GiveDirectly, the biggest philanthropic organization within the cash transfer movement, has discovered a massive fraud scheme perpetrated by some of its staff in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has temporarily suspended its work there in response.
GiveDirectly is a United States-based nonprofit that sends no-strings-attached cash grants to people living in extreme poverty. For six months, members of its DRC team stole around $900,000 out of a total $7 million that was intended to help impoverished families in DRC’s South Kivu province over a two-year period, the organization revealed Monday. GiveDirectly said it first uncovered the fraud in January and has since “paused operations” in DRC “to prevent further losses.”
The swindle in the DRC, combined with other smaller-scale such cases, means that GiveDirectly lost about 1.1 percent of the $147 million it delivered last year to fraud, the highest amount that it has reported to date.
About the author
Stephanie Beasley@Steph_Beasley
Stephanie Beasley is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global philanthropy with a focus on regulations and policy. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Oberlin College and has a background in Latin American studies. She previously covered transportation security at POLITICO.
