Accountability

News

Bank funded Enron corruption: US Senate

8 September 2003

A US Senate Committee found that the World Bank and US government institutions financed “questionable payments” by Enron for a Guatemalan power project. In 1993 Enron built an electricity generating plant near Puerto Quetzal and sold the power to a government-sponsored utility. The project was partially financed by an IFC loan of $71 million. In an effort to conceal taxable income from Guatemalan authorities, payments were disguised as “add-on fuel charges” and re-routed to a bank account in Miami. Researchers for the Institute of Policy Studies have uncovered numerous allegations of fraud and corruption around Bank-financed Enron projects in Bolivia and Nigeria.