Whether it's the Red Cross, the local homeless person or the guy outside Albertsons market raising money for some unknown cause, it has become increasingly difficult for me to give money to charities. It's almost inconceivable the amount of money which is loss through graft and corruption and simple stupidity. This fund has spent over $10 billion since 2002,
"But the levels of corruption in the grants they have audited so far are astonishing." If it's true that 2/3 has been eaten up by corruption that's a loss of $14 billion.
It's ridiculous.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...67dfdf80cb933b
AP Enterprise: Fraud plagues global health fund
(AP) – Jan 23, 2011
GENEVA (AP) —
A $21.7 billion development fund backed by celebrities and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations sees as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption, The Associated Press has learned.
Much of the money is accounted for with forged documents or improper bookkeeping, indicating it was pocketed, investigators for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria say. Donated prescription drugs wind up being sold on the black market.
The fund's newly reinforced inspector general's office, which uncovered the corruption, can't give an overall accounting because it has examined only a tiny fraction of the $10 billion that the fund has spent since its creation in 2002. But the levels of corruption in the grants they have audited so far are astonishing.
A full 67 percent of money spent on an anti-AIDS program in Mauritania was misspent, the investigators told the fund's board of directors. So did 36 percent of the money spent on a program in Mali to fight tuberculosis and malaria, and 30 percent of grants to Djibouti.
In Zambia, where $3.5 million in spending was undocumented and one accountant pilfered $104,130, 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(end of excerpt)......