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.”
Does SNC-Lavalin deserve a clean bill of health?
(February 4, 2014) A “privileged and confidential” review by the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), released to Probe International under the Access to Information Act, says graft-tainted engineering giant SNC-Lavalin has cleaned up its act. Reviews that lack rigour and independence, however, do not help the cause of rebuilding corporate reputations.
USAID and Chinese state companies look to build white elephant
(January 24, 2014) USAID may join forces with Chinese state companies to build a controversial and uneconomic dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Why foreign aid to Zimbabwe won’t work
(November 5, 2013) A Zimbabwe-based newspaper says greater accountability and transparency will help the country’s struggling economy, not foreign aid.
“Lost” foreign aid money, this time in Palestine
(October 18, 2013) A European Union auditor says billions of dollars in foreign aid to the Palestinian government has been squandered or lost to corruption.
SNC-Lavalin may have to abandon involvement in DRC dam project
(September 24, 2013) SNC-Lavalin may have to pull out from a consortium bidding on a contract to construct a massive dam project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
SNC-Lavalin corruption case in India rages on
(September 16, 2013) SNC-Lavalin’s decade-long scandal in India goes to trial.
Indigenous leader killed in resistance fight over Honduras mega-dam

(July 17, 2013) Tomás Garcia, a leader of the indigenous Lenca community in Honduras, was fatally shot on Monday, and his son Alan seriously injured, when members of the Honduran Army began firing indiscriminately at a demonstration protesting the construction of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca Dam already underway on the Gualcaeque River in the country’s southwest. International Rivers reports.