Ethiopia: Legally corrupt

The simplest definition of state corruption is the
self-enrichment of government officials through the use of the power bestowed
on them and state mechanism. In Ethiopia, the TPLF is a Mafia-type gang that is
running its own Mafiosi business empire, not the country as a legitimate,
caring government.

The
country itself is up for sale, as long as there are buyers out there. That is
why people in Gambella[1]
were evicted and their land sold to Indian, Arab, Turkish and Pakistani billionaires.
Recently, the Ethiopian government refused to cooperate with the World Bank
when it was asked to investigate whether the World Bank violated its own
policies by funding, in which thousands of people were allegedly relocated to
make way for agricultural investors[2].
The British Government actually knowingly or unknowingly funded a programme
that evicted the tribes of the Lower Omo Valley in south
west Ethiopia – chief among them the Mursi, the Nyangatom, the Bodi and the Daasanach, who depend on a combination of flood retreat
cultivation on the banks of the Omo River, rain fed
cultivation further back from the river, and cattle on the grass plains[3],
again to make way for foreign agricultural investors. The land of the
Amaras, Afars, Oromos
and all over the country is up for a grab. Even Egypt secured herself 20, 000
acres of farmland[4].
To imagine this, one acre is about 1 football stadium field. The money from the
sale of land, in hard currency goes straight either to the pockets of individuals
of those in powers or to the coffers of regime’s private money making
institutions, such as the “The Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray”, EFFORT.

Ethiopia
is full of ironies. Before the Tigray Liberation Front (TPLF) became the “Government”,
it was separatist rebel force, just like that of Eritrean Liberation Front with
the aim of building the Future Republic of Tigray.  After successfully overthrowing the military
regime of Lt Col. Mengistu Hailemariam,
guerrilla leaders of TPLF helped Eritrea gain its independence but delayed
their own, to finish some unfinished task of dismantling Ethiopia. Then they
saw, the opportunity to amass any wealth from the South and move up to the
North, to prosper their future Republic of Tigray, their ultimate goal. They
never felt belongingness to Ethiopia. The mother of all ironies is that they
are ruling the country and the people they hated so much at gun point. Therefore,
expecting respect for human right from such a bunch of separatists is like
expecting dove from a serpent’s egg. What would the British feels, if IRA end up
being in charge of the Westminster to decide on the future of The United
Kingdom? I leave that to your imagination.

Then
another irony follows. Throughout the history of mankind, governments fought
with neighbouring countries to expand their territories, but the government of
Ethiopia fights with its own people to give land away to anybody outsider as
long as the other party pays. The boarder land with the Sudan, including the
birth Place of Emperor Theodros, whose son Prince Alemayehu Theodros’s body is
lying right here in Britain at Windsor Castle has been given to the Sudanese
after forcefully evicting the inhabitants, under gunpoint[5].
That was in return of the Sudanese assistance while they were fighting the
previous regime. A fertile farmland had to be taken away from Ethiopian farmers
and given to a neighbouring country. When the Sudanese military came to take over
the land, the farmers stood up to protect their property, fighting back
bravely. However, their own government attacked them from behind in defence of
the alien Sudanese military.

More
than half of Ethiopia’s economy belongs to EFFORT, the Private property of Tigrian People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). From the
remaining 50%, about 25% belongs to the Sheik Al Amoudi,
an Ethiopian born Saudi Billionaire, who does business with them, probably
stashing millions of dollars away for them in foreign banks. Then about 12.5%
belongs to its satellite parties, while only 12:5% belongs to rest of 90
million people. When the regime declares the fast growing economy of the
country, one should understand that actually it is meant the fast bulging
pocket of the ruling officials, and not the people at all. Our people are
poorer than ever. The number of starving has quadrupled. Millions live on the
street. The regime itself estimates
that “150,000 children live on
the streets in Ethiopia,
around. 60,000 in Addis Ababa, many
arriving from rural areas looking for work”[6].

Why are we so poor?

