General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Clinton-Bush Fund has closed up shop in Haiti: Here are the fruits of neoliberal "charity" [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)developing countries, this is partly because we have legalized so much of it. Election campaign contributions are only the most costly and debilitating form: a legalized bribery that, for example, gives the pharmaceutical and insurance companies a veto over healthcare policy and generally hollows out our limited form of democracy.
This legalization of corruption reached a new milestone last December when one Lewis Lucke, a long-time US Agency for International Development (USAID) official turned influence-peddler, sued a consortium of firms operating in Haiti for $492,000, for breach of contract. As Lucke would have it (sorry!), he was promised $30,000 a month, plus incentives, to use his influence to secure contracts for these nice fellas. He got them $20m worth of contracts, but they cut him off after two months. The defendants in the case are Ashbritt, a US contractor with a questionable track record, and the GB Group, one of the largest Haitian conglomerates. Together, they formed the Haiti Recovery Group, which they incorporated in the Cayman Islands, to bid on reconstruction contracts.
Lucke was well-positioned for the job, having formerly been in charge of the multibillion dollar reconstruction effort in Haiti for the US government. (He was also previously the USAID Iraq mission director; we know how that reconstruction turned out.) His lawsuit states that when he worked for USAID, He met with Haitian offi cials, former United States Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, the state department, World Bank, and other participants
He was then hired by Ashbritt to, among other things, make strategic introductions to key stakeholders, organizers and brokers of Haitian recovery efforts
Bill Clinton and George W Bush established the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund to help Haiti build back better, and Clinton is co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which has met about six times since the earthquake, and has been widely criticized for its lack of Haitian representation in decision making...
Politicians here are quick to blame the Haitians for the lack of progress since the earthquake, and corruption is often assumed to be exclusively a Haitian problem. But it is clear that some of it comes from outside. Maybe a lot. For example, influence-peddling might help to explain why not a single US government contract for Haitis reconstruction in the last five months has gone to a Haitian company. In fact, out of $194m awarded since the earthquake, just $4.8m, or 2.5% of the total, has gone to Haitian companies... some 92% of USAIDs contracts have gone to Beltway (Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia) contractors. Now, isnt that a geographical oddity? About 15.5% of contracts in January 2010 were no bid, which presumably could be justified because of the urgency; however, this proportion has increased to 42.5% over the last five months...
This week, 53 members of Congress, including Democratic leaders such as Eliot Engel and Steny Hoyer, sent a letter to the Obama administration lamenting the appalling conditions that continue to prevail in tent camps and calling on organizations receiving US funding to demonstrate that they are making concrete progress in the camps. Its time for the so-called international community to clean up its act.
http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume4-41/Haiti%20and%20the%20International%20Aid%20Scam.asp