By IANS,
Nairobi : Over $50 billion is illicitly transferred from Africa annually with multinational corporations being the main culprits, said former South African president Thabo Mbeki here Wednesday.
Mbeki, chairman of a high-level panel which seeks to track and stop Africa’s illicit financial capital flight, said the amount is against $25 billion that the continent receives in overseas assistance from various donors, Xinhua reported.
“Organisations that can deal in such volumes of funds are not those that handle $15 or $20 but those with the ability to engage in the colossal amounts,” Mbeki told journalists in the Kenyan capital.
The panel was inaugurated Feb 18 to lead a global initiative to track and stop the illicit financial flows from Africa, with the Nairobi meeting being the third since inception.
Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced an exodus of more than $700 billion in capital flight since 1970, a sum that far surpasses the region’s external debt outstanding of roughly $175 billion.
Mbeki said part of the illicit flows of the money comes from activities emanating from multinationals, which he said are the only organisations capable of dealing in such huge amounts of money.
“No particular sector can be pin-pointed out at this particular moment because we are only six months old but all we can disclose at the moment is that some of the companies are associated with extractive industries,” Mbeki said.