ACDI/VOCA Corruption Scandal, Reader Feedback, Azerbaijan

 1) Why do you think this is a corruption scandal?    Unlike some of the other ACDI projects like the ones in Georgia and Afghanistan, USAID has not provided ACDI with the authority nor the financing to actually make any loans or to be actively involved in the lending process.   In this case they are nothing more than glorified seminar presenters and teachers trying to put together meetings and seminars to bring the actual lenders who do make the loans and the sources of private capital to the seminars with the hope they will talk to one another.

They are taking credit for the fact these organizations are working together, for which they had nothing in reality to do with the actual transaction or the process, but in typical USAID fashion, they have to tout the fact that they "had successes" because people in the industry who every reason to be talking to one another anyway actually did hook up.

The scam is that they are trying to spin the fact their "seminars" had anything to do with it, and that their $6 million from USAID therefore has a leveraging factor.   Obviously they are hoping USAID will give them more money to do more of the same.    These people they are inviting know more about microfinance than ACDI will ever know since they are 'in' the business so having ACDI doing seminars is just another way of wasting more USAID money.

2) "Why don't you send this to Der Speigel magazine?

I am sure that NATO/EU did not want to agree to 4 more years in Afghanistan in Lisbon, for no country has the money or the voting public in favor of even four more months. To expose corruption in USAID would be like jelly beans to make the German public demand to pull out of Afghanistan. Then get a contract or promise of payment and write up a much more detailed and factual expose for them, not just the word "corruption" and Rusty Shultz, ACDI/VOCA over and over."

I am sure that NATO/EU did not want to agree to 4 more years in Afghanistan in Lisbon, for no country has the money or the voting public in favor of even four more months. It seems that the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been milked by the same players, along with credit associations. 

 

Normicro's vision is to be a sustainable and leading organization in alleviating poverty through providing broad access to credit in Azerbaijan. Normicro promotes viable enterprises for internally displaced and low-income Azerbaijanis by providing sustainable lending services.

 

Here are points of contact that know all the details, and much effort has been made on the part of the Norweigan government to clean up another Eldar Jafarov mess, and he seems to have some rather high level corruption from the first family

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