Germany has halted its annual payments of 200 million euros ($274 million) to the Global Fund Against AIDS, TB and Malaria due to concerns over allegations of corruption against the Fund.
Announcing suspension of the funds, German Development Minister Dirk Niebel said on Wednesday: “I take the allegations of corruption and breach of trust carried by media against the Global Fund very seriously, and I expect that the fund will promptly clear them up.”
Stressing that an investigation was urgently required into the allegations, Niebel indicated that he had halted all “further payments to the Fund until it is fully cleared up.”
With its annual contribution of 20 million euros, Germany is the third-largest donor to the U.N.-backed Fund that has an annual budget of more than $20 billion. The Fund is the single largest source for fighting AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria across the world.
The latest developments come after an international news agency raised allegations of misappropriation and corruption against the Fund. The news agency alleged in a report that funds might have been misappropriated in several countries where the Global Fund’s controls were poor.
Following the report, the Fund acknowledged that its internal investigations had revealed some minor misappropriation of funds in several cases. But the Fund insists that it has taken strict measures to tackle the problem in all identified cases.
According to the Fund, internal investigations and audits carried out in 33 of the 145 countries where the it has grants have unearthed $34 million in misappropriated or unsubstantiated funds.
The Fund acknowledged that the amount found to be misappropriated was a large enough figure by itself, but pointed out that it amounted to only 0.3 per cent of the $13 billion the Fund has distributed to countries so far.
by RTT Staff Writer
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