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Blood, Money, and Education
(Wall Street Journal Europe; 28Sep03) - Arnold Roth Chris Patten, the EU's Commissioner for External Relations, plays a central role in the provision of EU financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. When a small contingent of Israelis traveled to Brussels - each of whom had experienced the loss of a family member by terrorism in the past two years - Mr. Patten declined to meet us. We met his deputy instead. I referred him to evidence uncovered by Israeli forces in 2002 showing that the PA's top managers skim money off the payroll and that secret bank accounts are a routine part of corruption in the PA. My concerns were misplaced, he said, since all payments made via Mr. Patten's office to the PA are closely supervised by the International Monetary Fund. Immediately after our meeting, I checked the record and learned that some months before, the IMF had published a report denying this. The IMF report confirmed budgetary abuse by the PA.