Convictions in US aid money scam

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Two men have been convicted of stealing US aid money flowing to Liberia. The men worked for the Christian charity World Vision, which administers aid to Liberia from the US government. Anchor Lisa Mullins finds out more from World Vision vice-president, George Ward. Download MP3

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston.  It’s not unusual to hear stories about US foreign aid being used ineffectively.  What’s unusual is for that aid to be stolen outright, and that’s what’s happened in Liberia in recent years.  Yesterday a court in Washington, DC convicted two Liberian men of conspiracy to steal US aid money.  The men worked for the Christian charity World Vision.  The group administered aid to Liberia for the US Agency for International Development.  George Ward is a vice president of World Vision United States. Mr. Ward, how much money are we talking about that these men misused?

George Ward:  We’re talking about approximately, our best estimate is $1.9 million.

Mullins: And this was not money that came from world aid donors, this was US tax dollars?

Ward: This was actually mostly food commodities, um, we’re talking about the dollar value of food commodities that were misappropriated through fraud.

Mullins: The commodities being?

Ward: And they were donated by the United States Government, not by our private donors, yes, that’s correct.

Mullins: So, and when did World Vision find out about the fraud?

Ward: Uh, we found out about the fraud in, um, February 2007 through an anonymous tip.

Mullins: Okay, so, so tell us what you found out about the scam itself.

Ward: We immediately launched an investigation by our internal auditors.  And what we found, we sent a team to the field and the team did a pretty thorough investigation, and what they found was that, um, we could only verify through interviews with local communities, that 9 percent of the food that had been programmed, uh, had actually been delivered.

Mullins: And what happened to the rest?

Ward: The rest was apparently misappropriated and sold, um, by employees of World Vision Liberia.

Mullins: Now tell me if this is true or not, that, that the employees specifically, these two employees were selling the food at a market to make profit on their own and the construction materials that were to go to help neighborhoods rebuild after an extensive civil war in Liberia, um, the construction materials were used instead to build personal homes for these people and others.  Is that correct?

Ward: Yes, we believe that they sold the food on a market, I don’t know the details on that, um, but, and we also believe that they, ah, misappropriated construction materials for their own uses.

Mullins: This, this is a question I’m sure you’ve been asked a lot, but how could this happen?  Uh, I mean one would assume that there would be significant monitoring and supervision of, of…

Ward:  Yes.  And of course this is very disappointing to us because we distribute literally hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food commodity aid throughout the world every year, and, um, losses are infinitesimal in that context.  So this is very disappointing to us.  Uh, what we found was a scheme that was well-thought-out, apparently, and that involved a number of employees, the two convicted were among the ringleaders.  But they constructed their scheme such that when our inspectors came through, and we do routinely monitor, audit and inspect our field programs, all programs including food commodity programs, um, when the inspections took place the food commodity distributions happened as they were supposed to.  So that they passed those inspections.  Um, but because of the circumstances in Liberia, that is, the instability and unrest, the arrival times of the inspectors were inevitably known to the perpetrators of this fraud.  So they’re able, basically, to stage the process and make it ah, seem apparent that procedures were being followed.

Mullins:  But certainly the inspectors themselves must have been hip to something like that happening, it can’t only happen in Liberia that it’s known when the inspectors are going to be looking around.

Ward: Normally we try to have surprise inspections as well as regular inspections, and that provides an additional element of uncertainty.  That was not done in the case of Liberia.

Mullins: Are there, right now, checks and balances that have been put in place by World Vision to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Ward: Yes, there are.  We did, ah, a very thorough lessons learned exercise immediately following the completion of the audit on this, and we put in place a number of procedures, first of all enhanced our international 24-7 integrity and protection hotline so that, that’s available to every employee worldwide.   Secondly we put in place for communities complaint and response mechanisms for communities where food aid is being distributed.  We are also, our food aid management response team is devoting 50% of its time to strengthening compliance management, and we have also instituted more surprise visits to food distribution sites.

Mullins: I’m sure you realize that this is the kind of thing that, number one, gets massive publicity and this indeed has, all around the world, even in small town newspapers, but also it’s the kind of thing that so many people fear, especially now, you know, with budget problems, that there is US money, or commodities in this case that is being so misused.  You’re aware of that.

Ward: Yeah, I’m certainly aware of that.  I would point out that, um, we discovered this fraud, that we cooperated very closely with the Department of Justice and the US attorney in the investigation, we turned over massive amounts of records and World Vision employees were brought here from Liberia to testify.  In addition we of course reimbursed the United States Government for the full amount of liability so that the net loss to the taxpayer is zero.  But, at the same time, as I said, this, we regret this very much because it is a blot on a record of excellence in performance as a partner of the United States Government and food commodity programs worldwide.  As I said we distribute hundreds of millions of dollars of food commodities in countries around the world every year, and an infinitesimal percentage of that is misappropriated.

Mullins: Well, thank you very much for talking with us.  George Ward, Senior Vice President for International  Programs with the charity World Vision US.  Thanks, again.

Ward: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.