Ousted Aid Groups Say Sudan Seized Assets and Funds
August 5, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
International aid organizations expelled from Sudan in March say the country’s government seized millions of dollars in assets from them after the ouster, reports Reuters.
The government kicked out 13 foreign aid groups in retaliation for the International Criminal Court’s indictment of the Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war-crimes charges. Three of those agencies — Oxfam and two national branches of Doctors Without Boarders — said the government took computers, vehicles, and other holdings and forced them to pay Sudanese workers left jobless by the expulsion.
Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, Abdel Baqi al-Jailani, said the government had acted according to regulations and agreements with the charities and that the seized assets were “being held in reserve” for new aid groups coming to take the ousted organizations’ place.
