New Internationalist, NI 406
November 2007, p26

Skulduggery: Fuelling corruption in Armenia

It all seemed to be on the up and up for Bruce Tasker. In 2004, he was
invited to become a special consultant to an Armenian parliamentary
commission examining the use of $3 billion in international donor funds.
He accepted the invitation – but he never could have guessed what would
happen next.

The Armenian capital, Yerevan, was used as a case study for the World
Bank-funded $30 million Municipal Development Project to improve its
water supplies. Tasker, a veteran British development worker, and his
team, discovered not only project failure but also an administration
riddled with corruption, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

So, taking the Bank’s stated concern with corruption in the former
Soviet Republic at face value, Tasker reported his findings, not only to
the parliamentary commission, but also to the Bank’s office in Yerevan.
Rather than act upon the commission’s interim findings, Tasker says that
the bank turned on him.

Alleging blacklisting by the bank for reporting the illegalities, Tasker
believes that pressure was applied on the government to prevent full
public disclosure. He claims that taking the matter further would have
revealed colossal fraud and corruption and that all the players,
including senior government officials and foreign workers, would lose
out. `The World Bank is fuelling corruption in Armenia,’ Tasker told New
Internationalist.

Despite the documented allegations, no action has been taken – including
by the World Bank’s own internal watchdog, the Department for
International Integrity (INT). The allegations against the Bank and
British nationals involved in the project were, however, reported by
Tasker to the British Embassy, which informed the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office and in turn, the Serious Fraud Office.

In March 2007, the Washington-based watchdog Government Accountability
Project (GAP) took up Tasker’s cause and filed its own complaint with
the INT in the hope that an investigation into the documented cases of
corruption and fraud would be launched.

When the INT finally responded this August, it gave no indication of
when it would investigate the matter. According to INT, the case was
considered to be of `medium’ priority and dependent on `the availability
of investigative resources.’ The letter came just days before GAP
released its annual report on the INT. The Armenian case was singled out
for specific criticism.

Tasker jokes about the INT’s reluctance to investigate the matter: `I
should consider myself fortunate… the low priority cases are simply
filed away with no further action’. Following on from the forced
resignation of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, this new revelation
hammers yet more nails into the coffin of the Bank’s credibility.
Self-righteous finger-wagging should start at home.

Onnik Krikorian