Prompted by the World Bank’s discovery of fraud in its health projects in India, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has decided to follow suit and re-evaluate its own line of programs for instances of corruption. The fund announced that although it has yet to find proof that any of the USD170 million it has given to the South Asian country went to unscrupulous parties, an inquiry was necessary after recent developments of fraud unraveled in the World Bank’s projects. “It’s important for us to take the findings of the World Bank seriously,” said Taufiqur Rahman, the fund’s head of grants in South and West Asia. “It’s a review just to make sure, given the World Bank report, that our investments are protected. I was surprised (by the report) because we didn’t know the scale of it.” The World Bank report revealed that nearly 90 percent of contracts connected to the bank’s funds showed clear signs of fraud and other disturbing discrepancies.
Source: Global Fund to review India projects for fraud (Reuters)
