The Daily Corruption | 4 January 2008

1. The Daily Corruption | 4 January 2008 One of the largest corruption scandals in Czech history has broken out at the Defence Ministry. Organized crime has reached all the way to the top echelons of the Czech Ministry of Defence. The police are investigating 24 former employees at the ministry, together with their accomplices in the construction business, on corruption charges. The suspects allegedly made sure that overpriced contracts for army bases renovations and other construction and maintenance work ended in the right hands. In return, they were paid large under-the-table commissions. The damage to the defence budget is still under investigation but the Czech Army spends an annual 2.5 billion crowns, or over 140 million US dollars, on these types of contracts.

2. The Daily Corruption | 8 January 2008 The current drive against systematic corruption, spearheaded by the Anti- Corruption Commission (ACC), has received wholehearted support from the general people. The media, civil society, TIB, and other organisations are working tirelessly to make corruption a difficult undertaking for the practitioners. Public procurement through government contracts has always been the primary source of corruption. Some experts suggest that, in government procurement and work tender, only 15% of the money reaches its intended destination as 85% is siphoned away through systematic leakages.

3. The Daily Corruption | 9 January 2008 A year after helping the new government draft its official agenda following its belated formation in January 2007, Estat.cz, a civic group for increased government effectiveness, issued its annual “report card”, evaluating the government’s first year in power. According to Estat.cz’s report, the government is seriously lagging behind in improving transparency in the public sector, an area in which its success rate reached only 25 percent. On its agenda, the government had promised to increase the accountability of public officials by increasing the public’s access to all nonclassified information. “The fight against corruption is one of the government’s main priorities,” the agenda states.

4. The Daily Corruption | 10 January 2008 State-run Gas Authority of India Ltd. says it will change tender documents to ensure transparency in the bidding process. The company said it would include an integrity pact, a tool Transparency International had designed to prevent corruption in public procurement. India's private oil and gas companies have complained that state-run companies have not ensured transparency in their tender documents.

5. The Daily Corruption | 11 January 2008 The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday pressed charges against detained former premiere and Awami League (AL) chief Sheikh Hasina and seven others in connection with Tk 3 crore graft case during the setting up of 100MW barge-mount power plant in Khulna. The ACC yesterday also approved the filing of first information report (FIR) against eight persons including former state minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar, former health minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain and former Awami League (AL) lawmaker Mirza Azam on charges of amassing illegal wealth and concealing information of their wealth.

6. The Daily Corruption | 11 January 2008 Just days ago the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) served Zuma notice that he would be charged with corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering. He faces 16 charges, including the implication that he was involved in soliciting a bribe through his jailed financial adviser Schabir Shaik from a French arms company that won a slice of the multibillion-rand arms deal. Zuma’s enraged allies, through Cosatu’s KwaZulu-Natal leader Zet Luzipho, have threatened that “blood will be spilt”. The statement was later withdrawn, but the point had been made.

7. The Daily Corruption | 12 January 2008 The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau here filed a chargesheet against six persons in connection with the irregularities detected in the construction of the Nellipuzha bridge across the Kunthipuzha in Mannarkkad which caused a loss of Rs 1.20 crore to the exchequer. Within four months of the commissioning of the bridge, a two-metre hole was detected on the main slab near the abutment. A few months later, another hole was detected on another slab. The bridge was weak due to the inadequate quantity of cement and steel used in it and therefore it had to be demolished. A new bridge was constructed, causing a loss of Rs 12,088,000 to the State Government.

8. The Daily Corruption | 14 January 2008 The call for an investigation into the Health Department’s pharmaceutical board handling of medical drugs has heightened this week. A medical insider, on condition of anonymity, alleged that fraudulent tenders for medical drugs and mosquito nets were being targeted as a major part of the alleged corruption in the Health Department. “Millions of kina are being wasted and stolen through corruption and slackness at the high levels of the Health Department,” the insider said. “These corrupt practices involved the Health Department’s hierarchy.”

