my commentary

What gets me really angry is that their is being fraud with money given to a good charity.
This happens all the time, yet most of the time the money is diapered without any trace.
And so the people who actually need the money do not receive it.

One of these scandals who was quite big but has not been on the news daily is the fraud with the Tsunami money. Millions were given from the society to help the victims of the tsunami of 2004. This natural disaster hit with hugh waves the coast of Asia and Africa and around 300.000 people died that day, and millions became homeless. Immediately hulp organisations started to all over the world to collect money to help those people.

The Netherlands were no exception and they donated over 500 million euro, were from 300 million was donated by the government and 200 million was paid by the society with the help of 67 charity organizations. [1]

Already in 2005 their were being asked questions of were to the money went, and how it was spent. One of the problems was that the money was donated without any restrictions. So the Dutch government had no insight ore control of what happened with the money. Although minister Bert Koeners who is responsible of development and cooperation in the Netherlands has given a statement about it and says that he and his team has done nothing wrong. He also pointed out that there is a lack in transparently of the what happened to the money, but that this is the problem of the SHO ( together working organization for aid).

The chairman of the tsunami organized aid Jan van Doggenaar, promised the minister more clarity of what had happened to the money. When he finally had organized his papers he and his team found out that around 60% of the money given by the Dutch government was spent on traveling costs. [2]

This is ridicules because it would mean that 180 million euro’s were spent on flying costs. And then we still do not know what has happened to the 200 million euro’s that were donated by the Dutch society.

And what makes this all the sadder is that this did not only happen to the donated money from the Netherlands but has happened to a lot of the donated funs. And that nobody in the SHO noticed that at least 180 million euro’s were being stolen.
Now the EU has decided to have a big investigation to see what has happened.
Yet the victims of the tsunami are not being helped by that, because their infrastructure is still not repaired as an example.

Examples like this makes me skeptical to ever donate money to a charity, because why would I make a rich man even richer. And I think that a lot of people think like this, although there are a lot of people who desperately need help they just do not trust the volunteering organizations any more.

Because the saying is true “the sun does not rise for nothing”


[1] http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/2802875/__Bestemming_tsunami-geld_blijft_vaag__.html?cid=rss
[2] http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/926727/nederland-wil-onderzoek-naar-tsunami-geld.html