A former deputy director at a private contractor that did business with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was sentenced Friday to 51 months in prison in the embezzlement of more than $1 million from a program meant to address global health problems. Mark Adams, 44, and his wife, Latasha Bell, 36, both of Fort Washington, each pled guilty in October before U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell in federal court in D.C. to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. Court records show the couple used money intended to save lives from terrible diseases to, among other things, renovate their home and buy luxury automobiles...

Court records show he also admitted that his false invoices generated more than $1.08 million in fraudulent payments between 2006 and 2010. The bogus invoices claimed to bill for services from Bell and companies controlled by Adams’s friends, including co-conspirator Everett Lipscomb Jr. But the records show that the work and services claimed on the invoices were not provided...Adams and Bell also used fraudulent invoices to pay a home renovation contractor to complete an extensive renovation of their home. In another instance, the records show, Adams and Bell received funds that they used to buy a luxury automobile.

Stephen Zimmermann says he needs more help from national authorities in fighting corruption on projects to end global poverty if his office is to have real impact...Of the 42 entities that were barred from doing business with the World Bank last fiscal year, 69 percent of the cases were for fraud, which critics say is a relatively simple to prove if there is an altered bidding document or bank statement.  Zimmermann said that very often the case starts out as one of suspected corruption and collusion, but his team faces investigative hurdles and are unable to gather sufficient proof.

The World Bank sanctioned 83 entities in 2012 for fraud or corruption on bank projects, a 247% increase from 2011 , according to an annual report released Tuesday. The statistics underscore the heightened emphasis on anti-corruption efforts at the World Bank in recent years...The number of businesses, non-governmental institutions and individuals debarred from World Bank projects increased to 83 from 32 in 2011. Since the World Bank established its punishment system in 1999, more than 541 firms and individuals have been sanctioned for fraud, corruption or collusion. Most come in the form of debarments, which render those designated as such ineligible to participate in Bank-financed operations.

Any observer of anti-corruption drives can attest that with such efforts usually comes a measure of . . . corruption. How does it happen?

• First, a government official is charged with the duty of rooting out corruption, and such rooting may target bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and the like.  
• When officials begin to prosecute such crimes, the public is often quite supportive of those actions, and governments are allowed a bit more wiggle room in their law enforcement activities than they might otherwise have.
• Once the anti-corruption activity gains steam, it sometimes takes on the taint of the very corruption it seeks to eliminate.  Officials feel emboldened to act in ways that are technically illegal, but seem palatable in an "end justifies the means" sort of way.

The anti-corruption effort can be used as a shield to cover politically motivated criminal charges

James Wasserstrom was posted to Kosovo to fight corruption. In 2007 he started raising concerns about what he saw as misconduct involving links between UN officials and a local utility company. His worries were ignored. After he complained to the UN’s oversight office, he says, his boss cut his staff, in effect abolishing his job, and had him investigated for misconduct. That culminated in his detention, the search of his house and car, and other indignities...

... after a long and costly legal battle that unearthed documents backing Mr Wasserstrom’s case, the UN’s new Dispute Tribunal overturned that. Without ruling on the alleged corruption, Judge Goolam Meeran, in a blistering judgment, said “any reasonable reviewer” would have spotted the clear conflicts in the UN’s evidence and demanded, at the least, more investigation of the complainant’s treatment. Now an anti-corruption officer at America’s embassy in Kabul, he stands to gain $1m in damages, plus costs.

He is particularly critical of top officials, including the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, for “deliberately undermining what they claim is support for whistleblowers” for footdragging and for misleading the General Assembly in these respects. “They clearly never expected that I would force them into court,” he said.

_________________________________

...economic superpower China remains one of the bank’s largest and most valued clients, even as it doles out development money to other countries and bullies the bank from aggressively investigating corruption....

Internal reports, reviewed by FORBES, show, for example, that even after Zoellick implemented a budget freeze some officials operated an off-budget system that defies cost control, while others used revolving doors to game the system to make fortunes for themselves or enhance their positions within the bank...

The bank, those inside and outside it say, is so obsessed with reputational risk that it reflexively covers up anything that could appear negative, rather than address it. Whistle-blower witch hunts...undermine the one sure way to root out problems at a Washington headquarters dominated by fearful yes-men and yes-women, who–wary of a quick expulsion back to their own countries– rarely offer their true opinions...

The bank’s corruption fighters are too focused on specific development projects and not enough on the budgets of poor countries, where bank funds–more than $50 billion since 2008–are commingled with a country’s income and may not be used for its intended purpose. These funds go down a rabbit hole and are almost impossible to track...