9. The Daily Corruption | 14 January 2008 The Albanian government has embraced an anti-corruption strategy that will be implemented through 2013 to fight rampant corruption. The problem in the country is so pervasive, the latest European Commission report on Albania describes it as a social phenomenon. Ending corruption is one of the most important conditions for Albania to receive an invitation to join NATO during the Alliance’s meeting in Bucharest this spring. Officials are also speaking out about corrupt practices. President Bamir Topi shocked the public when he declared on December 4th 2007 that Albanian officials think “day and night” about how to steal from the true land owners.

10. The Daily Corruption | 18 January 2008 Former energy secretary Toufiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury was on Wednesday sent to jail after he surrendered in court in the Khulna power plant 'bribery' case. Dhaka metropolitan sessions judge M Azizul Haque issued the order after Toufiq, escorted by his counsels, had appeared in the court and sought bail. He is facing charges of corruption along with seven others, including the imprisoned former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, also the Awami League president, for allegedly taking Tk 3 crore in kickbacks from officials of three power companies.

11. The Daily Corruption | 20 January 2008 A supervisor of Brunei Shell Petroleum Company Sdn Bhd was brought before the Magistrate's Court in the capital to face 20 charges for contravening Section 6(a) of the prevention of Corruption Act (Chapter 131) read with Section 7(1) of the same act. Investigation conducted by the Anti Corruption Bureau revealed that between May 2006 and January 2008, the accused accepted some $10,000 from a contract manager and a project manager of a company as an inducement or reward for showing favourable consideration relating to a tender project awarded by BSP to the said company.

12. The Daily Corruption | 20 January 2008 In one of the worst-ever compromises since the LDF Government came to power, the Local Self - Government Department has entered into an agreement with contractors to improve the basic infrastructure, violating all accepted norms. During the Ninth Five-Year Plan, a model for beneficiary committee-based execution of road works was mooted by the People’s Plan campaign in 1997. This was aimed at defeating the politician-contractor- engineer nexus under the centralised system. According to reliable official information, the contractors and engineers collude and use only 60 percent of the permissible bitumen and divert the rest to the black market. This is the kickback shared by the cartel.

13. The Daily Corruption | 23 January 2008 Corruption and ineffective public institutions are still undermining good governance in the country, a report by the African Peer Review Mechanism National Commission has said. “The World Bank (2005) estimates that Uganda loses about $300m (sh510b) per year through corruption and procurement malpractices,” the 592-pages report notes. It reckons that the Government would save sh30b annually by eliminating losses from corruption in public procurement alone. Citing the 2005 Auditor General’s Report, it estimates that 20% of the value of public procurement was lost through corruption, prompted by weak public procurement laws, adding that procurement accounts for 70% of public expenditure.

14. The Daily Corruption | 23 January 2008 Mpumalanga's former director general Advocate Stanley Soko is expected tp appear in court on Thursday when the province's largest corruption trial resumes. Soko and axed Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation (MEEC) chief executive Ernest Khosa are scheduled to appear in Nelspruit's Regional Court for allegedly forcing government contractors to meet them in shady car parks and dark streets to pay massive cash bribes. Both men were fired from their jobs when the scandal broke, and have been charged with corruption, fraud, and contravention of both the Public Service Management Act and the Organised Crime Act.

15. The Daily Corruption | 25 January 2008 "Make money, but not at any price!" Shareholders of the German industrial giant Siemens were impressed Thursday by strong profits but called for an end to corruption within the group. Before almost 10,000 investors, Daniela Bergdolt, from the DSW group of small investors, judged that "the reputation built by Siemens for 160 years has been reduced to ashes." Albrecht Kinkelin, a 64-year-old investor from Munich, told AFP however that "corruption in the economy is not exceptional," and estimated that "the group's image is certainly damaged, but not forever." All the same, he felt Siemens ought to have "acted more frankly."

