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Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

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Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#31

Post by setgree »

That's a big number, but I'm not shocked by the error/graft, nor its source (poor accounting).

A well-regarded development organization I used to work for went through a quiet reorganization in 2016 when a few million dollars came up missing. It turned out that just getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way.

I don't know how things ultimately resolved, but it's not obvious to me that effective countermeasures would have been cheaper than letting some of the money leak out in the delivery chain. It's an inherently hard problem to disburse development aid to the right parties in the right amounts.

Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#32

Post by zdragnar »

javajosh wrote: post #20

I wish this was a link to the original Oxfam audit. It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing. If the audit really knew what it was doing, wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for? That said, it's high-time for organizations like the World Bank to have fully transparent finances. Like, I should be able to go to a website and see where e…

> It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing.

Audits have degrees of certainty; an opinion may be unqualified, meaning the records are spotless, qualified, meaning there are issues but the records are trustworthy, and adversarial, meaning the records are inaccurate and do not represent the actual financial status.

If the records are questionable, it will usually take much more investigation than a standard audit to track down every money unit and produce a clean accounting of the money. Hence, it is possible to identify that records are wrong, but knowing exactly whether the money is still present but unaccounted for versus the money is actually gone from the organizations control without a record of the transaction isn't yet determined.

The DOD itself hasn't passed an audit ever. Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.

Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#33

Post by aspenmayer »

https://archive.is/TJR4l

Site certificiate expired October 25, two days ago.

Site is not authoritative/original link:

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...

https://archive.is/5Zhg0

The report itself:

> Download Oxfam’s new report “Climate Finance Unchecked.”

> https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#34

Post by dosinga »

edm0nd wrote: post #24
riazrizvi wrote: post #11

Some context, Oxfam isn't a perfect organization. They struggle with fraud and graft. This is a part of their ongoing effort to reduce it, and sometimes yes that does mean pointing the finger past themselves too.

Seems like they are based in Kenya and fraud/corruption is rampant in some of these African nations. Really sad but its seemingly been like this for so long which is why many of the countries there are in constant civil wars, coups, and their populations poor/starving. If hundreds of billions of dollars in aide over 2 decades isn't fixing these nations, what will?

Kenya is not a rich country, but hardly suffers from "civil wars, coups, and a starving population". Not all African countries do.

Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#38

Post by cle »

> Activists are calling for the Global North to provide at least 5 trillion U.S. dollars annually in public finance to the Global South as a down payment on their climate debt to those least responsible for climate change but most affected by it.

Huh? I'm pretty sure the Global South produces significantly more carbon emissions than the Global North. Like double. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong?)

From a quick Jupyter CSV excursion:

    Region
    North    13307.26
    South    24518.75
    Name: Emissions, dtype: float64
(based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...)

(edit: updated, miscategorized Australia)

Re: Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

#39

Post by starttoaster »

beejiu wrote: post #36
LorenPechtel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah--it's expired. One of the pitfalls of the push to encrypt everything.

It's still encrypted and you can still access it.

edit: Misinformation, the below user is mostly correct. It IS still less secure than a properly validated TLS connection though.

The certificate is expired, your traffic to and from that site is not encrypted. If it were the case that your traffic could still be encrypted, what would even be the point of expiring the certificate?

You're correct that you can still access it, over an unencrypted connection, however.

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