Sanction China by Stopping World Bank Loans to CCP

Decoupling the United States from China is a convoluted and complicated process. Some lawmakers make it sound easy by just terminating manufacturing agreements by U.S. companies and bring it stateside. Ah but hold on…it is important to know some other details that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are not telling you.

Consider the items below:

1.  Commerce Department official warned Congress recently that China is raising billions of dollars in U.S. capital markets and the activity could undermine American security.

Nazak Nikakhtar, assistant secretary for international trade at the Commerce Department, testified last month that Chinese companies raised $48 billion from American capital markets from 2013 through the end of last year.

Ms. Nikakhtar told the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that 172 Chinese companies in September were listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges — Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and the NYSE American — with a total market capitalization of more than $1 trillion. More here.

Confucius Institutes and U.S. Exchange Programs: Public ...

2. Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and two Chinese nationals who were researchers at Boston University and a Boston hospital were charged by the U.S. Justice Department with lying about their purported links to the Chinese government. But hold on, it is much worse. China has a real impact on all levels of the U.S. education system. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a 96 page report describing the Confucius Institute and how those agreements work with domestic universities. Further, major universities failed to report the other monies they receive from China among other countries. It is shocking how foreign money has infiltrated the U.S. education system and to learn which country does what and how much, click here.

China moon landing: Spacecraft makes first landing on moon ...

3. China launched its Long March 5B rocket into space. This is an effort by China to build a modular space station. It did however fall out of orbit falling for the most part into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa near the Ivory Coast. Additionally, as China continues to launch at least 12 more space operations it already has landed on the dark side of the moon. China and Russia are in fact collaborating on lunar operations including for shared bases. Russia’s operations coordinating with China are centered and funded by Roscosmos for Space Activities and the Skulkovo Foundation. This is the foundation where Hillary Clinton created U.S. technology (Silicon Valley) and Skulkovo via the Clinton Foundation via a major donor known as Viktor Vekselberg. This is the other scandal of technology transfer(s) to rogue nations.

4. We are already somewhat versed in Chinese complicity in the pandemic and the World Health Organization but lets go to the World Bank shall we? As of early 2019, China was sitting on cash reserves of some $3 trillion. It is the world’s second-largest economy, behind the U.S. It directly lends more money to other nations each year than the $2 billion or so it borrows from the World Bank annually. The World Bank, based in Washington, D.C., was established after World War II to help European countries rebuild. Its mission has evolved over the years and is now to finance development in low- and middle-income countries with the goal of eliminating extreme poverty.

“From a pure economic vantage point, there is no good reason for the World Bank to continue making loans to China,” says Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University.

“The Chinese don’t need the money,” Prasad says. “There is a glaring optics problem.” He adds that the argument could be made that the money lent to China could be put to better use elsewhere.

And it’s not as if the World Bank has an infinite amount of money to parcel out. Its lending budget, drawn from reserves, donations and the interest it earns on capital, is limited. So a dollar lent to China is a dollar that is not available for a project somewhere else in the world. The Trump administration, which regularly beats up on China, accusing it of manipulating global trade rules for its own benefit, has blasted the World Bank for lending too much to China.

Prasad says the World Bank’s lending to China is becoming “untenable” and will have to stop fairly soon.

Bert Hofman, the World Bank’s country director for China, says the amount of money China is borrowing each year from the global bank is just a small fraction of what the country is investing each year in domestic programs. And he believes that a motivation for China’s borrowing goes beyond money.

“The reason they still borrow is because they feel that the expertise of the World Bank is valuable to them,” Hofman says.

World Bank loans come with advisers and auditors who help implement (and monitor) bank-funded projects.

China gets access to international experts. The World Bank remains engaged with China and is able to see how new projects play out in this booming middle-income country. Hofman sees it as a win-win.

Prasad agrees that there are still some good reasons for the World Bank to remain engaged with China. Many of the bank’s loans to China are for projects addressing climate change and mitigating pollution from the country’s booming factories.

