Banda Aceh – Oxfam International's staff in Indonesia's Aceh province knew something was amiss last March when they started seeing inflated bills for construction supplies.
The British-based agency shut down operations in the city of Aceh Besar for a month, and an internal investigation led to misconduct charges against 10 staffers over the loss of US$22,000 (£17,100). "It was like pulling a string on a scarf. It might be one incident, but it was linked to something else that was linked to something else," Melinda Young, program manager for Oxfam's Aceh office, told The Associated Press.
Aid agencies say corruption is a constant threat in the tsunami disaster zones because of the size of the relief effort, a lack of local oversight and a history of corruption in many affected countries.
A government audit in Indonesia found as much as US$5 million was lost to corruption in the weeks after the Dec. 26, 2004, disaster.
An audit in Malaysia released earlier this month, according to media reports, found "shoddy workmanship" and misuse of some of the millions of dollars meant for tsunami survivors. Thailand also announced Thursday it will investigate allegations that tsunami aid was misappropriated.
"There was so much donated, but why are some people saying they haven't received anything?" Auditor General Jaruvan Maintaka said Thursday in an interview with local television ITV.
"People who lost boats – actual fishermen – did not receive compensation, but those who received compensatory boats were people whose houses were not even affected by the tsunami," Jaruvan said.
Transparency International, a global anti-corruption watchdog, accuses Sri Lankan officials of demanding bribes from survivors to get on lists for new homes.
Anti-graft activists in Indonesia cite reports of vendors marking up the price of donated fishing boats by as much as 100 percent, village chiefs inflating the numbers of survivors in need of help, and politically connected contractors constructing poorly built barracks for the homeless.
Aid agencies say prices of supplies are inflated, their truckers have to bribe their way past highway police, and sometimes the goods never show up.
Terre des Hommes Netherlands was forced to halt construction on 200 homes for four months this year and call the police after an Aceh partner allegedly misused US$150,000. The aid agency has built 2,000 other homes in Aceh without problems, said manager Cecile Harto, and the corruption came as a shock. "In the future, we will be more careful in choosing our partners and put more effort into monitoring of the process," she said.
Sri Lanka, according to Transparency International, has been slow to set up mechanisms to address the problem and, instead, has left monitoring of tsunami funds to international and local NGOs.
Indonesia, in contrast, has established an anti-graft unit in Aceh which has already fielded over 500 complaints and prevented the loss of US$12.5 million.