http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/datablog/2012/jul/19/developing-world-offshore-wealth-external-debt?intcmp=239


TJN estimates capital flight from Nigeria has totalled $233.9bn in the four decades since 1970. Once investment income is included, this stock of secret wealth could be as large as $306.2bn, the report says – nearly 40 times the country's total external debt of $7.9bn.

Sorry, forty times our debt


Report author James Henry said: "Since the 1970s … it appears that private elites in developing world countries have been able to accumulate at least $7.3tn-9.3tn of offshore wealth, even while many of their public sectors were borrowing themselves into bankruptcy, enduring agonising structural adjustment and low growth, and holding fire sales for public assets."

Sub-Saharan Africa: capital flight, secret wealth and debt
The elites of many sub-Saharan African countries have accumulated so much secret offshore wealth it could pay off their countries' external debts many times over, according to Tax Justice Network research

TJN used data from the World Bank, IMF, central banks and governments, and supplemented these with models of money flows and offshore private banking to produce what they say is "among the most rigorous and comprehensive" estimates of unrecorded capital flows and accumulated offshore wealth.

Not all capital flight is as a result of stolen money. A lot of income earned in Nigeria is moved abroad for a variety of reasons some of which are perfectly legitimate.

We are talking of offshore accounts here to tax havens and co which is usually illegitimate money especially from Nigeria. Please don't play the devil's advocate as if we used most of our crude oil receipts to develop our infrastructure and diversify our economic base we will not be where we are today. We need to stand up against the THIEVES!!

citizenisb: We are talking of offshore accounts here to tax havens and co which is usually illegitimate money especially from Nigeria. Please don't play the devil's advocate as if we used most of our crude oil receipts to develop our infrastructure and diversify our economic base we will not be where we are today. We need to stand up against the THIEVES!!

I agree that most of the money would have been stolen money but your headline is misleading. You're not going to have a successful fight against corruption by playing fast and loose with the truth. Our problems are mainly two fold: corruption and inept policy making. You can have economic development with the former but not with the latter.

Effectively claiming, as your headline does, that all capital flight from Nigeria is due to theft can lead to bad policy - such as clumsy restrictions on the movement of capital - which is even worse than corruption. A case of the medicine being worse than the disease. In a poor policy environment, even people and businesses who earn their money legitimately will want to shield their wealth from risks such as inflation and currency risks by moving capital abroad. There's more to capital flight in Nigeria than just theft. In a good policy environment, a lot of the thieves would even keep the money in Nigeria.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/commodities/9418651/Food-price-alert-as-US-woes-spread.html


British consumers will soon feel the squeeze from rising food prices as US crops are hit by America's worst drought in more than half a century, economists warn.

Good point