Within the world of global health aid and financing, corruption has long been a problem, from £200m from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and malaria being suspended in Zambia due to concerns about money for specific projects lining the pockets of officials, to the Global Fund suspending all grants to Uganda after discovering questionable spending and contracting by the ministry of health.
These corruption scandals are often dismissed as a problem that happens “over there”, and are even used as an argument against foreign aid. But are we really so different in Britain? If we look at the Covid-19 crisis, we see a similar pattern of public moneys, supposedly to tackle the pandemic, being extracted for private gain. A recent report by Transparency International UK says that a fifth of the Covid contracts awarded by the government contained red flags indicating possible corruption.