16. The Daily Corruption | 25 January 2008 Slovak Defence Minister Frantisek Kasicky quit on Friday over mismanaged procurement tenders that could have cost the state tens of millions of dollars. Prime Minister Robert Fico said he had accepted the resignation. Slovak media have reported that defence ministry officials overstated the value of several tenders for services such as maintenance or translations. One of the largest mismanaged tenders was a winter maintenance contract (not yet awarded), which the ministry originally listed as worth 1.5 billion crowns ($65.13 million). The ministry later publicly confirmed the contract was really only worth around 140 million crowns.

17. The Daily Corruption | 26 January 2008 “Yemen has assured its commitment to good governance in order to facilitate development. This commitment was launched at the beginning of 2005 at the international conference held in Jordon,” said Minister of Justice Dr Ghazi Shaif al-Aghbari at a regional conference concerned with supporting the UN convention for fighting corruption in the Arab World. “Corruption represents the biggest danger to the national economy as it results in damaging societal values and laws and causes losses to the country and its citizens,” said al-Aghbari. Yemen signed the UN Convention to Fight Corruption in 2003 and announced its commitment before the global community to increase efforts and activities in investigating and prosecuting corruption.

18. The Daily Corruption | 28 January 2008 The head of Nigeria's anti-corruption unit has reportedly been ordered to go on year-long study leave, in an apparent attempt to sideline him. Nuhu Ribadu, who has spearheaded Nigeria's attempts to combat financial crime, is involved in the prosecution of seven former state governors. Observers say that if he is removed from his post, it will be a blow to President Umaru Yar'Adua's credibility. The president came to power in May promising to fight rampant corruption.

19. The Daily Corruption | 30 January 2008 In recent months the Karnataka state capital has been caught in the turbulence of politics - but the city that aspires to lead India into the future has bigger worries it seems - worries over the functioning of basic facilities like hospitals. It turns out that mothers of newborn babies here have to face the worst kind of corruption in government hospitals. As TIMES NOW found out new mothers who are already in a tender physical condition are made to undergo mental agony as well, having to pay a price to see their own little babies.

20. The Daily Corruption | 30 January 2008 Himachal Pradesh government had decided to order high level probe into the controversial allotment of tenders and supply orders awarded by state Public Works (PWD) and Irrigation and Public Health (IPH) Departments during previous congress regime resulting in huge loss to the state exchequer. Official sources told this reporter here today that Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal had already handed over the investigation of rupees 75 crores Bamsan drinking water supply scheme falling in his home constituency to state Vigilance Bureau. Official of the Bureau had already reached Hamirpur to seize the records of IPH department. The initial cost of this scheme was rupees 35 crore only.

21. The Daily Corruption | 30 January 2008 The Commission for Investigation of the Abuse Authority (CIAA) Friday, requested department heads and other government officials to expedite monitoring mechanism on corruption and irregularities prevalent in all departments and organizations. The CIAA cited the major barriers to controlling corruption and effective implementation of the policies as delayed correspondence, lacking effective monitoring on irregularities and mal-appropriation, inattention towards the issues, referring to the upper level for responses and directions on issues.

22. The Daily Corruption | 30 January 2008 After performing dismally in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, graft allegations on Jammu and Kashmir Education Minister Peerzada Mohammed Sayeed has doubled the worries of Congress strategists. Also, with Assembly elections expected in October, bribery accusation on Sayeed, who also happens to be the state president of the Congress, spells trouble for Congress Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Although Sayeed has resigned as the minister and party president, Azad’s pledge to make the society corruption-free has begun to ring increasingly hollow. Shoaib Lone, an Independent MLA from Sangrama, accused Sayeed of receiving Rs 40,000 as bribe from him for granting permission to his sister for opening an elementary teachers’ training institute.

