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As Myanmar Tweaks Its Theft of UN Aid Funds from 25%
to 17%, Donor Anger at "Burma Shave"
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
FEC/Burma Shave series - 1st (June 26), 2nd, 3rd, 4th, last
UNITED NATIONS,
July 26 -- Under fire for taking a
25% cut of UN aid money, Myanmar's government has implemented a
temporary fix
or cover-up. It has announced that certain taxes and fees can be paid
with the
Foreign Exchange Certificates it requires that the UN convert dollars
into.
Last week, this temporarily raised to street value of FECs from 880
kyats, the
local currency, to 980 kyats, limiting exchange losses from 25% back to
17%. But
now the spread is back to 21%, with the FEC to kyat exchange rate
sliding back
to 950 to 1, compared to 1180 kyats per dollar.
The
temporary fix or cover-up did not work. Even at its best, is a 17% loss
of aid
funds to the Myanmar government acceptable to donors?
Why were these losses never disclosed while
funds were being raised, including in UN appeals for $200 million and
then,
earlier this month, $300 million more?
Myanmar troops in Yangon, funding by UN through FECs not shown
Inner City Press raised the
issue in
print and to the UN Development Program on June 26, then to UN
humanitarian chief John Holmes at
the Security Council stakeout on
July 9 and at two subsequent briefings. On
July 10,
the UN's
Humanitarian Coordinator for Myanmar Dan Baker denied there were
losses to the government. The next day
Holmes said
losses were "relatively small and transitory," but when asked by
Inner City Press about internal UN documents indicating otherwise, he committed to
look into the issue while visiting Myanmar. On July 24 he admitted
serious
losses, said he'd raised them to the government, and that "they
did
not say exactly how but they said they would try to find ways by which
we could
get round the problem."
Temporarily allowing
more things to be paid for in
FECs, thereby slightly (and only temporarily) bringing FECs' value
closer to
that of the dollar, is not getting round the problem -- it is covering
the
problem up so that the siphoning of aid money, which Inner City Press
first
pegged as the "Burma Shave," can continue in the future, including as
reconstruction money flows in. The UN, given that it knew of but
covered up
this problem, cannot be relied on to solve it, many donors are saying.
Demands
for repayment of losses to Than Shwe's Burma Shave are growing.
Watch this site.
And
this --
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