Breaking Africa's Banks: A Modest Proposal

In 2009 the US government forced the Swiss banking giant, UBS, to hand over a list containing names of Americans who took their money to Switzerland in order to evade taxes in the US. A similar exercise should be carried out by African pressure groups and it should be directed at tracing the bank accounts of former and current ruling elites of various African countries. A recent report by the group,Global Financial Integrity, states that between $854 billion and $1.8 trillion was siphoned out of Africa between 1970 and 2008 and stashed in foreign banks. One of the services that may be provided by those interested in helping Africa should be the checking of bank accounts in Europe and America to recover some of this ill-gotten wealth deposited there by thieving African ruling elites. There are always to sides to the official bank robberies carried out by African ruling elites: the elites who break the banks and the Western banks that serve as their get-away cars. Also see this report.