23. The Daily Corruption | 7 February 2008 Tanzania's Prime Minister Edward Lowassa told parliament Thursday he had tendered his resignation to the president after being implicated in a corruption scandal over an energy deal. The premier's decision came after a report was submitted to parliament over a deal signed between the government and the Texas-based firm Richmond for emergency power supply. According to a probe into the contract, the prime minister as well as two other government ministers and several other officials allegedly meddled in the tender to favour the US company. According to the report, the deal contravened laws and rules on procurement and costs the country 140,000 dollars a day.

24. The Daily Corruption | 7 February 2008 After almost a year the forensic investigation into various allegations of fraud, corruption and other irregularities at the Local Municipality of Madibeng is complete and 26 of these are being investigated further by the Directorate of Special Investigations of the National Prosecuting Authority. Mr. Phillemon Mapulane, Municipal Manager of the Local Municipality of Madibeng, said that the primary reason for the institution of the investigation was due to several allegations received from different sources. The allegations implicated both officials (most at senior level), councillors and outside parties. According to Mapulane this was coupled with prima facie evidence of favouritism towards friends and other related parties with regard to the manipulations of the procurement process and disregard of departmental recommendations by the awarding body.

25. The Daily Corruption | 9 February 2008 Party men now demand punishment of former BNP lawmaker Shahidul Islam Master for amassing illegal wealth and misappropriating relief goods. Shahidul, elected from Jhenidah-3 constituency (Moheshpur) in last parliamentary polls, is on the list of 80 corruption suspects announced by the National Committee Against Corruption. He faces seven cases including five for extortion and two for misappropriation of relief goods. Talking to this correspondent, several leaders of BNP and its youth and student fronts accused Shahidul of amassing crores of taka through tender manipulation, extortion and other illegal means and tarnishing the image of the party.

26. The Daily Corruption | 9 February 2008 Executives at Germany's main warship-building company are being investigated over claims that they offered kickbacks in Angola for an order, the weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday. No ship order was actually placed, but a corruption inquiry was under way against ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) staff involved in the tender, Spiegel said, adding that TKMS offices had been searched by police in Hamburg and Essen on December 19. TKMS had tendered to supply a corvette and three coastal patrol boats worth 750 million euros (1.1 billion dollars) to Angola under a deal that had been initiated by the Angolan military with a letter of intent on February 22, 2006.

27. The Daily Corruption | 14 February 2008 Directors of the largest construction companies, which were detained on Tuesday, along with several other persons, on suspicion of corruption and construction crime, are on pretrial release after the State Attorney’s request to sentence them with one-month imprisonment was denied. According to media headlines, this investigation, related to malversations of the “construction lobby” started several months ago and is based on suspicions of money laundering and transferring cash funds to private accounts, continues. The tender for construction of 100-meter-high control tower at the Ljubljana Airport Jože Pučnik, which was the primary motif for arrest, was cancelled and the Agency for Air Traffic Control will publish a new tender.

28. The Daily Corruption | 15 February 2008 The staggering extent of corruption in the procurement department of Telecom Namibia about 10 years ago started emerging more fully as the Telecom scrap-copper corruption trial continued in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday. Ivan Ganes, who as Telecom Namibia's Manager: Procurement was in charge of that department at the parastatal between April 1995 and early 2001, readily admitted in testimony given before Judge Collins Parker yesterday that he received millions of rand in "commissions", which were in fact bribes, over the last five years of his employment at the company. Ganes is a key witness for the prosecution.

29. The Daily Corruption | 22 February 2008 The energy minister delayed a raid on the state-owned pipeline company BOTAŞ's offices and forced the retirement of officials involved in a corruption case involving the company's officials in the tender for the scheduled building of a natural gas depot under the Salt Lake in central Anatolia, according to an indictment prepared by an Ankara prosecutor. Prosecutor Mehmet Tamöz briefed Energy Minister Hilmi Güler on the matter and was asked to delay the operation, the indictment said. The minister suspended all BOTAŞ officials involved and forced some to resign. The indictment also includes film recordings of officials taking bribes from contractors who wanted to win the tender.

