Ryan Hoover
Financial Times
September 24, 2002

Sir,
In James Lamont’s article “Lesotho bribery case warning” (September 19), Acres International warned that its bribery conviction “could jeopardise international construction companies’ operations in the developing world”. It certainly should, if these companies behave in the way Acres did in Lesotho.

The company claims it had no knowledge that its local representative passed some ý280,000 (US$430,000) to the former chief executive of the World Bank-funded Lesotho Highlands Water Project. After painstakingly detailing the evidence, however, Lesotho’s Chief Justice denounced this defence as a “sham”.

The evidence is powerful. The representative passed money to the executive at roughly the same time Acres won contracts; and the company failed to provide evidence of any other services their highly paid representative rendered them. The judge made a well reasoned decision: Acres’ representative was simply a conduit for bribes.

The Lesotho judiciary should be respected for its courageous stance against corruption and does not deserve arrogant aspersions on its integrity from guilty companies such as Acres.

It is time for the World Bank to take action against companies convicted of corruption. Declaring Acres ineligible to receive Bank-financed contracts is the way to start.
Ryan Hoover, Africa Programme, International Rivers Network, Berkeley, CA 94703, US