By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 14 -- The US today released its Fiscal Transparency Report under Section 7031(b) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2014, on governments receiving bilateral allocations of assistance under the Act.
Some are quoted below, but first these two questions from Inner City Press: what restrictions does the US impose for lack of transparency, for example by Egypt, to which the US in delivering Apache helicopter, to say nothing of the journalists detained?
Second, if the US prepared a similar report on the UN itself, how would the refusal to account for or disclose Ban Ki-moon's acceptance of gift like free private jet travel from Qatar, and refusal to implement even the most basic Freedom of Information Act, as requested by the Free UN Coalition for Access?
Now some from the report (link to full report here)
“Bahrain does not disclose the expenditures of the royal family in its publicly available budget.”
“Egypt’s budget does not disclose expenditures for significant state-owned enterprises or presidential expenses.”
“Ethiopia's processes for awarding natural resource concessions, contracts, and licenses are opaque.”
“Gabon’s budget reliability is lacking. The audit institution has been unable to complete verification.” And what does France say?
“Haiti’s process for granting natural resource contracts lacks transparency.” And now, a hold-over leader/
“Yemen budget lacks sufficient info regarding allocations to and revenue from significant state-owned enterprises.”
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