“The risk the World Bank faces is that if it only lends to very poor countries, it might end up not having much of a role to play in the large, fast-growing emerging-market economies,” Prasad says. “So the World Bank, in a bid to remain relevant and push its agenda on issues such as climate change and social development, has continued to lend to China.” More here.

***

The World Bank said its board adopted a new plan to aid China with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in low-interest loans annually through June 2025, despite the objections of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and several U.S. lawmakers.

World Bank approves $300mn for agriculture reforms in ...

Mnuchin told a House Financial Services Committee hearing that the Treasury’s representative on the board had objected on to the plan on Wednesday, adding he wants the World Bank to “graduate” China from its concessional loan programs for low- and middle-income countries.

The five-year lending strategy plan was published on Thursday afternoon after the World Bank’s board “expressed broad support” for the multilateral development lender’s engagement in China’s structural and environmental reforms.

The World Bank said its lending would decline over the “country partnership framework” plan, in line with reformsagreed under a $13 billion capital increase agreed in 2018.

The World Bank loaned China $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year ended June 30, down from about $2.4 billion during fiscal 2017. The new plan calls for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8 billion.

“Lending levels may fluctuate up and down from year to year due to normal pipeline management based on project readiness,” the World Bank said in its plan.

*** So we have a collection of reparation options due to the pandemic when it comes to China, we have a building space battlefield, we have corruption within China and now we have the U.S. at major odds with the Chinese Communist Party’s in violation of the One Country, Two Systems Act of 1997 with regard to Hong Kong. Secretary of State Pompeo declared to Congress that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous with The CCP which is correct but this will spark continued hostilities between the two nations even as naval conflicts continue in the South China Sea.

None of this will be easy but the reader should know more details to assess what may be ahead in global relations.

 

Unmasking List is not Complete

Primer: Crossfire Razor = LTG Flynn investigation, launched July 2016, cleared January 2017 (calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak included the call in question which was December 29, 2016. There were clearly requests prior to Samantha Power, it is unclear yet by whom and those results. We are told there will be more releases.

Crossfire Typhoon = George Papadopoulos

Crossfire Hurricane full FBI investigation operation

* The list below is hardly a full list of unmasking requests during the late part of the Obama presidency. This report was released by Senator Grassley. For example, Susan Rice is not listed. The below documents are for a specific time-frame. Note the requests prior to the main phone call that has raised the ire of the Democrats. For additional reference, LTG Flynn had the official job as National Security Advisor to President Trump from January 23, 2017 to February 13, 2017.

Other designations listed below are as follows:

DOE in Briefer is the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons division)

COS can be both Chief of Staff or Chief of Station (CIA)

CMO is Collection Management Officer

DCOS is Deputy Chief of Station

CMO is Chief of Missions Officer (Reports Officer)

CIA/CTMC Counter Terrorism Military Coordinator

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* Samantha Power: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, married to Cass Sunstein who was the Information and Regulatory Czar for President Obama.

* James Clapper: Former Director of National Intelligence, previously served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the same one that LTG Flynn was Director of at the time he was fired by the Obama administration.

* Kelly Degnan, previous Deputy Chief of Mission to Italy, San Marino and was nominated by President Trump to be Ambassador to Georgia and she speaks 5 languages.

* John R. Phillips, Former Ambassador to Italy and San Marino, and presently a lawyer at the whistleblower law firm of Phillips and Cohen. His wife is Linda Douglas and is head of communications for Bloomberg in WDC.

* John Brennan, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, previously was the Assistant to Obama for Homeland Security. (He at CIA when he set up the system that spied on Senate staffers working for Senator Feinstein doing work on the torture report)

* Patrick Conlon, Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Treasury Department, formerly 19 years at CIA

* Jacob Lew, Secretary of Treasury until 2017.

* Arthur Danny McGlynn, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

* Mike Neufeld, Deputy Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury

* Sarah Raskin, Lawyer, formerly on the Board of the Federal Reserve and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, married to Jamie Raskin of the 8th District of Maryland, U.S. House of Representatives.

