African nations vow to recover stolen assets

FORMER British prime minister David Cameron two years ago was caught talking about an anti-corruption summit and calling Nigeria “fantastically corrupt”.

But meanwhile his country ranks among the top destinations for stolen assets from African countries.

Nigeria and ex-British colonies in Africa hope to change that by working together to repatriate billions of dollars in offshore accounts from London and beyond.

At a regional conference held this week in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, the heads of anti-corruption agencies from around Africa met to discuss strategies to overcome bottlenecks in the recovery of stolen assets.

“Concerned about the heavy losses that Africa suffers as a result of illegal transfers of proceeds of corruption and crime out of Africa,” the anti-corruption representatives vowed on Friday to “strengthen cooperation and partnership in the tracing, recovery and return of assets”.

They further pledged in a joint statement to encourage African countries to commit to greater corporate transparency and called for investment in anti-corruption agencies to “trace, recover and return assets.”

Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland said Africa is losing tens of billions of dollars annually to corruption, urging the anti-graft tsars to lead the “fight against this tsunami”.

“We all know that the difference between the money we need to deliver the hopes and aspirations (of our people).... and the money we have, is the sum equivalent to that which is egregiously siphoned off by corrupt practices,” Scotland said.

Nigeria, the continent’s largest oil producer, is ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world by antigraft group Transparency International.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to continue his war against corruption as part of his 2019 re-election campaign.

Buhari’s anti-graft chief Ibrahim Magu claimed earlier this year that his agency has recovered over 500 billion naira ($1.3bn) in illicit funds.

But the government’s fight against corruption has been accused of being politically motivated.

Commonwealth adviser Roger Koranteng told AFP that leaders at the summit want a regional approach to recovery of stolen assets.

“There is strength in unity. If you go as a single country, you will have a problem because the countries outside the African countries are together,” he said.

Sustaining the momentum however may be difficult. Ghana’s independent prosecutor Martin Amidu said the will to tackle graft comes in ebbs and flows on the continent.

“For me, for the past decades, Africa has had a mafia of leaders who speak of corruption as if they are against it but internally didn’t attempt to fight it,” Amidu said.

Still, countries stand to gain huge amounts of money should they streamline asset recovery.

Nigeria announced in April it recieved over $300m from Switzerland as part of money seized from the family of ex-dictator Sani Abacha, who ruled the country from 1993 until 1998.

Buhari said the money will be spent on a welfare scheme targeting the “poorest of Nigerians”, in a country where poverty is widespread and unemployment is rampant.

Yet it is difficult to trace how the repatriated money is being spent, with some critics voicing concerns that stolen money gets repatriated to Nigeria only to be looted again.

“There is a need for robust oversight mechanisms as well as continuous monitoring of the use of recovered assets to ensure that they are used properly and efficiently for development outcomes and poverty alleviation,” said Marie Chene of Transparency International in a 2017 report.

Greater global attention on the issue is helping reforms, say anti-corruption activists.—AFP. CUBA’S worst aviation disaster in decades has killed 110 people, including five children, the country’s transport minister confirmed.

As two days of national mourning began on Saturday, Adel Yzquierdo said just three people had survived the crash, all of whom were critically injured and are receiving treatment at a hospital in Cuba’s capital, Havana.

The Boeing 737-201, on a domestic flight to the eastern city of Holguin, crashed at 12:08PM on Friday (16:08 GMT), shortly after taking off from Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport.

Yzquierdo said those on board Flight 972, operated by state airline Cubana de Aviacion, included 102 Cubans, three tourists, two foreign residents and six crew members from Mexico.

The 39-year-old jet with its crew had been leased to Cubana de Aviacion by a Mexican company, Global Air, also known as Aerolineas Damojh.

Maite Quesada, a member of the Cuban Council of Churches, announced that 20 pastors from an evangelical church were among the dead. Argentina’s foreign ministry said earlier that two of its citizens had died in the crash.

The three survivors, who were pulled from the wreckage, were Cubans.

One of the plane’s two black boxes has been recovered in “good condition” and handed to investigators, Yzquierdo said, with the other expected to be found “in the next few hours”.

This was Cuba’s third major air accident since 2010 and its worst since 1989 when 150 people were killed after a passenger plane crashed near the capital.

Skies were overcast and rainy at the time of the

GENEVA/KINSHASA — The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo can be brought under control and is not an international public health emergency, experts advising the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

Earlier in the day the WHO had said the first confirmation of Ebola in Mbandaka, a city of about 1.5 million people, had prompted it to declare a “very high” public health risk to the country and a “high” risk to the region.

Three new cases of Ebola were later confirmed in Mbandaka on Friday, in a part of the city next to the Congo River.

The ministry said in a statement late on Friday that the new cases had been reported on Thursday in the neighbourhood of Wangata, next to the river, and samples tested positive for Ebola. Another suspected case surfaced on Friday.

The outbreak, Congo’s ninth since the disease made its first known appearance near the northern Ebola river in the 1970s, has raised concerns that the virus could spread downstream to the capital Kinshasa, which has a population of 10 million.

The WHO’s Emergency Committee of 11 experts latest disaster, and Cuban state TV said the jet veered sharply to the right after departing.

“The only thing we heard, when we were checking in, an explosion, the lights went out in the airport, and we looked out and saw black smoke rising, and they told us a plane had crashed,” Argentine tourist Brian Horanbuena told The Associated Press news agency at the airport.

Fire crews and ambulances rushed to the scene, while images posted on social media showed a thick column of smoke rising above the crash site.

The plane was almost completely destroyed in the crash and subsequent fire.

Cubana has had a generally good safety record but is notorious for delays and cancellations.

In recent months, it took many of its planes out of service because of maintenance problems, prompting it to hire charter aircraft from other companies.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said a special commission had been formed to find the cause of the crash.

“Things have been organised, the fire has been put out, and the remains are being identified,” he said, after visiting the site. Boeing has offered to assist with the investigation. Relatives of those on board were ushered into a private area at the terminal to await word on their loved ones.

“My daughter is 24, my God, she’s only 24!” cried Beatriz Pantoja, whose daughter Leticia was on the plane.

A statement from Mexico’s transportation department identified the pilot and co-pilot as Captain Jorge Luis Nunez Santos and first officer Miguel Angel Arreola Ramirez.

It also said the flight attendants were Maria Daniela Rios, Abigail Hernandez Garcia and Beatriz Limon. Global Air noted maintenance worker Marco Antonio Lopez Perez was also on board.

Outside the company’s Mexico City offices, former Global Air flight attendant Ana Marlen Covarrubias said she had worked for the company for more than seven years and knew nearly all the crew members.

“I don’t have the words. I’m very sad. We’re in mourning,” she said, in tears. “It was something really, really, really terrible; a tragedy for us.”

In November 2010, a Global Air flight originating in Mexico City made an emergency landing in Puerto Vallarta because its front landing gear did not deploy.

The fire was quickly extinguished, and none of the 104 people on board was injured. That plane was a 737 first put into service in 1975.

Cuba’s First Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa had met Cubana officials on Thursday to discuss improvements to its service.

The airline blames its spotty record on a lack of parts and aeroplanes because of the US trade embargo against the communist-run country.

Last year, a Cuban military plane crashed into a hillside in the western province of Artemisa, killing eight soldiers.

In 2010, an AeroCaribbean flight from Santiago to Havana went down in bad weather, killing all 68 people on board, including 28 foreigners, in what was the country’s worst air disaster in more than two decades.—Al Jazeera.