Global Fund to review India projects for fraud

By Jonathan Allen

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is reviewing its India operations after the World Bank said it found signs of widespread corruption in its own India projects, the Fund's regional head said on Friday.

The Fund says it has no evidence right now that any of the more than $170 million it has handed to India since 2003 has been lost to fraud.

But Taufiqur Rahman, the Fund's head of grants in South and West Asia, says an urgent, in-depth inquiry was vital in the light of the World Bank's report last month.

That report found that, in some projects, close to 90 percent of contracts involving Bank funds in India showed signs of fraud.

"It's important for us to take the findings of the World Bank seriously," Rahman told Reuters by telephone from the Fund's Geneva headquarters.

"It's a review just to make sure, given the World Bank report, that our investments are protected. "I was surprised (by the report) because we didn't know the scale of it."

But some development workers have told Reuters the report only confirmed their own experiences -- that blatant corruption continues to hinder India's efforts to prevent people dying from tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases.

Rahman says the Fund has never seen evidence of fraud in its Indian operations, where it funds testing and treatment programmes. The worst he has heard is complaints that getting hold of promised funds can be slow.