World Bank Spent More Than a Year Covering Up Destruction of Albanian Village (Sick)

Managers at the World Bank provided false information to the agency's board of directors about a $39 million, politically-connected European "coastal cleanup" project that led to the destruction and destitution of a powerless village in Albania in 2007 — and then spent nearly two years trying to cover it up, FOX News has learned.

Bank insiders also misled and stonewalled a panel of independent investigators commissioned by the board to investigate the scandal, according to the investigators themselves.

World Bank sources tell FOX News that the panel's report, submitted to the 24-member board in late November, is one of the most damning independent assessments of the anti-poverty agency's behavior in the bank's 60-year history. The bank, the world's largest and most influential anti-poverty institution and part of the U.N. system, is doling out $100 billion over the next three years for development projects.

For its part, once the report leaked in Albania last week, the bank announced that further disbursements of the loan for the Albanian project had been temporarily suspended on Jan. 9 "due to certain outstanding policy and operational issues." A World Bank spokesman did not comment to FOX News by press time.

The scandal, laid out in documents also leaked to FOX News, paints a sharply-detailed picture of how the bank has responded to its own discovery of misconduct and potential corruption.

It also shows how projects ostensibly intended to improve the environment and living conditions in far-flung parts of the world can be abused and distorted in the name of the bank.

Moreover, as FOX reported in a series of articles since October, the bank has suppressed information on many other critical matters...

Inquiring minds want to know:
Are they getting a bailout, too?
Did they send money to their marionettes Obama, Frank, and Dodd, too?
Are they without transparency, too?
Were they involved with the takeover of America, too?

Rep. Kanjorski: $550 Billion Disappeared in "Electronic Run On the Banks"
"On Thursday Sept 15, 2008 at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve
noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA
to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two.
Money was being removed electronically.
The treasury tried to help with $150 Billion.
But could not stem the tide.
It was an electronic run on the banks
The treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts
they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon.
Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled
and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy."

FLASHBACK: from 9/15/08:

“U.S. President George W. Bush said Monday he is confident
that the markets are resilient and can deal with the latest financial blows.
“We are working to reduce disruptions and minimize the impact
these financial market developments on the broader economy.” ...

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
said eight years of Bush “brought us the most serious financial crisis
since the Great Depression.”

His Republican rival said John McCain said he was happy the
federal government decided not to use taxpayer dollars to bail out Lehman Brothers.”

How did Obama know THEN
that we would experience the ‘most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression’
when those who did not plan the takeover would not know for three more months?

October 10, 2008, another massive selloff.

Destruction and corruption in Albania, the Republican’s favorite Balkan playground and source of campaign funds. Big surprise! Frankly its a real shame the entire hell hole isn’t treated to this level of destruction, roughly akin to what both the Clinton and Bush gangs subsidized for the Albanians in Serbia and Kosovo.

"Mistakes were made," said the bank in a statement made last week, and "ways to address the alleged grievances of those affected are under active consideration."

I'm sure that this bit of bureaucratic weasel language will assure the hapless Albanian villagers who had their homes bulldozed so that the World Bank could build a private resort.

Inquiring minds want to know: Are they getting a bailout, too?

Meanwhile, World Bank president Zoellick is arguing that the bank should distribute even more money on behalf of the world's dispossessed.
In a column in London's Financial Times on Jan. 25, he called for an "Age of Responsibility" that would include developed countries giving nearly 1 percent of their economic stimulus packages to the world's poor.

Of course they are. And a bonus for their trouble.

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