* Nathan Sheets, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs

* Adam Szubin, Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at U.S. Treasury

* Robert Bell, Civilian Representative of the Secretary of Defense in Europe and Advisor to U.S Ambassador to NATO.

* VDAM John Christenson, U.S. Military Representative to NATO Military Committee in Brussels.

* James Comey, Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

* LTC Paul Geehreng, Defense Policy Advisor to US Mission NATO, policy advisor on Russia.

* Douglas Lute, US Permanent Representative to NATO married to Jane Holl, currently serving as UN Special Envoy to Cyprus, former Deputy Secretary of Department of Homeland Security.

* James Hursh, Acting Secretary of Defense in Europe and Acting Defense Advisor to US Mission NATO.

* Scott Parrish, U.S. State Department, Political Officer, NATO.

* Elizabeth Sherwood Randall, US Deputy Secretary of Energy, previously White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, brother is President of ABC Disney Group and ABC News.

* Tamir Waser, NATO Operations Officer, London

* John F. Tefft, U.S. Ambassador to Russia, career Foreign Service Officer.

* Ambassador John R. Bass, Turkey, former Ambassador to Georgia. Former Chief of Staff and Policy Advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

* Denis McDonough, Former White House Chief of Staff for President Obama, former Senior Fellow at Center for America Progress.

* Michael Dempsey, Former Acting Director of National Intelligence for January to March of 2017, formerly with the CIA as a WINPAC Expert

* Stephanie O’Sullivan, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, former senior leader at CIA.

* Joseph Biden, Former Vice President for President Obama and attended the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting in question that included President Obama,  Susan Rice, Sally Yates and James Comey.

***

WHAT IS UNMASKING?

During routine, legal surveillance of foreign targets, names of Americans occasionally come up in conversations. Foreigners could be talking about a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident by name, or a foreigner could be speaking directly to an American. When an American’s name is swept up in surveillance of foreigners, it is called “incidental collection.” In these cases, the name of the American is masked before the intelligence is distributed to administration officials to avoid invading that person’s privacy.

Unless there is a clear intelligence value to knowing the American’s name, it is not revealed in the reports. The intelligence report would refer to the person only as “U.S. Person 1” or U.S. Person 2.” If U.S. officials with proper clearance to review the report want to know the identity, they can ask the agency that collected the information — perhaps the FBI, CIA or National Security Agency — to “unmask” the name.

WHEN WOULD AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY UNMASK A NAME?

The request is not automatically granted. The person asking has to have a good reason. Typically, the reason is that not knowing the name makes it impossible to fully understand the intelligence provided.

The name is released only if the official requesting it has a need to know and the “identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s latest report, which includes statistics on unmasking. “Additional approval by a designated NSA official is also required.”

Former NSA Director Mike Rogers has said that only 20 of his employees could approve an unmasking. The names are shared only with the specific official who asked. They are not released publicly. Leaking a name, or any classified information, is illegal.

HOW OFTEN ARE NAMES UNMASKED?

The number of unmasking requests began being released to the public in response to recommendations in 2014 from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

There were 9,217 unmasking requests in the 12-month period between September 2015 and August 2016, the first period in which numbers are publicly available. The period was during the latter years of the Obama administration.

The number rose during the Trump administration. The 9,529 requests in 2017 grew to 16,721 in 2018 and 10,012 last year. More here.

 

 

Trump Halts Federal Retirement Accounts Investing in China

In February of 2020, this site published an article describing the California Public Pension Fund’s investment in Chinese stocks could lead to national security risks and even spying. The value of the fund is $3.1 Billion. Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi refuses to approve House committee hearings on anything related to China….

The Chinese Communist Party has both different accounting rules for corporations reporting financial data and or refuses to release any accounting data. How and why Chinese companies are listed on U.S. Stock Exchanges in the first place is an unanswered question and one that is likely being reviewed now by the Securities and Exchange Commission along with several other agencies due to a very contested relationship between the U.S. and China due to the virus outbreak.

Please find linked a complete list of all Chinese companies listed on the NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, and NYSE American, the three largest U.S. exchanges. As of February 25, 2019, there were 156 Chinese companies listed on these U.S. exchanges with a total market capitalization of $1.2 trillion.

