Report by Sudan Radio Service, Thursday, 20 August 2009:
Al-Tahir Calls on GOSS to Account for 8 Billion USD
(Khartoum) – The speaker of the National Assembly in Khartoum, Ahmed Ibrahim al-Tahir has urged GOSS to account for the 8 billion USD that has been dispatched to them over a four-year period.Note to self. If 100 tanks were ordered by Government of South Sudan the order ought to show up somewhere in the accounts, no?
Addressing a forum attended by representatives of oil-producing states in Sudan, al-Tahir said that development of the south is the sole responsibility of GOSS and it should be transparent in how they spend their share of the oil revenue.
Sudan Radio Service asked the SPLM secretary for the southern sector, Bol Makueng, for his reaction to al-Tahir’s statement.
[Bol Makueng]: “First of all that chairman [al-Tahir] does not have the interests of the people of south Sudan at heart. Secondly, it is one of their tactics to create havoc here in the south, either through militia so that there is insecurity or through media propaganda so that the country is seen as being a failed or corrupt state. They think that they have the right to do things on our behalf and then we have to account for what they do. This is not acceptable. Now the figures they are talking about are figures that when you go into details later on, you can not trace them to wherever they claim they have sent that money to. Because we don’t know how much oil is sold and how much money it sold at or how much percentage of that money is given to us. That is the paradox of the northern claims. Perhaps they have taken the monopoly of managing the oil money, so they can say anything; they can say they have given us trillions. They are always apportioning blame, apportioning anything bad to the south or to GOSS or to the SPLM."
Bol Makueng was reacting to accusations that GOSS has can not account for 8 billion USD which it received over the last 4 years.
