If An Illegally Logged Tree Falls In The Cambodian Forest, Does The World Bank Hear It?

[hatrack]

EDIT

"The World Bank wants to assist the government to enact reforms to reduce rural poverty, encourage social development, improve the business and investment climate, and strengthen the rule of law," Zoellick said. "These next, essential steps would help the government earn the respect of entrepreneurs and investors and, more importantly, the appreciation of Cambodians, who have suffered much and seek the full benefits of peace, growth and opportunity."

These words help to gloss over a prospect looming in the distance that could be damaging to senior government officials with hands soiled by corrupt deals. Early last month, the US Senate urged the administration of President George W Bush in a draft bill to impose travel bans on Cambodian officials named in a recent report on the country's illegal logging network. "If implemented, the proposed US ban would senior Cambodian ministers, top-ranking generals and others" from entering the US, stated Global Witness, a London-based environmental lobby, which produced the report "Cambodia's Family Trees - Illegal Logging and the Stripping of Public Assets by Cambodia's Elite". "It also wants other Western and Asian countries to impose similar restrictions," Global Witness wrote.

The Senate is acting on the Kleptocracy Initiative that was launched by Bush last year to combat high-level corruption, said Simon Taylor, a director at Global Witness. "The initiative aims to shut out high-level corrupt officials from the global financial system, deny them a safe haven, and recover and return proceeds of their crimes. "Our report presents strong evidence that corruption and nepotism by high-ranking officials in the Cambodian government facilitated extensive illegal logging in Cambodia; and that their involvement has undermined the rule of law, democracy and sustainable development," Taylor said in an e-mail interview. "The activities of these officials fall within the remit of the Kleptocracy Initiative, and they can be denied safe haven in the United States."

On the eve of Zoellick's visit to Cambodia, Global Witness urged the World Bank's new chief to use his days in Phnom Penh to "set the tone for his presidency and lay the foundations for the bank's approach to kleptocratic governments". That would be a shift from "the bank and most other international donors so far made little effort to call the government to account on the issue" of illegal logging. " inaction by the donor community is symptomatic of its long-standing failure to ensure that aid strengthens governance," said Taylor. "The donor-Cambodian-government relationship has descended into a farcical exchange of money for empty promises, which confers legitimacy on those same officials who are looting the country."

EDIT

http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IH08Ae01.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Are cats or radioactivity involved?

If not -- no.

--p!

[cloudbase]

2. Yes.

The sound it makes is cha-ching.

[Javaman]

3. Same goes for Brazil. nt