Release: Ethiopia Financial Intelligence Service (45 GB)
Emails from the government entity monitoring corruption in Ethiopia, Africa's second largest country by population. The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa had early access to the dataset.
The dataset includes approximately 19,000 emails from Ethiopia's Financial Intelligence Service, previously known as the Financial Intelligence Center, the government agency responsible for monitoring suspicious financial transactions in the country. It is rare for documents from any country’s financial intelligence unit to come to light. DDoSecrets has added this dataset from Ethiopia to our limited distribution section. Update: the data is now public.
Bloomberg reported on one thread in the Financial Intelligence service’s dataset: an internal investigation into the Ethiopian head of the World Head Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu:
“Compiled over several months in 2021, the documents are part of a report sent to judicial authorities and the federal police. They include bank statements, handwritten witness accounts and email correspondence among investigators, witnesses and banks. The intelligence unit probed allegations that Tedros was involved in embezzlement of state funds, sexual misconduct, illicit purchases of property in Addis Ababa, rigged tender offers and illegal procurement during his tenure as Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005 to 2012.”
Bloomberg interviewed Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and “verified the documents by analyzing attached metadata to check that they were created by their authors and confirmed the investigation with two Ethiopian officials.” They did not, however, find any evidence of the alleged corruption investigated by the Ethiopian authorities. Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal from PPLAAF commented:
“When government officials subvert the fight against corruption and financial crime to settle political scores, it undermines the rule of law and is a setback to authentic good governance efforts … The Ethiopian government materials give us a rare insight into the bureaucracy and mechanics of such targeted acts.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung looked into the allegations of corruption around a construction project for 500 health centers that the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) funded in Ethiopia: “According to a GIZ spokeswoman, the transaction was billed correctly.” Despite a lack of evidence backing up the allegations in the report, the financial intelligence unit handed their investigation of Dr. Tedros over to the Ethiopian police and public prosecutor's office, and “an official charge was made but apparently never served,” writes Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Tribune de Geneve confirmed that Ethiopia has never forwarded their investigation to Swiss authorities:
In Bern, the Federal Office of justice specifies that Ethiopia has not never sent a request for mutual legal assistance to Switzerland concerning possible acts of corruption alleged against Dr Tedros.
Most of the media partners in the PPLAAF consortium have published their reporting, except for The Continent, a weekly digital magazine from South Africa. The Continent is sent out via WhatsApp or Signal message every weekend. Subscribe by sending them a message, to read their next edition.
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