Looking
at United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Index, we find
Ethiopia at 174 out 187, just ahead of 13 countries from the bottom of the
table. Examining World Economic Forum’s Global competitive report, we find
Ethiopia at 118 out of 133[7].
Transparency International gives 33 points at Corruption Perception Index. The
highest is awarded to New Zealand, Finland and Denmark, which is at 90. United
Kingdom scores 74, along with Japan, ahead of United States. The lowest score
8, awarded to Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan. Awarding Ethiopia 33 points
out of 90 is totally wrong. I would have put the figure at 2, and that is I if
I am too generous in marking. “The country has also lost close to 12 billion
dollars since 2000 to illicit financial outflows, according to Global Financial Integrity (GFI), whose
statistics are based on official data provided by the Ethiopian government, the
World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)”. The State Corruption
index of Ethiopia could have been lower than that of the level of Somalia,
North Korea and Afghanistan, but the corruption is concealed, because one would
never know where the “government” official activities ends and their business
activities start. EFFORT is a business as well as the “Government”[8].

When
it comes to Natural resources, Ethiopia is not poor at all. We have ample water
resources, for example. 8/7^th of the Water that passes through the
Nile Delta of Egypt comes from Ethiopian Highlands. We have mighty rivers
everywhere. Baro, Tekeze, Wabi Shebele, Gibe, Awash, … you name it, are some, not to mention lakes
everywhere. Truly speaking, Ethiopia is the water bed of Africa. But we suffer
from draught and lack of clean drinking waters.

We
have Gold, Precious stones but they all belong either to EFFORT or Al Amoudi. We have unexploited oil reserves, that could turn
Ethiopia into the economic power of Sub-Saharan Africa, but we don’t have a
responsible government that cares for the people. We have so many fertile lands
which would have been able not just feed Ethiopia, but the entire Africa. Given
her potential agricultural resources, Ethiopia could easily become the
bread-basket of the continent of Africa. If you had followed a BBC Television
Programme “From Pole To Pole” by Michael Palin[9],
you would truly find why he called Ethiopia the Garden of Eden. From Egypt to
the Sudan, it is all desert land. He found life in Ethiopia.

Then
what went wrong? To begin with, we have had wars and battles throughout our history.
Most of our productive times have been wasted fighting to ward off invaders.
Our history tells us that we fought for more than 100 years against the
invading Turks, not to mention Italians and other colonialists from Europe.
When we are not fighting the invaders then we find ourselves fighting each other
as if war was a kind of our national sport. That is all to control power, unlike
the incumbent ones, to break up the country. This one is the worst government
Ethiopia had ever had. They stand to serve the interest of other countries,
rather than their own. One way or another, wars do cost too much and I am not
the one to tell you how much it does. You know it firsthand. War on terrorism
is mother of all ironies of Ethiopia. The TPLF itself is a terrorist
organisation[10].
It is currently bent on terrorising its own people.

To
add insult on injury, then there is this occasional draught that used to come
every 10 years. We heavily depend on rain water, rather than using the irrigation
technology. Have we had peace in the country, even without touching the River
Nile, we could have taken out as much water as we wanted for agriculture from the
rest of the rivers for irrigation purpose, without igniting the fury of the
powerful neighbours and use it to cultivate more than enough crops. The Nile is
a controversial river. Whether we like it or not, it may ignite war anytime
between Ethiopia and Egypt, if not The Sudan. All the Egyptian Military Might
exists, not for anything else, but only one purpose. That is the safeguarding
of the free flow of The Nile River. We know that. They know we know that too.
That is why Egypt works day and night so that there would be no peace time in
Ethiopia.

Then,
there is this third element. Everyone that may aspire to come to power is not
always just for the sake of seizing power but for the sake of enriching
oneself. Yes, we had all corrupt regimes in the past history, but none of them
come anywhere near the incumbent regime. Here we are not talking about
individual official corruptions, but institutional corruptions, with the mighty
force of the government power behind it. Corruptions seems to be legal, it is
rather uncorrupted people that are branded as criminals. Ethiopia is full of
paradox.

