TRANSPARENCY INT’L SAYS:
Graft robs public sector of $400B a year
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 07:12:00 10/31/2008
Filed Under: Graft & Corruption
ATHENS -- An estimated $400 billion that is meant to be spent on public sector projects is lost to corruption every year, the head of the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International said Thursday.
Huguette Labelle, speaking at the start of a four-day conference in Athens, said around 10 percent of the $4 trillion (€3.1 trillion) spent annually on public procurement is siphoned off by corrupt officials and their associates.
"That's about $400 billion. It could deal with a lot of HIV campaigns," Labelle said.
The comments came at the start of the 13th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) which is focused on how corruption impacts on politics, finance, resource management, climate change and crime.
The biennial conference is attended by over 1,200 delegates from 135 countries, organizers said, including experts from the United Nations, the World Bank and Amnesty International.
It takes place in the shadow of a global financial crisis that has brought banks around the world to the brink of collapse.
IACC Council chairman Barry O'Keefe said it was vital that the war against corruption is intensified at a time when money was tighter.
"We've got to renew our efforts in relation to the transfer of money," he said.
"Not just money laundering, but the way in which money can be moved very rapidly...to various stations around the world in small parcels and then aggregated in a place that has no bank regulations."
"The term 'free market' does not mean 'unrestrained market'," added Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose government has been embroiled in several embarrassing corruption scandals.
The latest case involved the exchange of valuable state lands with an influential Orthodox monastery which made a multi-million profit in the deal.
|