An asterisk next to the stock symbol indicates a company with at least 30 percent state ownership. As of February 25, 2019, there were at least 11 Chinese state-owned companies listed on the three major U.S. exchanges.

A highlighted row indicates a company that was not included on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) September 2018 review of non-U.S. companies where the PCAOB is denied access to conduct inspections.

So as an interesting measure to begin measures against China, President Trump issued a letter to the Labor Secretary to halt investments in Federal Savings Plans in Chinese equities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A second letter was sent by the Secretary of Labor to the Thrift Investment Board and that is found here.

Rather than the normal contested and really stupid questions that the media asks during White House daily briefings, there are some real questions that should be asked and they include all things China.

For some context on how China is all over the United States, consider the information below.

For many Chinese companies, their dreams of listing in New York are only on hold.

Some high-profile Chinese stocks listed in the U.S. such as Luckin Coffee, the self-proclaimed Starbucks rival in China, have been rocked following allegations by short-sellers that these companies faked their numbers, accusations that in some cases are now being internally investigated.

The reports are the latest challenge for Chinese initial public offerings in New York, on top of U.S.-China trade tensions and the impact of the coronavirus.

But some in the cross-border IPO business say the listing plans are just delayed, not canceled.

“I do know Chinese companies that are planning to list this summer as soon as after Labor Day,” said Jim Fields, a Shenzhen-based producer of videos for Chinese companies presenting to potential IPO investors in the U.S. China celebrates the holiday on May 1.

Fields noted the new IPO timeframe is a delay of about one to three months.

Last year, 25 Chinese issuers went public in the U.S., in addition to three special-purpose acquisition companies — companies that raise money to buy another — according to Renaissance Capital, which sells IPO-focused exchange-traded funds. That’s down from 32 Chinese listings in 2018, which was double that of the prior year and the most since 2010.

Despite geopolitical and epidemiological challenges in the first three months of this year, seven Chinese companies and three special-purpose acquisition companies went public in the U.S., according to Matthew Kennedy, IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital.

“We suspect several more had planned to list, but delayed their offerings amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” Kennedy said in an email. “As we noted in our 1Q20 Review, China appears to be the first country emerging from the pandemic, so Chinese companies may also be first to return to the IPO market. However, these financial scandals do reputational damage to Chinese issuers broadly.”

On April 2, Luckin Coffee announced an internal investigation found the chief operating officer fabricated sales by about 2.2 billion yuan ($314 million) from the second to fourth quarter of last year. Shares have plunged more than 80% since the latest disclosure this month, and have been halted for pending news for roughly the last week.

About two months ago, investment firm Muddy Waters said it was shorting, or betting on a decline in the price of the stock, based on an anonymous report that alleged the coffee company fabricated financial and operating numbers beginning in the third quarter of last year. Luckin said at the time the allegations were “misleading and false.”

The company did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange were not available for interviews for this story.

Other high-profile U.S.-listed stocks have come under scrutiny in the last several days.

Shares of video streaming site iQiyi, which is majority-owned by search giant Baidu, dipped last week after a report by Wolfpack Research alleged the video company inflated revenue by about $1 billion to $2 billion. Muddy Waters said it assisted Wolfpack with the report and is also betting against iQiyi’s stock. The Chinese company said in a statement it believed the report contained “errors” and was “misleading.”

China's hottest companies - Tal Education (8) - CNNMoney

Tutoring company TAL Education announced last week it suspected an employee of inflating sales for its “Light Class” product, which accounts for about 3% or 4% of the company’s total estimated revenues. TAL said the employee has been taken into custody by the local police. More here.

