By Aaron Ross
NAIROBI (Reuters) -U.N. investigators on Tuesday accused South Sudanese authorities of plundering their country’s wealth, including by paying $1.7 billion to companies affiliated with Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel for road construction work that was never done.
The payments from 2021 to 2024 were just one example of “grand corruption” in the impoverished nation, according to the report by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, where average gross domestic product per capita is now a quarter of what it was at independence in 2011.
“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” said the commission, which was created in 2016 by the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The report cites an annual budget allocation to the president’s medical unit that exceeded health spending across the entire country.
In an official written response sent to the U.N. commission, Justice Minister Joseph Geng said the report was based on figures that do not match the government’s own data and attributed South Sudan’s economic problems to conflict, climate change and falling sales of its chief export, crude oil.
A spokesperson for Bol Mel declined to comment.
CONFLICT HAS RAGED SINCE INDEPENDENCE
Since 2011, South Sudan has endured repeated bouts of armed conflict, including a 2013-2018 civil war in which an estimated 400,000 people died.
Last week, the government charged First Vice President Riek Machar – whose forces opposed soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir in the civil war – with crimes against humanity, escalating a feud that has fuelled fighting in recent months.
South Sudan is also contending with steep cuts to the foreign humanitarian aid it receives each year.
But the report said corruption best explains its sustained economic and humanitarian woes, with nearly two-thirds of its 12 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse.
The commission said the report was based on 173 targeted meetings and interviews from late 2022 to late 2024 as well as government documentation and financial data.
It said its focus on corruption was warranted because graft has undermined the government’s ability to meet its human rights obligations and directly fuelled armed violence.
“Locked in a zero-sum competition for power and control of resources and territory, South Sudan’s elites continue to pursue partisan political ends, mobilising and exploiting ethnic differences and tensions,” it said.
OFF-BUDGET ‘OIL FOR ROADS’
The 101-page report spotlights companies associated with Bol Mel, whom President Salva Kiir elevated to one of South Sudan’s five vice-presidential positions in February.
The U.S. government sanctioned Bol Mel and two companies it said were associated with him in 2017, saying one of the firms had allegedly received preferential treatment from high-level government officials to do road work in the country. The U.S. sanctioned two more of his companies in 2021.
After the 2017 sanctions were announced, South Sudan’s government denied the U.S. characterisation of him as Kiir’s personal financial adviser and said the decision to blacklist him was based on misleading information.
South Sudanese officials have been asking U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to lift those sanctions during recent bilateral discussions, Joseph Szlavik, a lobbyist working for Juba in Washington, told Reuters last month.
Those conversations have also touched on sending more U.S. deportees to South Sudan following the arrival in July of eight men, including seven from third countries, Szlavik said.
The State Department told Reuters it does not provide details on private diplomatic communications, but called on Juba to “begin using public revenue to address the public need of the people of South Sudan rather than rely on international assistance”.
According to the U.N. report, South Sudan’s government disbursed an estimated $2.2 billion from 2021 to 2024 to companies affiliated with Bol Mel through its off-budget “Oil for Roads” programme.
In some years, this programme consumed around 60% of all government disbursements, the report said.
Despite the outlays, the companies affiliated with Bol Mel completed less than $500 million worth of driveable roads, inflating the value of construction contracts by overstating the length of the roads, overcharging relative to industry standards and building fewer lanes than agreed, the report said.
The report did not specify how the companies are affiliated with Bol Mel, but two of the three that it cited by name were those sanctioned by the U.S. in 2021.
Bol Mel has never publicly responded to the accusations against him.
In his response, Justice Minister Geng dismissed the allegations about road spending, saying sums cited in the report were absurdly high given South Sudan’s economic realities.
He pointed to anti-corruption legislation enacted before independence and in July 2024 as proof of the government’s “serious commitment and will to combat corrupt practices”.
PUBLIC SPENDING DOES NOT MEET PUBLIC NEEDS
More broadly, the report said public spending priorities did not reflect the government’s obligations to its citizens.
Little of the more than $23 billion raised from oil exports since independence has gone to address pressing needs like education, healthcare and food security, it said.
For example, in the 2022-2023 national budget, more money was allocated to the Presidential Medical Unit than to the community, public, secondary and tertiary public healthcare systems across the entire country, it said.
The government’s response did not specifically respond to this point, but said it was working to promote the well-being of its citizens. The minister of presidential affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Aaron Ross; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly, Aidan Lewis and Ros Russell)
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