Palestinian Authority: Still Stealing "Hundreds of Millions," Hamas Taking Over

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
23 February '10

Donor countries have yet to respond to revelations by former Palestinian intelligence official Fahmi Shabaneh that top Palestinian Authority officials are continuing to pocket millions of dollars earmarked for financial aid to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Shabaneh expressed frustration over the way the international media has been handling his exposures: “Don’t the Americans, Europeans and Arabs care about their money that is being stolen? If they continue to turn a blind eye to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas will eventually take over the West Bank the same way they took the Gaza Strip.”

Nearly a month after Shabaneh, who headed the anti-corruption unit in the General Intelligence Service, revealed in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post that some of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s close aides and loyalists had siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars to private bank accounts, decision-makers in the US and EU continue to bury their heads in the sand.

The foreign media has continued to cover the story as if it were only a “sex scandal” in Abbas’s bureau - a reference to a videotape revealed by Shabaneh showing Rafik Husseini, director of the president’s bureau, naked in a woman’s bedroom.

Following are examples of some of how, according to Shabaneh, international aid to the Palestinians is being “hijacked” by “thieves and thugs in the inner circle of Mahmoud Abbas.”

Thousands of civil servants whose names appear on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority either do not exist or have never reported for work. The Palestinian Authority has more than 150,000 registered civil servants whose salaries are paid by American, European and Arab governments. Shabaneh’s investigations showed that senior officials in the president’s office and the Palestinian Ministry of Finance have been “diverting” millions of dollars of these payments to their private bank accounts every month.

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