We live in extremely bizarre times…
Thanks to the rise of Leftism.
Panorama claims ASI has been paying ‘policemen’, some of whom are fictitious or dead, and that this is the tip of an iceberg. Its employees on the ground are earning up to £850 a day, though they cannot set foot in Syria itself.
MAX HASTINGS: Why cash for jihadis must be the final straw for this foreign aid racket
There is a story — alas, true — of an American aid worker visiting a village in Pakistan where a school had supposedly been built with foreign largesse.
On finding none, he inquired as to its whereabouts and was told by an official, with a shrug: ‘It is probably a Mitsubishi Pajero, driving around Islamabad.’
The abuse and theft of foreign aid is a story as old as the hills into which much of the money disappears. Thus the latest horror — that British taxpayers’ money supposed to fund policing in ‘Free Syria’ has allegedly been diverted into the pockets of jihadis — is merely a twist in a long-running scandal.
Last night’s BBC Panorama investigation of the activities of a contractor named Adam Smith International shows the full range of aid abuses in play: ASI seems to be chiefly a vehicle for enriching its own founders and managers.
