BY STEPHEN GLOVER

The Panama Papers are sending shockwaves in all directions. David Cameron has still not shown he didn't benefit in the past from his father's offshore tax arrangements.

My guess is he will have to be franker before he convinces his critics that he hasn't somehow been associated with the kind of tax avoidance measures against which he has publicly railed.

But there is another less obvious time-bomb in the Panama Papers that has not yet detonated. When it does, Mr Cameron will have to defend himself on another front.

He is, of course, the great champion of Britain increasing foreign aid at breakneck speed, irrespective of our financial predicament. Last year it stood at £12.2 billion, including an overshoot of nearly £200 million. It is projected to be a staggering £16 billion by 2020.

What is clear from the Panama Papers is that leading politicians from a number of poor countries to which we have given aid possess considerable assets. They have also employed offshore companies.

For example, the daughter of Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif is named as having been the beneficial owner of flats in Park Lane, one of the most expensive parts of London. Note that in recent years, Pakistan has been among the top three recipients of British aid.

The family of former Sudanese president Ahmed al-Mirgrani own a property in London whose value is not specified. Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, and has received £175 million in British aid since 2003.

The wife of Bukola Saraki, president of the Nigerian senate, and his former adviser own two offshore companies that jointly hold a £5.7 million house in London's Belgravia. In 2014, Nigeria was the fifth largest recipient of British aid, to the tune of £237 million.

Also flying the flag for Nigeria is Mallam Bello Gwandu, a former director of the Nigerian Ports Authority. A British Virgin Islands company owned by him holds a flat in Maida Vale, another much sought-after area of the capital.

Nor should we forget Folorunsho Coker, a former head of the Number Plate Production Authority in Lagos, who owns a £1.65 million property in agreeable Fulham.[/i]

And so it goes on. A £2.8 million house near London's Sloane Square belongs to Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister of Iraq, a country in which much British blood and treasure have been invested.

Kalpana Rawal, the deputy chief justice of Kenya (recipient of £135 million of British aid in 2014), was a director or shareholder in four offshore companies, some of which bought and sold property in Britain.

There are hundreds of officials and politicians from Third World countries mentioned in the Panama Papers. Some of them come from oil-rich Arab countries that do not receive British aid.

The ones that concern me here come from poorer countries to which we do give considerable sums of money. Needless to say, I am not suggesting these people are guilty of diverting British aid or their own government funds.

But it is disturbing that officials and politicians from poor countries in receipt of aid should be buying up choice houses and flats in the richest parts of London, thereby pushing up property prices beyond the reach of most British- born people.

Wealthy foreigners from the Third World are apparently using offshore companies in order to minimise their tax liabilities in their own countries, which they are thereby depriving of much-needed tax revenue. The hard-pressed British taxpayer is effectively being asked to make up some of the difference in the form of aid.

There is, of course, already lots of evidence of the misuse of public funds in the Third World. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa has just been found guilty of half-inching nearly £14 million of public money to improve his private home. With the support of his ruling ANC party, he has escaped impeachment.

Over the past decade, the UK has given tens of millions of pounds in aid to South Africa, though it has now ceased. The South African president may not have been literally pocketing our money, but he was indirectly defrauding the British taxpayer.[i]

No less shocking is the case of Rwanda, an impoverished country that has received hundreds of millions of pounds of British aid. Its president, Paul Kagame, doesn't stint on his own comforts and hires a jet for his frequent foreign travels. This disagreeable man, who has cracked down on a free Press, was once a favourite of David Cameron and the Tory hierarchy.

The Panama Papers state that Kagame's former physician, security adviser and spokesman, Brigadier General Emmanuel Ndahiro, has allegedly owned a jet aircraft as well as property abroad.

Will David Cameron, and his fellow foreign aid zealot George Osborne, pause for a moment, and consider this new evidence? They should ask themselves how officials and politicians in dirt-poor countries are able to buy expensive houses in London.

Their commitment to expanding foreign aid while other budgets are squeezed originates in a desire conceived more than a decade ago to 'de-toxify' the image of the Conservative Party. Mr Cameron believed that if Britain undertook to meet a United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of GDP a year, voters would be persuaded that the Tories were no longer 'nasty'.

Has this worked? I hardly think so. In fact, I believe that Cameron and Osborne's pig-headed determination to increase foreign aid during a period of belt-tightening is having precisely the opposite effect to the one they intended.

Many people, including a growing number on the Left, are aghast that money cannot be found for pressing causes closer to home while ever larger sums are lavished on often corrupt Third World countries where there is little or no accountability.

For example, Britain spends nearly £250 million a year supporting industry in developing countries — some 3.5 per cent of the soaring aid budget. Nigeria is a major beneficiary, with leather exporters there receiving tens of millions of pounds from our Department for International Development.

Some, possibly most, of this money is misspent. An investigation on BBC Radio 4 revealed that a 700 per cent increase in Nigerian leather exports, largely to Italy, was exaggerated by filling containers with rocks to collect cash coming from huge aid subsidies.[i][/i]

And yet money cannot be found — or at any rate has not been found so far — to keep alive the strategically important steel plant in Port Talbot on which the livelihoods of thousands of British people depend.

Aid is lavished on countries whose politicians and officials are mysteriously able to buy expensive properties in London while our own people are asked to make sacrifice after sacrifice.

A couple of days ago, a major study warned that GP surgeries are reaching 'saturation point' and can't cope with the rapidly rising population.

Will Cameron and Osborne ever understand the rage of ordinary Britons facing such adversity? I am sure they are decent men, but I don't think their desire to splurge so much aid money is chiefly attributable to humanitarian concern. No, first and foremost they hoped it would look good.

But it doesn't. It looks increasingly bad. They never express any outrage at stories of waste and corruption in countries to which we give aid, and they show scant concern when people in this country are in need of help.

I understand that ever-rising foreign aid is a cornerstone of their political credo to which they blindly cling. But, actually, their addiction to what I believe is an immoral cause will be more and more interpreted as proof of hard-heartedness and remoteness from their own people — clear evidence that the nasty Tories have not changed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3527405/STEPHEN-GLOVER-irony-Cameron-s-obduracy-foreign-aid-proves-Tories-nasty-party.html

[size=18pt] omo this year na bad year for dem Saraki family ooo [/size]

As my name no comot for Dasukigate make I wait this one...my name fit show.

Not again.

You people should leave Saraki na. Do you want to kill him?

National cake. Make them chop jare. Me sef go chop if I reach there