Tragic

$4B in Oil Revenue Said Missing in Angola:

More than $4 billion in oil revenue disappeared from
Angolan state coffers between 1997 and 2002, even as the country was
struggling to recover from 27 years of civil war, Human Rights Watch
said in a report Tuesday.
State oil revenues surged after international companies such as BP,
ExxonMobil and Total expanded their Angolan operations in the late
1990s, totaling $17.8 billion from 1997 to 2002 - about 85 percent of
government income - according to the Human Rights Watch report.
A total of $4.22 billion of that money, representing about 9.25 percent
of gross domestic product annually, is unaccounted for, according to
the group's analysis of figures from the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, an estimated 900,000 Angolans remain displaced, millions
have almost no access to schools and hospitals, and nearly half the
country's 7.4 million children suffer from malnutrition, according to
U.N. figures.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 12:14 PM | Permalink