Aid Group Says Zimbabwe Misused $7.3 Million and Hasn’t Repaid It...

[Indi Guy]

Source: NYT

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: November 2, 2008

JOHANNESBURG — The government of Zimbabwe, led by President Robert Mugabe, spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things and has failed to honor requests to return the money, according to the organization’s inspector general.


The actions by Zimbabwe have deprived the organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, of resources it needs and damaged efforts to expand life-saving treatment, said the inspector general, John Parsons. Zimbabwe’s actions also jeopardize a more ambitious $188 million Global Fund grant to Zimbabwe, due for consideration by the fund’s board on Friday, Mr. Parsons said.

The Global Fund has continued to demand that Zimbabwe return the money, and Global Fund officials say Zimbabwean financial officials have promised to do so by Thursday. But Mr. Parsons said Zimbabwean officials also said they had not repaid the money because they did not have enough foreign currency.

The breakdown of trust between the Global Fund and Zimbabwe’s government comes at a time of widening humanitarian crisis and casts further doubt on the willingness of Western donors to invest heavily in rebuilding the economically broken nation as long as Mr. Mugabe is in charge, even if a deadlock over a power-sharing government is resolved...



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/world/africa/03zimbabwe.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

[billyoc]

1. 7.3 million buys a shot and a beer in Zimbabwe.

:rofl: