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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

#61

Post by iudqnolq »

c0brac0bra wrote: post #18
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.

Remind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?

The money is not actually missing*.

Oxfam attempted to add up all the numbers in various PDFs linked on the World Bank's website and got a total that's less than the headline figure in the World Bank's press releases. (See the actual report at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...)

Some of that is probably missing data and some of it reflects that headlines like "USA donates 1 billion" don't actually always result in the US making a bank transfer for a billion dollars. For example sometimes it's a simplification of a complicated loan.

Your comment reflects a common misconception about audits. When the books don't add up that doesn't show that money is actually missing.

I don't love analogies to personal finance but a better one would be to suppose you asked a random US citizen what they spent money on last month and then compared it to their bank account. They'd probably be wrong, and you probably wouldn't have enough information to know exactly how wrong they were because they didn't save all their receipts and so on.

*edit: this report provides no evidence money is missing. to be fair it doesn't disprove missing money either

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

#64

Post by starttoaster »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #43
starttoaster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An expired certificate still encrypts your traffic. You might have to change settings or click through a scary warning in your browser, but other than that a certificate doesn't magically quit working as soon as it expires. The expiration date is arbitrary.

You are correct, I had to do a bit of research. Because Chrome even explicitly states that traffic to a site with an expired certificate is unencrypted. But I guess that's mostly to scare you, because the truth is that it just opens you up to potential MitM attacks and other similar issues with regular ole HTTP, but traffic between you and an unverifiable identity is at least TLS encrypted.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #43
starttoaster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An expired certificate still encrypts your traffic. You might have to change settings or click through a scary warning in your browser, but other than that a certificate doesn't magically quit working as soon as it expires. The expiration date is arbitrary.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by yarg »

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.

It's insane the way that browsers shit the bed if there's any issue with the certificate.

Just throw in a big red exclamation point on top of the little padlock icon next to the URL bar - it's literally only there to inform the user about any potential security issues. Use it and (unless the site is known to be or obviously malicious) load the bloody page.

Honestly, it's absolutely insane that the browser misrepresent out of chain HTTPS as more of a threat than HTTP.

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

#67

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

c0brac0bra wrote: post #18
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.

Remind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?

While I'm continually frustrated by the complexity and opaqueness of the US tax code, your analogy doesn't make any sense to me. If your personal finances "struggle with fraud", it means you committed fraud. So yeah, of course you should be held directly responsible. That's very different from a large organization doling out money for tons of various complex projects, and those 3rd parties (or 3rd parties down the chain) commit fraud.

Heck, if you give money to someone and they commit fraud and abscond with your money, you get to take a tax write-off for the stolen funds.

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

#68

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

iudqnolq wrote: post #61
c0brac0bra wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?

The money is not actually missing*. Oxfam attempted to add up all the numbers in various PDFs linked on the World Bank's website and got a total that's less than the headline figure in the World Bank's press releases. (See the actual report at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10... ) Some of that is probably missing data and some of it reflects that headlines like "USA donates 1 billion" don'…

Great comment. On one hand I like what Oxfam has done, which is to show that the World Bank has poor financial controls and should do a much better job tracking where funds are actually spent. On the other hand I don't like how this is reported/interpreted (and Oxfam I think deserves some blame for how their investigation is characterized) as "there is a ton of fraud at the World Bank". That's simply not accurate, and your edit sums up the situation very well

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

#70

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

situationista wrote: post #22
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.

I don't read this as a problem of fraud within Oxfam. They audited the World Bank and found there was fraud in the bank. Or am I missing something?

They didn't find that there was fraud. They just found that the World Bank has poor financial controls and a lack of transparency in determining where funds are spent.

Of course, a lack of financial controls makes it easier for people to actually commit fraud, but the Oxfam report didn't go to that next level and look for specific evidence of fraud.

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