Financial
Transparency Coalition[11]
recently reported that

An upcoming report by Global Financial Integrity finds that
Ethiopia, which has a per-capita GDP of just US$365, lost US$11.7 billion to illicit
financial outflows between 2000 and 2009.  More worrying is that the study
shows Ethiopia’s losses due to illicit capital flows are on the rise.  In
2009, illicit money leaving the economy totaled
US$3.26 billion, which is double the amount in each of the two previous years.

STATE CORRUPTION IN
ETHIOPIA

Al
Mariam (2013), a professor of California State University wrote

Recently,
the World Bank released its 448-page World Bank (WB) report, “Diagnosing
Corruption in Ethiopia” with evidence galore showing that Ethiopia under
the absolute dictatorship of the Meles Zenawi regime has become a full-fledged corruptocracy (a
regime controlled and operated by a small clique of corrupt-to-the-core vampire
kleptocrats who cling to power to enrich themselves at public expense). Perhaps
the report’s findings should not come as surprise to anyone since “power
corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.[12]

Al
Mariam further explained that In the study of World Bank, the major
determinants of corruption are listed as poorly functioning legal and judicial
system incontinent with the 1994 Constitution, an overregulated bureaucracy,
emphasising regulation rather than service delivery, a low-paid civil service,
a new yet rudimentary government, based on federal structure, and weak
budgetary and financial control, with an outdated procurement structure, and
poorly trained financial staff.

As
many as 4.6 million people need food assistance annually, but aid money
is not combating hunger. It comes from the front door but returns through the
back door.

As
I have mentioned in the introduction, 50% of the Ethiopia Economy is run by
EFFORT, the TPLF Economic Power House. It is not the Public sector but enjoys
every privilege that the Public Sector enjoys because it owners are the
dictators in power. It is not required to pay any tax because it is seemingly a
Charity Organisation, created to “rehabilitate” the war torn-apart economy of
Tigray. However, it has not only just rehabilitated that province of Tigray,
but the prosperity of that region has been successfully used to masquerade the
pathetic poor state of economy of Ethiopia, elsewhere. EFFORT is a conglomerate of economic empire that amalgamates
66 companies under its control, having two or more giant companies in every
sector of the economy. For example, Addis Pharmaceutical Factory controls all
the licence of producing, importing and distribution of medicines. Almeda Textiles Factory controls clothing business. Express
Transit Service Plc (EXTRAN) dominates the transportation sector[13]. Any
donor that brings in food to feed the hungry poor is required to use the
service of one of the TPLF transportation companies to move the shipment from
the Port of Djibouti to anywhere inside the country. This lucrative business
belongs to EFFORT and no one has the right to question that. By the way, the
TPLF truly believes that that it is the international communities’
responsibility to feed its own starving population. Begging for food is no more
shame. Hunger is needed phenomenon for the TPLFites
to amass wealth. It has no time to deal with the provision of food for the
hungry, being bent on money making mission mission
for itself. Coming back to an example of how EFFORT
controls economic sectors, we can mention for instance the supply of cement for
government construction. That is entirely EFFORT’s Messebo
Cement Factory’s are of business.  The
most talked about Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile that is currently an
invitation of Egypt into conflict. However the business was actually created
for the EFFORT Conglomerates to legally amass wealth. That is where EFFORT
makes money. Guna Trading House, Hiwot
Agricultural Mechanisation, Mesfin Industrial
Engineering are some giant companies under direct control of EFFORT. In April
2009, EFFORT merged with Dejenna Endowment, which
brought another set of six companies under the direct ownership of EFFORT.
These are Biruhe Tesfa
Plastic Factory, Machew Particles Board, Dimma Honey Processing Factory, Alagye
Forestry, National Geo-Textile Factory and Aberdelie
Cattle Fattening and Exporter. That concluded the dominance of TPLF in every
sector of the economy. We can safely conclude that EFFORT is a parasite lynch
that is sucking blood out of Ethiopia without giving back nothing, but pain and
suffering.

