How £9m UK foreign aid to Libya fuels trafficking gangs

OUR foreign aid budget is being used to indirectly fund squalid detention centres in Libya that are run by people traffickers, a damning report reveals today.

The study accuses British authorities of sending millions of pounds to the country without first investigating how the cash is spent.

It highlights how taxpayers’ money is potentially finding its way into the hands of gangs who are fuelling Europe’s migration crisis.

About £9 million is currently being spent on projects in the North African nation from which record numbers of migrants are risking their lives to reach the EU.

But the analysis, by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), finds that attempts to curb migration on the Mediterranean route – where more than 4,000 migrants died last year – have been largely ineffective.

Rather than helping address the issue, British money is allegedly being paid into detention centres where migrants are often locked up for months at a time.

The ICAI, which scrutinises UK aid, said smugglers and traffickers have taken control of a huge proportion of the centres in what charities have described as a ‘billion dollar industry’. Libyan officials are said to be engaged in the large-scale extortion that is helping gangs to siphon money from charities.

The ICAI said it had seen no evidence that Government departments, including DfID, had properly analysed the ‘economic and political conditions’ in the country.

It said providing financial support to the detention centres ‘might create conditions that would lead to more migrants being detained’.

Dr Alison Evans, ICAI’s chief commissioner, said: ‘We are concerned about the risk of unintended harm to vulnerable migrants.’

A Government spokesman said it is tackling the causes of migration by ‘building opportunity and stability for people in their home regions.’