Corruption Plagues Aid Agency Backed by Bono, World Leaders

An audit has found that in some cases up to two-thirds of grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were eaten up by fraud.

You know that Product (Red) t-shirt Bono asked you to buy? Apparently the profits from it are not going where you think. An internal audit for the Global Fund, a favourite cause of high-profile development activists like Bill Gates and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has uncovered astonishing levels of corruption. Two-thirds of funds for an anti-AIDS program in Mauritania was siphoned off, 30 per cent of funds audited in Djibouti had been misappropriated (the majority of it to buy motorcycles and cars), and tens of millions of dollars worth of anti-malaria drugs bought by the organization were being sold on the black market. The Global Fund is valued at $21.7 billion and claims to have saved 6.5 million lives since 2002.