There is this much talked about fast development of
the country. That us supported by the number of
skyscrapers built in Addis Ababa and the ring roads. The skyscrapers belong to
the TPLF officers, to rent it out to the foreign dignitaries. No fair bidding. The
roads are meant to transport TPLF products and military personnel. They are
built with the aid money donated or borrowed to fund for the purpose, but the
job is done by EFFORT companies. Construction of roads and bridges is exclusively
EFFORT’s lucrative business that no other business would have had access. It is
entirety TPLF’s money making machine amassing billions of pounds. Alright, we
have roads. So what? Colonialist Italy built more roads in Ethiopia to
transport its military logistics than Emperor Haileselassie
built in his 40 years of administration. TPLF’s construction of roads is meant
to obtain high way that would enable them to loot from the South and ship to
the North effectively and efficiently.

EFFORT is entirely controlled and run by Azeb Mesfin, the wife of the late
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
She also controls the entire publishing corporation of the country, which is
called Mega Publishing Corporation; therefore, she is named as The Queen of
Mega! Actually later, this has been promoted to the title of Queen of
Corruption. Corruption breeds corruption.

Corruption runs throughout the sectors. There is
corruption in Health sector. There is corruption in education sector. There a
huge corruption in the construction sector through kickback-deals, winning every
bid through either direct order from the ruling separatist party or through
what is known as Gursha/Gubbo
or bribery. There is a huge corruption in telecommunications. The Military as
an institution that is the most corrupt. Literally all its high ranking
officers have one or two villas to be rented out to foreigners for hard
currency. The money is normally deposited in foreign banks. All these were
disclosed in the in “Diagnosing Corruption”[14] though
not directly, not to upset the TPLF.

VISIBILE INDIVIDUAL CORRUPT OFFICIALS

Every
official of the TPLF regime is corrupt to the core. Corruption is a kind of
allowed activity by the TPLF to enrich oneself. The TPLF follows the philosophy
of “Don’t put a muzzle on an ox
while it treads grain” (ሲሾም
ያልበላ
ሲሻር
ይቆጨዋል).
If you are
an official of the TPLF, you are expected to be corrupt. It is rather
suspicious if you are incorruptible and you probably land yourself under
scrutiny.  You can amass, not just
millions of dollars, but even billions, as long as you don’t fall out with the
establishment of the TPLF. You can’t do business on your own. You need to share
it with the TPLF officials. In the meantime, you have got to know how to stay
within the bounds of TPLF structure. Once Meles
Zenwi said to his appointees: “EPRDF’s appointment to
aigher office is like sleeping on a tree-branch.
If you snooze, you will drop.” (የኢሕአዴግ ሹመት የዛፍ ላይ ዕንቅልፍ ነው። ሽልብ ካልክ ዱብ ነው).

They
will ignore any corrupt official until he/she rebels against the establishment
of the TPLF. A good example is, the former Defence and
Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Tamirat Layne. He was
amassing wealth, they looked away. They left him illegally prosper. Then they
had to charge him of corruption and throw him into jail for 18 years prison
term, when he stepped of the line.  That
was not because he just stashed away US $8,000,000[15]
(that is nothing) into a Swiss bank, which was in turn obtained “corruptiously” from Al Amoudi,
but because he started thinking independently and questioning some of the
actions of his masters, the TPLF leaders. Meles Zenawi humiliated him. After coming out of jail, we hear
that Tamirat Layne has bought himself a petrol
station and lives in the USA.

The
funniest story that took place was the incident of disappearing 10,000 tones[16]
(20 million pounds, or 9 million kilograms) of coffee without trace. How come
420 truckloads of coffee beans disappear without a trace? The late Prime
Minister, Meles Zenawi threatened
to order the launch of an investigation, right there in front of the Members of
the Parliament. He knew the outcome would be disastrous for him. Guess what! He
dropped the investigation. He knew the culprit. It was his wife, Azeb Mesfin. The Queen of Mega is
corrupt to the core, but who would touch her? She is untouchable! Point a
finger at her, you are a dead meat.

