Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

who gets the money? 87revenues between July and December 2000, by comparing export, tax,and other earnings from oil activities with deposits into the CentralBank of Angola. The program’s limited scope meant that it could notinvestigate discrepancies found nor monitor how the income wasspent. The program had to rely on the information that the Angolangovernment and the international oil companies were willing to supply.The oil diagnostic included a review of the government’s internalreporting procedures for its petroleum income. AUPEC, a natural resourcetax consultancy connected to the University of Aberdeen, washired to conduct this review. According to the project terms of reference(provided by AUPEC), project components include the following:• Design, develop, and install a monitoring system that will givethe government an ongoing accurate view of the revenues received• Recommend institutional and regulatory improvements as wellas other measures necessary to support sound management of oilrevenues.However, AUPEC notes that its findings on the project so far remainconfidential, in accordance with the wishes of the Angolan government.In practice, this means that it has not been able to reveal whatreporting procedures may be in place nor its recommendations toimprove them.At a workshop on Petroleum Revenue Management held at theWorld Bank on October 23–24, 2002, a member of the audienceasked the Angolan ambassador to the United States when the Angolangovernment planned to publish the findings of the oil diagnostic. Theambassador replied that the government was still reviewing the documents.She further noted that the government planned to meet withKPMG, the main consultant on the project, in November 2002, afterwhich the government “probably has plans to publish the report.” Asfar as she understood, there were “no missing funds, [and] the mainproblem was with the reconciliation procedures.”According to the BBC, an internal report by the International MonetaryFund viewed by the news organization indicated that more than$900 million disappeared from Angolan government finances in 2001(“IMF: ‘Angola’s Missing Millions’” 2002). According to the BBC,“There has been little progress in the areas of governance and fiscaltransparency in Angola [and] lack of useful data made the monitoringof Angola’s fiscal situation difficult.” The document reportedly statedthat the state-owned oil company, Sonangol, “assumed some time agocomplete control of foreign currency receipts from the oil sector andstopped channeling them through the central bank as mandated bylaw.” According to the BBC, some diplomats have allowed that “at