Communications Director of The Global Fund, Joe Liden, has released a response to recent accusations that the multi-billion dollar efforts were being wrongly allocated by the international response community.
The World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain village of Davos takes place this week amidst astonishing reports of extensive corruption and misallocation of a significant portion of $10 billion spent since 2002 by the celebrity promoted, and internationally funded Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
The Associated Press has uncovered that the entire $21.7 billion development fund has seen as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption via forgeries, lax bookkeeping and the resell of donated prescriptions on the global black market. (Click here for response from Global Fund)
The United States and European Union are the major sponsorship players while Bono of rock band U2 launched a new global brand, (Product) Red, which donates a large share of profits to the Global Fund. Other prominent backers include former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives $150 million a year.
Sweden has suspended its $85 million annual donation until the fund's problems are fixed as it held talks with fund officials in Stockholm last week. (Click here for response from Global Fund)
Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Peter Larsson said in a statement:
"For Sweden, the issues of greatest importance are risk management, combating corruption and ultimately ensuring that the funds managed by the Global Fund really do contribute to improved health."
Last month, the fund announced it had halted grants to Mali worth $22.6 million, after the fund's investigative unit found that $4 million was misappropriated. Half of Mali's TB and malaria grant money went to supposed "training events," and signatures were forged on receipts for per diem payments, lodging and travel expense claims. The fund says Mali has arrested 15 people suspected of committing fraud, and its health minister resigned without explanation two days before the audit was made public.
Mauritania had "pervasive fraud," investigators say, with $4.1 million, 67%of an anti-HIV grant, lost to faked documents and other fraud. Similarly, 67% of $3.5 million in TB and malaria grant money that investigators examined has disappeared.
Stephane Dujarric continued:
"UNDP does, as a standing practice, inform the Global Fund about key audit findings and recommendations resulting from internal audits of Global Fund grants managed by UNDP."
In Zambia the fund decided the nation's health ministry simply couldn't manage the grants and put the United Nations in charge of them. The fund is trying to recover $7 million in "unsupported and ineligible costs" from the ministry.
Fund spokesman Jon Liden said:
"The messenger is being shot to some extent. 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."
Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and formerly the World Bank's chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific summarizes the scandal:
"Without a spotlight, without investigations, and without some sort of accountability, it's impossible to root out corruption. But just simply withdrawing donations, I do believe, would condemn millions of people who are not involved in the corruption to terrible fates."
Source: Original AP Article
For Response From The Global Fund Directly, Click Here
Written By Sy Kraft, B.A.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий