UNITED NATIONS: Corruption in Somalia remains rampant despite the country’s new leadership, with 80 percent of withdrawals from the Central Bank made for private purposes and at least 33 percent of monthly revenues from port operations unaccounted for, UN experts said.
In a report to the UN Security Council obtained Friday, the panel of experts monitoring sanctions against Somalia said a key to irregularities has been the current governor of the Central Bank, where $12 million of $16.9 million transferred by PricewaterhouseCoopers could not be traced.
The report also said only 4 percent of the estimated revenue from issuing passports reaches government coffers. In the past
Depite the good-faith efforts of Finance Minister Mohamud Hassan Suleiman, the panel said the system inherited by the new government “is in many ways beyond its control, while at times political decisions and appointments have exacerbated conditions of corruption.”
Somalia had not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on each other, plunging the impoverished East African nation into chaos. But since African Union forces ousted Al-Shabab fighters from the war-battered capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011, a relative peace has returned, creating a new sense of hope and opportunity.
UN: Corruption still rampant in Somalia
