The Red Cross has confirmed that more than $5m (\u00a33.8m) of aid money was lost to fraud and corruption during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.<\/p>\n
Auditors found overpriced supplies, salaries for non-existent aid workers and fake customs bills.<\/p>\n
The disease, which raged between 2014 and 2016, claimed at least 10,000 lives.<\/p>\n
It required a massive humanitarian operation costing hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it under control.<\/p>\n
As Ebola spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the Red Cross Federation in Geneva was dispersing cash donations to the national Red Cross societies in each of those countries – altogether a sum of about $100m.<\/p>\n
An investigation by Red Cross auditors has revealed that in Liberia $2.7m disappeared in fraudulently overpriced supplies, or in salaries for non-existent aid workers.<\/p>\n
In Sierra Leone, Red Cross staff apparently colluded with local bank workers to skim off over $2m while in Guinea, where investigations are ongoing, around $1m disappeared in fake customs bills.<\/p>\n
The Red Cross told the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva that it is deeply sorry for the losses.<\/p>\n
The organisation adds that has introduced stricter financial rules, and promised to hold any Red Cross staff involved to account.<\/p>\n
Fraud involving donor money is every aid agency’s nightmare, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n
The Red Cross is the world’s best-known humanitarian organisation, and this revelation will be damaging, she adds.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Red Cross has confirmed that more than $5m (\u00a33.8m) of aid money was lost to fraud and corruption during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Auditors found overpriced supplies, salaries for non-existent aid workers and fake customs bills. The disease, which raged between 2014 and 2016, claimed at least 10,000 lives. It required a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[2031,172,2032],"class_list":["post-368039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-ebola","tag-fraud","tag-red-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}