Kenya’s problem is not poverty, Okiya Omtatah says—it is borrowed cash that never faces Parliament, and a legislature too compromised to ask where it went.
Omtatah’s odious-debt puts Kenya’s political lenders—and its political class—on notice
A Kenyan court fight over irregular borrowing is testing the wisdom of a 1927 doctrine on odious debt.
Lenders, beware — a Kenyan court case may invalidate ‘odious debts’
Loans made outside normal parliamentary channels and held offshore may soon find themselves less likely to be repaid.
What will happen to the oil-for-loans project between China and Venezuela after Maduro’s arrest?
The arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has prompted warnings that a new government may refuse to recognize debts deemed odious or illegitimate.
A paradise for corruption
Britain tries to clean up its dirtiest secret.
BBC climate disinformation reporter attacks Kenyan farmer
When a Kenyan farmer expressed views contrary to the climate change narrative, a BBC reporter took him to task for sharing from his own experience and research.
Why Communist China is determined to weaponize Ebola
India would be the country most at risk of a major Ebola bioweapons attack.
The resource curse comes to Mozambique
Hidden foreign aid to an incompetent and dishonest government is set to rob Mozambique of its gas treasure as no one can explain what happened to billions of dollars the country borrowed for a series of price-inflated, murky projects. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) reports.
Suspicions mount in slaying of noted Honduran environmentalist
The killing of award-winning environmentalist and indigenous leader Berta Cáceres by two gunmen at her home in Honduras raises questions about the possible role of Honduran soldiers and police in her death, the Washington Post reports.
Wanted by U.S.: The stolen millions of despots and crooked elites
The United States’ Kleptocracy initiative is aimed at holding foreign government officials to account and preventing them from using the U.S. as a haven for money looted from their own countries. Although solid wins are rare, tying up a corrupt foreign leader’s money in the courts is seen as a victory, writes Leslie Wayne for The New York Times.
After Mozambique’s spending, the reckoning
The Africa Report looks at Mozambique’s economic crisis — a crisis that has still to reach its peak.
Canada may blacklist SNC Lavalin – The view from India
Media sources in India are following the Canadian government’s investigation of SNC-Lavalin with great interest.
Ukraine’s odious debts
Ukraine’s national news agency, Ukrinform, asked Probe International’s Patricia Adams to weigh in on Ukraine’s multibillion-dollar debt to Russia and whether Ukraine could challenge the enforceability of the US$3 billion Eurobond using an odious debts argument.
Canadian pensioners wade into China’s housing market
(April 16, 2014) Working Canadians are placing a bet on the Chinese real estate market thanks to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board that invests their obligatory pension contributions globally.
“An independent Catalonia should not pay” for Spain’s “odious debts,” says employer association CCN
(February 18, 2014) As Catalonia’s secession movement gains new momentum, Albert Pont, the leader of a Catalan pro-independence business lobby, recently called out part of the national debt owed by the government of Spain — estimated at 962 billion euros in 2013, its highest level in a century — as “odious debt.” In the event of separation from Spain, Pont said that while an independent Catalonia — currently a province widely known as “the factory of Spain” and as the country’s wealthiest region — would be willing to “assume part of [the Spanish] debt; obviously, a proportionate one…. there are shares of the debt that we are not responsible for.”
Probe International 