30. The Daily Corruption | 7 22ebruary 2008 Two major bribery scandals brought to light yesterday by Turkish newspapers that cited several bureaucrats and businessmen involve allegations of corruption in public institutions and might signal that corruption and bribery, which have been decreasing since 2002 according to domestic and international reports, might be making a comeback. According to a 2006 World Bank report on corruption that covers the years 2002 to 2005, corruption in Turkey had decreased during that time period as a result of reforms carried out to improve the business environment. Turkish companies reported a lower number of bribery incidents in public tenders than some EU member countries, but recent events suggest that corruption in public agencies could be slowly heading back to pre-2002 levels.

31. The Daily Corruption | 22 February 2008 The African National Congress has called for the sacking of a senior council official who blew the whistle on alleged abuse of power and corruption in a R1-billion 2010 stadium project. The apparent attempt at a cover-up follows a damning report by independent attorneys on the alleged corruption, which was leaked to the Mail & Guardian. Central to the saga is the Mbombela municipal manager, Jacob Dladla, who was investigated by the local council after being accused of wide-ranging misconduct in relation to 2010 contracts.

32. The Daily Corruption | 23 February 2008 Police investigating a corruption case involving a debt-stricken Defense Ministry official believe he received 3 million yen in bribes on top of the 2 million yen originally thought. Makoto Sogabe, 55, is under arrest for accepting a 2 million yen bribe from Yasuo Yamanaka, 43, president of the Yamanaka Kensetsu construction firm in Bihoro, Hokkaido. In return, Sogabe informed Yamanaka of a confidential reserve price in a tender for a ministry contract on the construction of a storage facility at a Ground Self-Defense Force base in Hokkaido in March 2006. Sometime around 2006, Sogabe, who was a deputy division chief at a local branch of the ministry in Obihiro, Hokkaido, also asked Yamanaka to lend him about 3 million yen.

33. The Daily Corruption | 24 February 2008 The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has ordered an internal audit at the party's in-house investment firm, which is controlled by allies of South African President Thabo Mbeki, the Sunday Times reported. The probe of Chancellor House Holdings comes some two months after Jacob Zuma defeated Mbeki for the ANC leadership in a bitter contest that was marked by allegations on both sides of dirty tricks, vote-buying and political smear campaigns. It will include an audit of black empowerment deals and tenders won by the firm and is also expected to look at the roles played by Mbeki, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and ex-ANC treasurer-general Mendi Msimang, the newspaper said.

34. The Daily Corruption | 4 March 2008 Who was manipulating the bidding in a tender for the construction of a hall in Karlovy Vary, and why? Anti-corruption Unit has been trying to unravel these questions for over a year. Now, new information has been made available, pointing to possible links between the company that was running the selection procedure (also known as "the Czech bidding lottery"), and the company that won the tender. Jiří Pilský, an agent with Stormen, the company hired by Karlovy Vary to organize the bidding, used to work for Tender Group Plus. That company is under suspicion of having manipulated selection procedures in the past, and the court case is currently on trial.

35. The Daily Corruption | 12 March 2008 Nine suspects, including Edirne Mayor Hamdi Sedefçi, were arrested by a court Monday for alleged corruption in tenders and for organized crime, while seven others, including the son of former President Turgut Özal, Ahmet Özal, were released pending trial. All suspects were questioned by the Edirne prosecutor's office. Özal, speaking to reporters after his release, said he trusted the Turkish judiciary, dismissing claims that he was involved in corruption. The suspects face charges of corrupting tenders, accepting bribes and forming a criminal organization.