California Bullet Train, Shut-up About Fleecing the Government

Exactly how come Senators Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein have nothing to say? Pelosi? Nah….
When Mark Styles was hired in October 2018 to help oversee Central Valley scheduling for the California bullet train, he soon learned he had walked into a mess.
Over the previous half decade the project had repeatedly fallen behind schedule, and the cost by 2018 had jumped from $64 billion to $77 billion in two years.
California is Building High-Speed Rail | High Speed Rail ...
A core problem was the project’s operating culture, in which managers for WSP, the bullet train’s lead consultant, threatened to punish or terminate employees if they failed to toe the company line, Styles said.
“I was told to shut up and not say anything,” said Styles, a career construction manager who was hired as WSP’s senior supervisory scheduler in the project’s Fresno office. “I was told that I didn’t understand the political arena the project was in. I told them I am not going to shut up. This is my job.”
The atmosphere described by Styles has been corroborated by a half dozen current and former senior officials knowledgeable about the project’s Fresno office.
The officials say it helps explain why California’s high-speed rail endeavor has barreled ahead for more than a decade, despite warnings it was structured on risky assumptions and could run out of money before any trains operate.
WSP spokeswoman Denise Turner Roth rejected Styles’ claims. “We always work carefully with our client to evaluate the demands of each project and to prepare realistic and transparent recommendations regarding schedule and budget,” she said.
But other ex-WSP employees in the Fresno office, including engineer Vera Lovejoy and project controls coordinator Todd Bilstein, say they were also discouraged from sharing bad news with bosses.
“I wanted the project to succeed,” said Lovejoy, who left the project in 2019 after one year. “I was eager to help deliver it. But I couldn’t stay. If you rock the boat, you are labeled as not a team player.”
Bilstein also left in 2019 after a nine-month tenure.
“If I was to give a talk at a construction conference, I would say they were not following generally accepted project management principles,” he said. The company’s failures, he said, ran the gamut of estimating costs, scheduling construction and managing change orders.
“Revealing bad news was discouraged,” he added. “I just couldn’t continue to work there. I don’t work that way. American professionals don’t work that way.”
Styles, who has no lawsuit or other legal claims, is also no longer with WSP. He left in November, calling it “the worst job of my career,” and moved to a new construction job out of state.
Brian Kelly, chief executive of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said in a statement that the agency “takes seriously any claim of wrongdoing by an employee or contractor. We have procedures in place for any such claim to be raised and reviewed. We have an expectation that all employees act within the law and that our contractors meet the requirements of state and federal law.”
He added in an interview, “Our focus is on the mission in front of us.”
In the last half year, Kelly has moved to make changes in his organization’s culture, replacing numerous middle-level management officials, orchestrating more documentation for its plans and vowing to improve transparency in the agency operations.
WSP and Parsons Brinckerhoff, which merged in 2014, have been on the project since the 1990s. The Montreal firm, one of the largest infrastructure engineering organizations, is working under a $666-million contract. When he arrived at the project’s Fresno office, Styles said, he found a dysfunctional operation like he had never seen before — a pressured environment that aimed to contain bad news that could damage the project’s fortunes.
At the time, the rail authority was confronting delay claims, resulting from its slow acquisition of land, and change orders — both amounting to millions of dollars in higher costs.
Within days, he asked to see the detailed justification documents for the change orders. He said he wanted to understand the delays and how they would affect future construction, a routine part of a scheduler’s job.
WSP management, he said, told him that he didn’t need to see the documents. WSP was pushing to “keep the numbers looking good,” which in some cases involved altering reports written by its staff to make construction progress look better, he alleges.
Styles and other sources speaking off the record say that the bullet train schedule, which calls for installing 119 miles of track and a complex signal system from Madera to Wasco by 2022, is “impossible,” even though the project’s budget is predicated on the completion date.
To install track by 2022 would normally require all of the bridges, viaducts, trenches and other structures to be completed beforehand. As a stopgap measure, the rail authority now plans to install track in five-mile discontinuous segments, which the Federal Railroad Administration has criticized as illogical.
A more likely scenario would have the current construction completed between 2025 and 2028, which would drive costs up and force the state to either find new money or curtail the project, Styles and others said.
Rail authority spokeswoman Annie Parker said the agency has acknowledged repeatedly that “the deadline is a challenge.” It will require boosting monthly construction spending from the current $46 million to $70 million, said chief financial officer Brian Annis, who added that its construction pace is improving.
