Businesses can profit by doing good/Tsunami of fraud hits tsunami aid.

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Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 12:00 AM Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale with your request. Businesses profit by doing good By Dan SewellThe Associated Press Excerpt: Companies that work to improve health and education overseas also can improve their images in foreign countries and among consumers at home. They can reap benefits to employee morale and recruiting. And they can lay the groundwork in future markets. U.S. corporate donations overseas have increased in recent years, highlighted by the more than $566 million in contributions to tsunami relief, according to the Business Civic Leadership Center for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The center hasn't compiled statistics on charitable projects but says they are on the increase, too. Entire article at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002932988_philanthropy16.html The Sunday Times - World Massive fraud hits tsunami aidMichael Sheridan, Banda Aceh Builders take charity

millions THIS was supposed to be the scene of the world’s greatest aid effort, but endemic corruption has drained it of millions of pounds while leaving tens of thousands of tsunami victims stranded in tents. Now two charities that raised unprecedented sums in Britain have fallen victim to rip-offs that ruined their efforts to house the survivors and have forced them to suspend key projects. Save the Children and Oxfam were both

targeted by unscrupulous building contractors who took their money, only to build structures so flimsy that a new wave would wash them away. Indonesian anti-corruption campaigners, who uncovered the Save the Children case, have also assembled a dossier of fraud and incompetence that reveals why the Jakarta government and international aid agencies have failed in their promises to the survivors of Aceh. “We calculate that 30% to 40% of all the aid funds, Indonesian and international, have been tainted by graft,” said Akhiruddin Mahjuddin, an accountant who investigates aid spending for the Aceh Anti-Corruption Movement. The betrayal is all the more cruel because it has been committed, in the main, by the Acehnese themselves. Indonesia, which lost more than 131,000 people, got the most pledges of aid, totalling $6.5 billion (£3.7 billion). It has already collected $4.5 billion in funds. Read the entire article

at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2136598,00.html "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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