Patricia Adams
Globe and Mail
October 30, 2002

Toronto, Ontario
E-mail: Letters@GlobeAndMail.ca

Re: “Acres vows appeal,” by Terry Weber, October 28, 2002

Dear Sir:

Acres International, the Canadian engineering firm sentenced this week in Lesotho for bribing an African official, is misleading your readers by claiming that the World Bank dismissed the same charges against it (“Acres vows appeal,” by Terry Weber, October 28, 2002).

The World Bank financed Acres’ work on this multi-billion dollar dam-building scheme and did conduct an internal investigation after Acres was indicted in Lesotho. But far from dismissing the charges, as Acres would have us believe, the World Bank simply put the issue on ice, until it could get the information it needed to make an informed decision about whether or not to “debar” Acres from future World Bank contracts. As Bank spokesperson Caroline Anstey said, “our investigation is not a criminal investigation. We do not have subpoena power” as did the Lesotho prosecution.

At the same time, Ms. Anstey said, the Bank made it very clear to Acres that if damning new evidence came to light in the Lesotho trials, it would reopen its investigation. To that end, the World Bank is now reviewing thousands of pages of trial transcripts and the Judgment against Acres.

Yours sincerely,

Patricia Adams, Executive Director
Probe International
225 Brunswick Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2M6
tel: 1 (416) 964-9223 (ext 227), fax: 964-8239
https://journal.probeinternational.org/