Leaked report alleges ‘significant shortcomings’ in PA’s fund management
The Palestinian Authority
squandered nearly €2 billion ($2.7 billion) in European aid through
corruption and mismanagement, a British newspaper claimed Sunday,
leaking the contents of a not-yet-published European document.
According to the article, in Britain’s Sunday
Times, the European Court of Auditors (ECA), an EU organ set up in 1975
to audit the EU’s income and spending, found that Europe had little
control over €1.95 billion ($2.64 billion) spent in the West Bank and
Gaza between 2008 and 2012, noting “significant shortcomings.”
Aidas Palubinskas, a spokesman for the ECA,
told the Times of Israel in a mail reply that “no such report has been
finalized,” adding that a special report on EU aid to the Palestinian
Authority will be published by the end of the year.
Transparency
International, a Berlin-based watchdog monitoring corporate and
political corruption, claimed that the state of paralysis afflicting the
Palestinian parliament since 2007 has “given the executive unlimited
management over public funds.” Nepotism is also commonplace in the
Palestinian public and private sectors, the organization claimed.
A Palestinian opinion poll
conducted in July 2012 found that 71 percent of respondents believed
that corruption existed in PA institutions under the control of
President Mahmoud Abbas. Some 57% of respondents said the same of
Hamas-controlled institutions in the Gaza Strip.
Similarly, a hearing held at the House of
Representative’s Committee on Foreign Affairs in July 2012 accused the
Palestinian political establishment of “chronic kleptocracy,” pointing
the finger directly at Mahmoud Abbas and members of his family.
Azmi Shuaibi, head of Transparency Palestine,
the local chapter of Transparency International, said in April that his
organization was investigating 29 Palestinian officials on counts of
fraud and money laundering.
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