Fortune
magazine reported that once the Ethiopian National
Bank exported the “gold” bricks to South Africa for sale where
experts there identified the so called “gold” bricks as FAKE and
returned them to Ethiopia. Oh dear! That was worth US$96.5 million loss plus
embarrassment of the century.  It is a
scandal at international level![17]

The
Queen of Mega has been declaring on television so many times that her husband
was the poorest head of state in the world[18]
that made his family live on 4,000 birr payroll based salary per month[19].
Poor me! That was a joke of the century.

Just weeks
after the Queen of Mega declared that laughable statement, CELEBRTY NETHOWRTH declared
“Meles Zenawi was Ethiopia’s former Prime Minister with
a net worth of $3 billion”[20].
 It was also mentioned that he was one of
the most recent literate and forward thinking leaders of Africa. Zenawi had an MBA from the United Kingdom, but forgot to
mention that it was bought from the open market, and a Master of Science in
economics from Netherlands.

I
think, Celebrity Net Worth, got it entirely all wrong. If that was the case,
how come, a check in the name of his elder daughter Semhal
Meles Zenawi, for US5
billion[21]
was deposited into a bank in New York? We will leave the investigation to Department
of Fraud and Money Laundering Investigation of the United States.

All
these are the tip of the ice-berg, ladies and gentlemen. Probably there are deposit account in the name of their other children at
various capital cities of the world. This includes Far East countries such as
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and other unsusceptible, places, in addition to
the well-secured banks in Switzerland.

We
knew about Meles’s embezzlement of resources, way
back as far as 2005. When the information on embezzlement and stashing away of
millions of dollars came out, Meles and his gang
filed suit in a US court against four Ethiopians for making false and
defamatory statements. The four Ethiopians were Goshu
Habte, Yonas Habte, and Dawit Kebede who live
in the United States and Lishan Gizaw
who resides in Germany. It is interesting to note what the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Ethiopia said at the time:

“Not only are the defendants
fabricated statement damaging to the personal reputations of the plaintiffs,
but also seriously risk and undermine Ethiopia’s important international relations,
including with its economic development partners.”[22]

Oh
dear-dear! Rather than being scared, the Diaspora were so excited about the
possibility of bringing the daytime robbery of the TPLF into the open and
started to pledge money to cover the legal cost of the four defendants. Had the
case gone ahead it would have been opportunity that the BBC and major credible
news agencies throughout the world would have had a chance to bring the truth
to the open.

According to Ethiopian Review[23], a counter
lawsuit was being filed against Meles, Bereket and other top officials of the EPRDF regime by Tensae radio accusing them of torture and murder of
Ethiopian civilians. According to the evidences that are being gathered so far,
some of victims could be close relatives of Ethiopian Americans. That scared a
hell out of them and immediately instructed their lawyers in America to drop
the lawsuit against Tensae radio, securing back their
own right to immunity. What Embarrassing bunch of Mafiosi running a country,
like Ethiopia.

The
following table shows a fraction of some money deposited at various places across
cities of the world, in the name of high ranking officials of EPRDF/TPLF at the
time.

Source:
http://www.tensae.com/ radio 22.05.05. It is importna
to note that these foreign bank account funds are a miniscule compared to the
amount of funds that each individual owns using the so-called “shares” of their
concocted para-NGOs such as EFFORT.

The
Corruption Game

The
Ethiopian regime is control freak. It is not just the military, the health,
education the entire economy, but also the media, the NGO and even individual
lives under control. There is a Constitution to satisfy the wishes of donors.
However, there are, the bills and new laws it fabricates every day. To control
the media, there is a Press Law that contradicts the constitution. To silence both
the local and the International Human Rights Organisations, there is an NGO
law. To silence its opposition critics, there is an anti-terrorism law[24].
Just two days ago, it came up with another drafted new intelligence and
security bill with various controversial provisions to amend the existing
legislation that came into effect in 1995. As per this bill, any security
personal may kill anybody on the spot while in duty, and is answerable to no
one.