Sylmar-based Tutor Perini, which is building rail structures in Madera and Fresno counties, said a week ago it will complete its work in 2023. The company’s contract was initially $1 billion, but delay claims and change orders have doubled the amount.
Chief Executive Ron Tutor told security analysts in a recorded telephone call on Feb. 26, “With our extending the completion date from the end of ’21 to the first quarter of ’23, once again, we are in discussions with the owner to resolve payment for that further delay. However, it seems certain that given all of the results and resolves over the last 90 days that that should be the final end date for high-speed rail.”
It would mean that the rail authority could not begin to install track and signals until after that construction is completed.
When The Times asked the rail authority if it had comment on Tutor’s statement, it received an email Friday from Tutor saying his statement to investors had caused “some confusion.” He said that he hopes that “substantial completion” of his company’s work would occur in early 2022, leaving “paperwork, acceptances and contractual documentation” to be completed in early in 2023.
Turning around the multibillion-dollar project has proved difficult for years, given California’s complex governance structure, flawed contracts and past decisions, officials close to the project say. Executives in civil engineering firms say the rail authority lacks technical resources.
“They have all these people in top jobs with no technical background,” said a top executive at a major European engineering firm, who worked on the project. “They are politicians. They never disclose the full cost. They give you incremental truth. They believe that is a successful business model. They should cancel the contracts and start over.”
The Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees billions of dollars in grants, has long warned the rail authority it risked missing deadlines and was headed for big cost overruns. In December 2016, the FRA warned the statethat the cost of the Central Valley construction could jump by $3.6 billion. After The Times obtained a copy of the confidential report and published its findings, the rail authority denied the legitimacy of the analysis. Today, the cost is even higher than the FRA projected.
WSP said it stands by the job it is doing for the bullet train. “To the extent WSP prepares cost and schedule estimates for the program as a whole, WSP brings world-class talent to the project that prepare professional estimates based on client needs and the information available when generated,” Turner Roth said.
Styles said he was shut out of work not long after taking the job at WSP, though the company did not fire him. Over many months, Styles, who was being paid $170,000 annually, said he kept advising management about the problems and writing procedures for contract compliance.
In a Facebook posting in June, Styles wrote that he had been warned by a co-worker “to be careful” and “you know too much” and to take a lower profile. “I’d rather be dead than a coward,” he wrote.
Styles filed an ethics complaint against his former employer in June, which was examined by a management committee in Chicago. “The committee concluded there was no proof that WSP violated ethics with the state,” he said.
Turner Roth said, “In 2019, an employee — who has since left the company — raised a question about the schedule data submitted to WSP by the construction managers and construction contractors. In response to this question, WSP thoroughly investigated the matter, and concluded there was no wrongful conduct by WSP employees in their review of contractor submissions.”
As for Lovejoy, whose career includes engineering jobs at major public agencies and corporations, she said problems started more a decade ago when the Obama administration issued a $2.5-billion grant from its economic stimulus program, intended for “shovel-ready projects.”
The grant came about four years before the first construction contract was issued, and actual work did not begin for two more years. “It was so far from shovel-ready,” Lovejoy said.
Another former WSP employee, who spoke anonymously out of concern that he would face retribution, supported Styles’ assertion that monthly and annual reports submitted by staff often were changed by WSP management before they were reviewed in meetings and sent to state executives.
“We gave them the bad news and they wouldn’t accept it,” he said.
The Times has previously reported that the project has struggled to relocate pipes, electrical lines and other infrastructure that stands in the way of securing parcels and laying track. Today, the rail authority is short by 497 of the 2,042 parcels it needs, according to its most recent progress report. In December, the authority acquired only five parcels.
In late 2018, Hemanth Kundeti, a database manager, was hired into the project to help improve property records, but he lasted only several months.
Kundeti, an employee of a subconsultant to WSP, said he developed his own software tool that could track the work more accurately. It would have allowed the state to replace a subcontractor that was charging $2 million annually to maintain the records, he said.
When he proposed the tool to WSP and state officials, it was rejected. In February 2019, he was twice reprimanded for “insubordination” for continuing to promote his software, according to a copy of the reprimand. In response, he wrote on his warning letter that management “without healthy debate is dangerous for any organization.” He was terminated a few weeks later.
“I am still reeling from the after-effects of being terminated for trying to save taxpayers’ money from being wasted,” said Kundeti, who has found a new job.

