out of the more than 145 countries around the world the Fund does lifesaving work. This involved $34 million dollars, which is less than 3/10s of one percent of the more than 13 billion that is at work saving lives each day.
Any type of corruption is sickening, but it's even more appalling when it involves people’s lives. We should applaud the Global Fund for continuing this work in some of the most difficult parts of the world while rooting out corruption early and dealing with it quickly.
You can read the Global Fund’s response to these recent articles on their website here www.theglobalfund.org. And if you have any comments or questions check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/globalfund.
-Stephanie @ (RED)
The Global Fund would like to make the following statement about how it protects its grant money.
Two articles published by the Associated Press on January 23 and 24 and picked up by a large number of media outlets have seriously misrepresented the extent of fraud discovered in grants financed by the Global Fund.
To date, the Global Fund’s Office of the Inspector General has undertaken audits or investigations in 33 of the 145 countries where the Global Fund has grants. As a result of this, the total amount of misappropriated or unsubstantiated funds that the Global Fund is demanding to be returned at present is $34 million. While all fraud is unacceptable and the Global Fund is taking strong and firm action to recover such losses, one should keep in mind that this amount represents 0.3 per cent of the total amount of $13 billion disbursed to countries by the Global Fund so far.
In short, the vast majority of Global Fund resources are delivering tremendous progress in the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria and saving millions of lives through the hard work of thousands of hard-working, honest health workers around the world.
Some media reports have also stated that the controls in place to monitor flows of Global Fund financing to countries are non-existent or inadequate. These reports are false and misleading.
Global Fund grants are subject to a rigorous system of financial controls. All grant spending is verified by an independent agency which is required to report at least annually (and in many cases quarterly) on grant progress. All grant progress reports are posted online.
In addition to these controls, the Global Fund’s Office of the Inspector General provides an additional independent layer of oversight and scrutiny to uncover wrong-doing.
The Global Fund is committed to the highest standards of transparency and accountability and has acted upon each instance of misuse of its resources by taking strong and swift action, by suspending grants, freezing cash disbursements and by demanding a return of misused funds.
For more information please visit: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/howprotect/
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