36. The Daily Corruption | 13 March 2008 Detectives are investigating allegations of corruption in collapsed Tube firm Metronet, the Standard reveals today. Police have been called in after a six-figure contract for complex electrical work was given to a firm that specialises in unblocking drains. An Evening Standard investigation has uncovered serious concerns over how £850,000 worth of work to refurbish electrical fittings and fire alarms at Oxford Circus station was awarded. A contract was given by Metronet to Lanes Group, which has no industry certification for electrical work.

37. The Daily Corruption | 15 March 2008 South Africa's 2010 World Cup soccer tournament was a prime target for corruption, editors were told in Johannesburg on Friday. "There was a real fear that South Africa, in the staging of the 2010 Soccer World Cup, could look bad in the eyes of the world because of the dangers of corruption," said Professor Danny Titus, chairperson of the SA branch of Transparency International. "There is no national picture of what tender fraud looks like in South Africa...what the amounts are and the type of tenders involved, " he said. Corruption in Africa 'cost $150bn'

38. The Daily Corruption | 22 March 2008 IT must be counted among the most bizarre revelations in Nigeria political history that a little more than $13billion went down the drains in one of the most imponderable contracting scandals recorded anywhere involving a government. The Nigerian House of Representatives, particularly the honourable Ndidi Elumelu and his colleagues in the House Committee on Power have conducted a methodical probe of the power sector, and have unravelled a profound and unimaginable depth of sleaze in the contract regime of the Nigeria Integrated Power Project initiated by the Olusegun Obasanjo government. “From the oral and documentary evidence, it has been clearly established that the total expenditure in the power sector during the period was $13.28bn.”

39. The Daily Corruption | 17 April 2008 The Office of Fair Trading has today formally accused 112 construction firms in England of participating in "bid rigging", in its biggest investigation of cartel activity to date. Some of the biggest names in construction in the UK — including Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Connaught, Interserve and Kier — have been accused of ripping off the public sector to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. They were today issued with a "statement of objections" from the OFT, alleging that they participated in cartel-type activity in bidding for thousands of public sector construction contracts, worth £3 billion, including tenders for schools, universities and hospitals. Multi-million pound fines are expected to arise from the investigation, which began in 2004.

40. The Daily Corruption | 17 April 2008 The fourth penal section of the Milan tribunal has sentenced former Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia to three years in prison, charged with corruption and embezzlement in relation to the alleged bribes accepted when he was head doctor at the Milan Polyclinic. It is a ruling going beyond the request made by state attorneys Eugenio Fusco and Maurizio Romanelli, who had asked for 2 years and nine months. Sirchia had been accused of taking bribes from multinationals specialized in healthcare products in exchange for favouring them in tenders.

41. The Daily Corruption | 18 April 2008 An investigation into tenders called by the National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF) found flaws in two public procurements, the Transport Ministry said on April 18. The probe, carried out at the request of Transport Minister Petar Moutafchiev by the ministry’s internal audit department, detected breaches in tenders that were to be financed with funds from the European Union's Operational Programme Transport. The Transport Ministry, in its capacity as the administrator of funds under the transport operational programme, decided against financing these projects and advised NRIF to consider its further actions carefully.

42. The Daily Corruption | 18 April 2008 German companies did not register any improvement in the traditional weak points of Bulgaria’s business environment: corruption, the lack of transparency in public procurements, as well as the poor state of the country’s infrastructure. These were the findings of a survey, published on April 9, carried out by German-Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (GBCIC). The survey results show that, in general, the German investors in Bulgaria are not satisfied with the framework conditions in the country. They found that the effectiveness of local administration, access to funding and the conditions for scientific work were unsatisfactory - all marked with 3.6, while legal security and public procurement transparency received a grade of 3.8. Even worse was the evaluation for public infrastructure and the fight against organised crime (4.1).