When the World Bank is Corrupt, Anyone Care?

Per the World Bank website:

The World Bank Group considers corruption a major challenge to its twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the poorest 40 percent of people in developing countries. In addition, reducing corruption is at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals and achieving the ambitious targets set for Financing for Development.

Corruption has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice.

Great right? There is even a video of ten steps to stop corruption.

Also on the website:

The United States was a leading force in the establishment of the World Bank in 1944 and remains the largest shareholder of the World Bank today. As the only World Bank shareholder that retains veto power over changes in the Bank’s structure, the United States plays a unique role in influencing and shaping development priorities.

Through the World Bank Group, the United States participates in addressing international development challenges of vital importance. The United States has a long history of generously supporting the World Bank Group’s mission and has been a champion of the International Development Association (IDA), the Bank’s fund for the poorest, which provides low-interest loans and grants to developing countries for education, health, infrastructure, agriculture, communications, economic and institutional development.

Why all the concern?

World Bank Has Expressed This Big Estimate About Indias ...

OCCRP: A paper the World Bank released on Tuesday shows that countries dependent on aid from the organization see increased flows into tax secrecy havens, suggesting that some of its funds is ending up in the wrong hands. The Economist reported last week that the development bank allegedly tried to conceal the findings by neglecting to publish the study, and that Pinelopi “Penny” Goldberg, its chief economist, would be stepping down just 15 months into her tenure.

Because of media reports connecting Goldberg’s resignation and the study, the World Bank issued a public statement, explaining that the paper had undergone “several reviews, and it was improved as a result,” before it was published on the organization’s website. The timing of when it decided to publish the paper has drawn scrutiny, however.

Stefano Feltri, an Italian journalist who reported on the censorship in Pro Market, a University of Chicago-based publication, confirmed to OCCRP that the article was first published on the personal website of Niels Johannesen, a professor of the University of Copenhagen and CEBI, who co-authored it.

The article was then published hours later, by the World Bank, he explained, also confirming this through screenshots he shared with OCCRP.

Goldberg’s reason for resigning is unclear. The Economist said: “After aid to a country spikes, money departs for offshore havens. And after a sensitive paper is spiked, Penny departs for New Haven.”

OCCRP has obtained emails sources say were sent out Feb. 5, before the study controversy went public, showing that she had voiced her intention of returning to her post as an economics professor at Yale University.

Her departure marks the Bank’s second consecutive chief economist who has stepped down — Paul Romer, who served previously, resigned after publicly denouncing the organization for its “politically motivated” methodology that criticized business practice Chile under its socialist president Michelle Bachelet.

“I don’t know what exactly happened,” said Johannesen, who was more focused on the findings of his paper, when asked by OCCRP whether he could provide clarity to the situation.

He said his paper uncovered what he called “leakages” of foreign aid, where the number of offshore transactions going to tax havens designed to hide the origin of the source goes up in aid-dependent countries. He said about 5 percent of aid appears to be flowing illicitly offshore.

“While we can only speculate, the study shows that aid might itself be eroding institutions,” he said.

The professor concluded that the “big task,” in response to the findings, would be “the further disciplining of tax havens, and strengthening anti-money laundering standards.”

*** For context: The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of poorer countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.[6] It comprises two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International Development Association (IDA). The World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group.

The World Bank’s most recent stated goal is the reduction of poverty.[7] As of November 2018, the largest recipients of World Bank loans were India ($859 million in 2018) and China ($370 million in 2018).

Remember India just signed a deal during President Trump’s visit to buy $3 billion in military equipment. And China has been buying/loaning money to countries to take over their cargo ports known as debt trapping while building the silk road initiative spending $900 billion.

Anyone asking any real questions on all this?