...a 2006 study, however, Lerrick drilled down into the bank’s books and found real annual losses of $100 million to $500 million per year on its loans–although accounting maneuvers painted a rosier picture of the financials...

“Trust funds” are the World Bank’s dirty little secret, their version of Congressional earmarks. There are hundreds of them, funded by dozens of countries and dedicated to virtually every poverty-type project you can think of. And they have been growing so phenomenally that they now provide $600 million annually, or 30% of the bank’s total administrative budget...

since they have various arms of the bank administering these funds, there’s even less oversight than there would have been otherwise. And while those trust funds are generally not supposed to go toward administrative overhead, they often do anyway, say bank insiders, which many countries are unaware of. FORBES has turned up examples–such as with Italy–in which arms of the bank have been charging headquarters and individual countries for the same salaries and expenses, helping to enrich bureaucratic fiefdoms.

FORBES has also discovered a whole layer of bank officials who have learned how to game the system or expand their influence through its constantly revolving doors...

it’s not shocking that last December more than $2 billion suddenly started appearing, disappearing and reappearing across the online budget accounts (and computer screens) of bank units around the world, according to staffers responsible for those budgets. In some accounts they showed huge deficits where none had been, while in others there were sudden surpluses. This was popping up in unrelated units across the bank’s computer networks–and driving everyone crazy trying to figure out what was happening...It eroded confidence in the World Bank’s controls...

The United Nations agency that administers a trust fund bankrolling Afghanistan's police allowed procurement fraud to flourish for several years, according to an internal U.N. report seen by The Wall Street Journal. The report, which hasn't been made public, casts new light on possible mismanagement at a U.N. office that has channeled billions of dollars into the country since 2002. It also raises new questions about the international community's role in Afghanistan at a delicate moment: U.S. and international troops are departing next year, just as the country is bracing for a high-stakes election to pick President Hamid Karzai's successor. At issue is the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, or Lotfa, a fund administered by the U.N. Development Program that covers payroll and benefits for the Afghan National Police. Started in 2002, Lotfa has overseen the delivery of around $2.5 billion to help bankroll and build the Afghan police force. Last year, international monitors raised concerns about suspected fraud at the fund, allegations first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The reports caused a major credibility problem for the U.N. in Afghanistan: Lotfa had previously been touted as a model for international assistance. At the time, the European Union put tens of millions of dollars in anticipated donations to Lotfa on hold amid the investigation.

A BBC documentary has uncovered evidence of abuse by the Afghan police force in Helmand province. Reporter Ben Anderson spent five weeks following a group of US Marines who are advising the police in Sangin district before the hand-over of power is completed there next month. He discovered evidence of some shocking behavior including corruption, kidnap, drug use, murder and child abuse.

Much of the $28 million the United States spends daily to build up Afghanistan is thrown at projects without planning, and little attention is paid to whether the work ever gets done right, the U.S. official in charge of oversight of Afghan reconstruction said Thursday. Meanwhile, security is so bad in many areas that keeping watch over projects is nearly impossible, while bribes and corruption continue to flourish, said John Sopko, who in July took over the job of Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR. In his first public speech since his appointment, he painted a grim picture of the state of the U.S. campaign to remake Afghanistan, an effort that has cost thousands of U.S. lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. The quarterly reports that Sopko, a longtime prosecutor and congressional counsel, has since issued form a counterpoint to more optimistic assessments coming from the Pentagon and other parts of the U.S. government. In order to wisely use U.S. taxpayer money to reconstruct Afghanistan, U.S. military and civilian officials need to start asking tough but simple questions, Sopko told an audience at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on global security issues. “Are these programs and buildings needed? Have you asked the Afghans if they want them?” he said. “Have we designed them to meet any specific needs that the Afghans have? And have we designed them in such a way that they can be sustainable in the future?”

In fact, there is virtually no chance that the Afghan government will tackle corruption – and everyone knows it. President Hamid Karzai has made similar commitments for years, yet not a single high-level official has been convicted for graft, in a country whose public sector ranks as the third-most corrupt in the world, according to Transparency International.

The unspoken reality is that the United States, which drives international policy on Afghanistan, appears to have resigned itself to this kleptocracy. Back in 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama tried to pressure the Afghan leader into tackling corruption, but his efforts served only to worsen relations between the two countries, and he soon backed off...Washington seems to have decided that a kleptocratic Afghan government is better than no Afghan government...