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Where Did the Money Go?

(National Review/IMRA) Rachel Ehrenfeld - How corrupt is the PA? How much money have Arafat et al. stashed away? Where did the money come from? How long have we known about it? Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) estimated the PLO's loot in a 1993 briefing paper at $8-10 billion. In addition, the PLO enjoyed an annual income of about $1.5-2 billion from "donations, extortion, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, etc." In 1996, a Palestinian Legislative Council investigative commission found that nearly 40 percent of the PA's $800 million annual budget (coming mostly from foreign aid) had been lost through corruption and mismanagement. The PA's comptroller wrote: "The overall picture is one of a Mafia-style government, where the main point of being in public office is to get rich quick." The London Daily Telegraph revealed records of about $8 billion held in numbered PLO bank accounts in New York, Geneva, and Zurich, as well as secret holdings of the PLO in front companies, European real estate, and shares in Mercedes-Benz and the national airlines of the Maldives and Guinea-Bissau. Die Zeit's special investigation into EU funding revealed that at least 4.1 billion euros have flowed from the EU to the PA since the autumn of 1993, in addition to hundreds of millions of euros in grants contributed by individual European countries. U.S. aid to the PA runs about $75 million annually, not including the millions of dollars sent each year from private sources.
2002-08-13 00:00:00
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