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Zambia misappropriated $13m from Global Fund - report

Zambia misappropriated $13m from Global Fund - report
By Joseph Mwenda
Thu 18 Nov. 2010, 04:01 CAT

ZAMBIA has been named as having misappropriated US$13 million, the largest amount among three other countries having misapplied and embezzled resources under the Global Fund.

And Sweden has withheld its US $85 million annual pledge to the Global Fund for next year following concerns of financial misappropriation in Zambia, Cameroon, Mauritania and Mali, amounting to US $25 million. This is according to the November 2010 edition of The Lancet, the world's leading medical journal in oncology, neurology and infectious diseases.

At the third pledging round of the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in New York, Sweden's AIDS Ambassador Anders Nordström announced that Sweden would not be making a pledge for 2011.

Nordström said the decision was his country’s response to the findings by the Global Fund's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which had identified cases of misappropriated grant money in Zambia, Cameroon, Mauritania and Mali which Sweden had since demanded to be paid back before considering the resumption of funding.

According to the OIG report, of the total misapplied US $25 million, Zambia had the highest amount with almost $12 million in ineligible expenditures identified and $1 million in non-delivered goods.

In Cameroon about $3 million was reported to have been abused, $4 million in Mali while an amount of $6.7 million was identified in Mauritania as unaccounted for.

“There is a certain pattern here and we would like to see how the Global Fund is handling these cases, how the Fund behaves when fraud is detected in a country,” he said.

However, Nordström denied that Sweden is cutting support to the Global Fund, and insisted that his country would remain a “concerned and engaged partner”.

“Sweden is doing this because we would like to ensure that resources are used to achieve the intended health outcomes and nothing else. We want to see progress on the broader reform agenda of the Global Fund. And we will continue our dialogue with them through the fall,” he said, adding that the final pledging decision would be taken at a political level.

Director of Resource Mobilisation at the Global Fund, Stefan Emblad, has also stated that all misused funds identified by the OIG must be repaid by all the four countries.

“We have from the beginning been aware that we sometimes work in very risky environments and some of the measures that are in place to ensure that grant money is not lost to corruption include an independent Inspector General who reports to the board, and a robust response when fraud is discovered,” said Emblad.

A recent report by the OIG exposed misapplication, misappropriation and lack of sound accountability by organisations managing resources from the Global Funds in Zambia.

Labels: CORRUPTION, DONORS

posted by MrK @ 5:04 PM