Uruguayans file anti-corruption claim on the Gateway

News|Bretton Woods Project|10 September 2001|update 24|url
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Two prominent Uruguayans today filed a claim alleging "several irregularities" in the World Bank's Development Gateway internet initiative. Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch and Latin American secretary of Third World Network, and Dr. Carlos Abin, Executive Director of the Instituto del Tercer Mundo have called on the Bank's Fraud and Corruption Investigations Hotline to investigate: "a misuse of Bank funds and positions, gross waste of Bank funds, cost mischarging or defective pricing and perhaps even fraud and misleading of public opinion."

They claim that "potential donors are being misled to make grants to a supposedly independent Foundation that in fact is just an appendix of the Bank".

They also state: their concern that "senior World Bank managers, especially the Bank's President James Wolfensohn and the former Vice President for Human Resources, Richard Stern, have used their positions at the Bank to create a new organisation in which they will hold positions".

They raise serious questions about the ongoing relationship between the World Bank and the 'independent' Foundation it has established. "The Foundation will contract the Bank to provide staff, infrastructure and services necessary for it to function. Any legitimate independent recipient of Bank funds is required to conduct an open bidding process before contracting services from third parties. Why was the foundation exempted from this rule? On what basis has the Bank decided to fund an entity even before it was properly created? If it is true that this "Independent Foundation" is contracting back to the Bank, staffed by the Bank, situated in the Bank, entirely designed by the Bank and largely capitalized by the Bank, we may be facing a case where eventual donors and perhaps even the American authorities that granted it legal status as a non-profit organization, may have been deceived in their good faith to accept a non-existing independence."

Read full text of claim (Word '95 download)

See press release

The claim has been filed by Mr. Roberto Bissio, a journalist, coordinator of Social Watch and Latin American secretary of Third World Network. He is a member of UNDP's civil society advisory committee and has written extensively on the role of information technologies in development. Dr. Carlos Abin is Executive Director of the Instituto del Tercer Mundo. As a lawyer he has advocated diverse actions in defence of the environment, freedom of communications and defence of human rights. Both claimants are Uruguayans, working from Montevideo: c/o ITeM, Jackson 1136, Montevideo 11200, Uruguay - Phone: +598 (2) 4196192, fax: +598 (2) 4119222.

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Published: 10 September 2001 , last edited: 27 May 2010

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