Anyway,
whenever they try to pin down an opposition, a critic or anyone who falls out
with them, they firstly play it on television, from which their court judges
learn how to behave in handling such government driven cases, pull out one of
the new legislations and cage their opponents. Period!

Recently,
there is information about a serious fall outs within the TPLF regime and its
satellites after the death of Meles Zenawi. All within the TPLF are trying to control power and
fit in the shoes of Meles Zenawi.
Those who have got the upper power, particularly control of the military have
started playing a “corruption game”. Just like they did on the former Defence Minister,
Seye Abraha, those in
control have started crack down on their opponents again on the corruption
charges. Before taking action though, as usual they started playing it on
television. Every arrest had been seen, going as far as the Head of Internal
Revenue, which sat at the level of ministerial post have been dramatised and well
executed. The International community thought the regime of Hailemariam
Dessalegn, the incumbent Prime Minister has been
doing something to bring corruption under control, but it is just a game used
to tame some officials trying to step out of line.

Conclusion.

Ethiopia
is a corrupt state at the highest level, but well concealed. The corruption
starts from top and goes straight down to an individual level. Corruption in
Ethiopia is the order of the day. How one could bring corruption under control
when the corrupt official plays judge and jury at the same time? Corruption
bills are used to bring down only those who step out of the line of the ruling
Maoist/Albanian type communist party, disguised as democrats. They follow
democratic centralism.

A
Gambella Region Senior Finance Officer had been on
the run with crucial documents to implicate corrupt senior Government Officials
of the region and EFFORT for the last two years. The fugitive came out of his
hiding after being promised immunity and 24-hour security by the Federal Government
until the culprit were brought to justice with the documents in his procession.
The fugitive asked audience with head of Corruption Investigation Department,
but he couldn’t see him before two weeks because the official claimed that a
relative was sick in another part of Ethiopia and he would be going there. He
eagerly waited for the two weeks. Then just a day before his appointment he
dropped dead after having lunch in a restaurant. They poisoned him. That is a
warning shot for any whistle-blower. Everyone has to put up with corruption,
shut up and watch as a bystander while TPLF cats eat and fatten themselves.

In
a country where the government is not accountable to the people, there is no
way of getting rid of the cancerous disease of corruption. The government of
Ethiopia lives and breathes corruption as the oxygen. It came to power through
corruption, fooling the international donors[25]
and maintains its power through intimidation, ballot rigging to the extent of claiming
to have won 99.6% of the vote results in election. Who would dare to ask them?

The
regime in power got there where it is now with its hands tainted in blood and
corruption. It will not leave the post without bloodshed. It will not function
properly as a legitimate government, either. Therefore, it has to be pushed out
of the power before it pushes the country into a bottomless pit of corruption.
The power should be given back to the people, so that the people are able to elect
a government that they chose to look after them and the government they could
bring down through the ballot when they don’t want. Up until this moment,
dictatorship breads corruption and corruption feeds the dictators to stay in
power. They are not mutually exclusive. That is a vicious circle that needs to
be broken.

Ethiopians
are determined to get rid of these human rights abusers. All we ask the United
Kingdom and United States is not stand on our way, by financing and sustaining
it to exist. A regime that terrorises its people cannot be an ally against
terrorism. I know that, the Ethiopian Regime is playing the Chinese card. This
is black-mailing. Just abandon it. Trust us. It will collapse. If you,
particularly the British Government, take the right action now, you will remain
with friends and trustworthy allies forever – the people of Ethiopia. If you
keep feeding this corrupt regime to stay in power, then Ethiopia is going to be
a breeding ground for elements with grudges against you. That is a reality. You
don’t have to look into crystal ball to predict what is coming. You already
know it from experience.

Thank
you.