43. The Daily Corruption | 18 April 2008 The head of department for health and social development in Limpopo, Dr Jabu Dlamini, almost burst into tears yesterday when she was grilled by the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) about questionable transactions. Dlamini had no answers when Scopa aked her about allegations of fronting and malpractices in the tendering process. This was after Dlamini and her team of professionals were unable to give answers about the expenditure on the department’s building that was built in the 2006/2007 financial year. It also wanted an explanation about allegations that a multimillion-rand food parcel supply tender was awarded to seven companies, although only one invoice was submitted.

44. The Daily Corruption | 24 April 2008 The steps Yemen has taken in the fight against corruption were more than noticeable, acting as an indicator that the president and the Yemeni government are working together to take measures that aim at reducing corruption and limiting the influence of corrupt officials in government circles. Since 2004, Yemen has revised a large number of legislation to support the anti-corruption movement, with the help of international donors, Yemen was able to bring a revised procurement law into effect, forming a committee to combating corruption, undertaking several awareness and publicity campaigns against corruption, and restricting and empowering the Central Organization for Control and Audit. However, spectators still believe that there is along way to go for Yemen is corruption will be illuminated.

45. The Daily Corruption | 30 April 2008 In the absence of a proper system of checks and balances, corruption has firmly gripped the funding of civic projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Interestingly, the tenders floated for the road works under the JNNURM have some strange conditions — which read more like an open demand for kickbacks — that contractors should provide the PMC's engineers and consultants with things like Tavera cars, laptops, tea-cups, laptops, water purifiers and chairs! Commenting on this, a contractor who requested anonymity said, "Now it is an open secret that not a single tender in the municipal corporation is passed without paying kickbacks. There should be some checks on those who approve tenders and those who move files from table to table."

46. The Daily Corruption | 30 April 2008 The Colombian government is promising transparency in the way it conducts water tenders. It could prove vital in encouraging private sector investment. Between 1996 and 2003, the Colombian government spent COP11.7 trillion ($6.47 billion at current exchange rates) to boost the number of citizens with access to water and sewerage provision. The government is now admitting that a large part of that money was wasted on unneeded works and bribes.

47. The Daily Corruption | 2 May 2008 Police questioned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for 90 minutes under caution that he may face charges. Olmert has been questioned in recent years about a number of alleged crimes, including steering government contracts to friends and making illegal patronage appointments. None of the investigations have resulted in charges as of yet. The secretive nature of the questioning, the news that Olmert had been given just 48 hours warning and the fact that the interrogation was "under caution" led media to speculate that police may be close to breaking one of the cases.

48. The Daily Corruption | 4 May 2008 The government has awarded a R4.7m a year tender to clean dirty hospital linen from an Eastern Cape hospital to a man who does not have washing machines, the Sunday Times has reported. When all the laundry items were not being returned to the Cecilia Makiwane hospital, the reason became obvious. The businessman who won the contract employed people to scrub bloodied sheets in tubs of cold water, with their bare hands, the Sunday Times said. A member of a delegation that visited the "laundry" found that conditions there were "shocking," and there was no trace of any washing powder.

49. The Daily Corruption | 7 May 2008 Two allied groups of accountants, bishops and businessmen announced on Wednesday that they have banded together to intensify the monitoring of state procurement and review government tenders. The groups include the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (Picpa) and Bishops-Business Conference for Human Development (BBC), a member of the Coalition Against Corruption (CAC). Done through a signing of a memorandum of agreement last Monday, Picpa's and BBC's initiative comes in the wake of the CAC's launch of its "Catching the Big Fish" campaign.

50. The Daily Corruption | 8 May 2008 Technical officers who process government tender documents have been blamed for fuelling corruption, nepotism and favoritism. Addressing a kgotla meeting in Mmopane in the Kweneng District, the MP for Kweneng South East, MP Mmoloki Raletobana, said some officers, especially foreigners had a tendency of releasing secret information about government projects to certain companies they favour to help them to win tenders. He said excluding politicians from the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board was not a solution but would rather give them chance to continue awarding tenders to their friends.