Britain’s foreign
aid budget keeps rising. Currently at £12 billion a year, it is due to soar
during David Cameron’s two terms as Prime Minister, to £16 billion by 2020.
As the Mail revealed
yesterday, Britain pays £1 in every £7 of aid donated by rich countries — three
times as much per head as the U.S. — and much of it is being sent to the
world’s most corrupt countries where despots line their own pockets and make
life even worse for the poor.
Among the most
egregious recent examples was South Africa, where — even as our Government gave
the country £19 million a year to alleviate poverty — its president Jacob Zuma
was spending £13 million of state funds improving his lavish home.
Ministers have
stopped direct aid to South Africa since the outcry, but elsewhere the spending
continues. Here, we present our guide to the 12 countries — the ‘dirty dozen’ —
where British taxpayers’ money is most shockingly abused...
UK aid: £178m a year
Corruption league table ranking: 166 (Third most corrupt of 168
countries)
The Afghan economy
is reliant on aid, yet even International Development Secretary Justine
Greening admits theft is endemic.
One U.S. audit found
no government ministry could be trusted to prevent funds being stolen or
wasted, while the UK watchdog has condemned weak controls and anti-corruption
measures.
Huge sums have been
flown out of the country by corrupt politicians and businessmen — much of it
made from drugs and some suspected of being siphoned off aid projects. At one
point, more was leaving Afghanistan in cash than was being collected in taxes.
In 2009, a former
vice president landed in Dubai with $52 million in cash, while government posts
were said to be so lucrative they were sold. Investigations have linked family
and associates of ex-president Hamid Karzai to a £90 million property empire.
BANGLADESH
UK aid: £189m a year
Ranking: joint 139
Anti-corruption
group Transparency International calls politics in Bangladesh ‘a battle between
established elites over state resources’, with health services riddled with
extortion. Several of the country’s richest people are linked to politics,
including Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the prime minister’s son, and Tarique Rahman, the
British-based son of a previous president.
Rahman was cleared
of money-laundering three years ago, alleging the accusations were politically
motivated, though his business partner was found guilty of taking kickbacks.
One MP, a member of the ruling family, increased his income 330-fold in five
years.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
UK aid: £183m a year
Ranking: 147
When Joseph Kabila
took power in this war-torn nation aged 29 in 2001 after the murder of his
father, he became the world’s youngest leader. Since then he is believed to
have stashed away billions by flogging off Congo’s mineral wealth on the cheap
in dodgy deals.
His twin sister’s
holdings in a South Pacific tax haven were exposed by the Panama Papers leak.
The president was accused of bribing MPs $100,000 each to back a law allowing
him to circumvent restrictions over his term of office that would have ejected
him out of office this year.
KENYA
UK aid: £129m a year
Ranking: joint 139
Mega-rich President
Uhuru Kenyatta, son of his nation’s first president, is from one of Kenya’s
wealthiest families, with land holdings and business stakes worth £300 million.
He and his vice
president used witness intimidation to evade crimes against humanity charges at
the International Criminal Court over election violence. Public services are
notoriously corrupt. Kenyans pay up to 16 bribes a month to officials.
NEPAL
UK aid: £81m a year
Ranking: 130
Nepal has slipped
down the corruption index, with one expert telling British MPs that politics
there is ‘an extractive enterprise’ with absenteeism levels of 73 per cent in
the health ministry.
Huge sums of aid
were poured in to assist after last year’s earthquake, yet thousands of people
remain in temporary shelters without water or electricity amid complaints of
aid cash disappearing.
NIGERIA
UK aid: £250m a year
Ranking: 136
Our aid to this West
African nation doubled under the Coalition and keeps rising, despite corruption
and even a space programme. It has some of the world’s highest-paid
politicians, earning up to £1.4 million a year, more billionaires than Britain
and is Africa’s biggest market for private planes, with annual sales of £1
billion.
When its central
bank governor said £14 billion of oil revenues were missing, he was fired —
while one state governor alone embezzled £50 million.
PAKISTAN
UK aid: £538m a year
Ranking: 117
Even the pro-aid
select committee for international development complained of giving huge sums
to a country where more than two-thirds of MPs do not bother filing tax
returns. Corruption and tax evasion is estimated to cost Pakistan about £100
million a day. Prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s children were linked to £7 million
offshore dealings for four Park Lane properties by the Panama Papers. The
billionaire businessman sparked outrage over travel expenses — including 17
trips to Britain — averaging £132,000 a month.
Former president
Asif Ali Zardari was known as ‘Mr Ten Percent’, allegedly amassing a
billion-pound property portfolio including a Surrey mansion set in 350 acres.
PALESTINE
UK aid: £72m a year
Ranking: n/a
Britain hands £25
million to the Palestinian Authority, which pays convicted terrorists and their
families ‘salaries’ that rise depending on the seriousness of the terrorist
crimes they commit. Corruption is rampant in the occupied territories, with
claims that one minister stole £120 million and accusations that the terror
outfit Hamas took millions from reconstruction aid after Israeli attacks.
President Mahmoud
Abbas is finishing off a £9 million palace near Ramallah with helipads, two
swimming pools and a whirlpool spa. He reportedly stayed in a £1,800-a-night
New York hotel.
RWANDA
UK aid: £66m a year
Ranking: 44
This tiny central
African nation has become an aid darling despite the bloodstained reputation of
its iron man leader Paul Kagame and assassinations of rivals abroad.
The prickly
president says corruption ‘kills a nation’. Yet he has two £30 million private
jets (that have been lent to his friend Tony Blair) and a sprawling countryside
estate.
When visiting New
York he stayed in a swanky hotel costing £12,000 a night — a sum that would
take the average Rwandan two decades to earn. Wife Jeannette is said to be the
business brain in the household.
SOUTH SUDAN
UK aid: £134m a year
Ranking: 163
Britain has been a
big supporter of the world’s newest country, arguing aid will improve
stability. Experts say aid fuels conflict and corruption.
South Sudan has been
shattered by savage fighting over oil revenues, with economic collapse and
state coffers heavily plundered.
In 2012, just one
year after the nation’s birth, president Salva Kiir accused his own officials
of stealing almost £3 billion.
UGANDA
UK aid: £92m a year
Ranking: joint 139
President Yoweri
Museveni — who travels in a 40-vehicle motorcade — has won his fifth election
amid reports of intimidation, bribery and ballot-box stuffing.
Seven years ago,
given £70 million in UK aid, he bought himself a Gulfstream jet. Later it
emerged he bought six Russian fighter jets at twice the market rate and without
parliamentary approval — for three times the annual spending on Uganda’s health
service.
Museveni often hands
out cash at rallies, once giving a sack containing £66,000 to a youth group.
ZIMBABWE
UK aid: £66m a year
Ranking: 150
The country is
asking for £1 billion drought aid and its rulers claim to be Marxists, but
those close to veteran president Robert Mugabe have plundered billions, largely
from illicit diamond smuggling. One aide who died in suspicious circumstances
was said to have left his wife £8 billion in his will.
The president’s
wife, fighting rivals to succeed her ailing husband, is nicknamed ‘Gucci Grace’
due to her extravagant shopping trips to Singapore on which it is said she
routinely takes $5 million in cash.
The Corruption League Table, devised by Transparency International, is a respected annual assessment of global public sectors.
Daily mail UK
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