African Panel Ranks Ethiopia Top 10 in Illicit Financial Flow: 16.5 billion dollars from 1970 to 2008
African Union's (AU) high level panel on illicit financial flows (IFF) from Africa ranked Ethiopia ninth from the top 10 African countries with high illicit financial flows from 1970 to 2008 next to Côte d'Ivoire and Sudan.
The panel, which was chaired by Thabo Mbeki, former South African president and comprised nine other members, released its report at Hilton Hotel on February 1, 2015.
The high level panel is the first African initiative mandated to be established after the fourth joint annual meeting of the AU/ECA conference of ministers of finance, planning and economic development adopted a resolution to establish the level of IFF from the continent, to asses its long term impacts and to propose policies in reversing the illegal outflows.
The Report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, used estimates by various researches on illicit financial flows from Africa, adding that a significant amount was from sources such as bribing and trafficking of drugs, people and firearms, which are secret in nature and could not be properly estimated.
The panel reported that Ethiopia could have lost 16.5 billion dollars due to illicit financial flow from 1970 to 2008, which was 2.3pc of the total IFF from the continent, based on which the total continental loss could be computed to a little over 700 billion dollars. However, the report gives a different figure, 854 billion dollars for the total loss during the period.
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