Search Results for: Nigeria

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Oil and gas companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and at December 2005, MIGA had supported 13 oil and gas projects, with guarantees totalling US$707 million, with a standard leverage of five-to-one, so investments covered are actually five times larger.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

THE FORTEEN countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) have their AML/CFT work cut out. Under-funded, lacking resources, short of political will and working in a region that leaks money like a sieve…it is a demanding context for the group’s daunting tasks.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

ONGOING recruitment of South African nurses to the UK is pushing South Africa’s already hard pressed public health system close to the brink of collapse and putting patient care at risk, the country’s lead nursing union and health experts have warned.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

CENTRAL bankers, drug barons, warlords, corporate bosses and small town crooks in Africa are all washing their money despite attempts by governments and international law enforcement agencies to bring them to book. But financial crime has never been as lucrative as now on the world’s poorest continent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is predicting annual aid to the poorest countries will reach about US$130 billion by 2010, up US$50 billion from 2004. That said donor countries need to increase standard development spending to sustain an 2005-06 increase sparked by Iraq and Nigeria debt relief and Tsunami-linked emergency assistance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BY KEITH NUTHALL

UNEP – RISK MANAGEMENT

A BOOK detailing practical ways in which governments can reduce the costs of dealing with major challenges such bird flu, terrorism and climate change has been released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BIRD flu has reached Africa, the Office International des Épizooties (OIE), the world animal health organisation, has confirmed, citing an outbreak in Kaduna state, northern Nigeria involving 46,000 cases. The news poses a dismal outlook for efforts to contain the disease given sub-Saharan Africa’s shambolic regulatory and veterinary controls, and international health workers will inevitably fear the worst.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FURTHER global restrictions on the tobacco industry are to be developed, the first Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has decided. Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, diplomats established working groups to develop legally binding protocols, using the convention as their authority, that further limit cross-border tobacco advertising and smuggling.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD’S senior anti-money laundering body, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is to focus on Africa, following a meeting of the international organisation, in Cape Town last week. FATF members approved a strategy where its officials and those of the Eastern and Southern Africa Money Laundering Group "work together more aggressively to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in the region".…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE COUNTRIES of eastern and southern Africa pose two particularly serious challenges for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world’s leading anti money laundering agency, according to Alain Damais, the organisation’s executive secretary. In an interview with the Money Laundering Bulletin, he also discussed developments in money laundering typologies, the progress made by China towards becoming an FATF member and EU legislation designed to thwart laundering.…