US loans fueled insider deal, failed power plan in Liberia

…Backing the project at every stage was a U.S. agency that approves more than $3 billion a year in global financing but whose profile is so low it regularly cancels annual public hearings because no one signs up to speak.

In all, OPIC handed out $77 million of the $217 million approved in Liberia.

The last loan came under the current president and CEO, Elizabeth Littlefield. As the longtime head of the global Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, she once bought a fleet of scooters so executives could quickly zoom down the hallways in their office in Washington, D.C.

When OPIC approved the final loan, worth $90 million, in 2011, the agency did not conduct an onsite environmental and social check for a project in a country haunted by a decade-long civil war and history of abuses against women, the AP found.

“There was just an utter failure of the due diligence process that OPIC is supposed to follow,” said Natalie Bridgeman Fields, executive director of the Accountability Counsel, a San Francisco legal organization representing laborers in Liberia. “There are a lot of deep issues of that society that would require a high level of due diligence.”

OPIC’s own Office of Accountability questioned the agency’s review process…

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