ADDIS ABABA, March 8 (NNN-ENA) — Bob Geldof, the Irish political activist who founded the Band Aid supergroup to raise funds for food aid to Africa, has lashed out at British media claims that millions of dollars raised by Band Aid were diverted to Ethiopian rebels who used the cash to buy weapons.

An outraged Geldof told The Times newspaper that ?it would be a tragedy? if the people stopped giving to charity because of allegations made by the same broadcaster — the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) — which inspired him to fight poverty and hunger in Africa.

The tragedy so incensed Geldof, of the group The Boomtown Rats, that he formed Band Aid and organized the Live Aid concert, raising 250 million USD for famine victims. His journey from rocker to fund-raiser began in December, 1984.

Geldof, who said if the money was gone to buy guns lives in millions had been claimed, told the Belfast Telegraph newspaper that the BBC’s report was “meaningless and unsubstantiated”.

Nick Guttmann, director of emergency relief operations at Christian Aid, said that contrary to the BBC report, the purchase for the relief food grain during the 1984 drought in Ethiopia was paid in Ethiopian Birr, not US dollars, “which is what international arms traders demand from those who want to buy guns”.

In an interview with The Independent-Sunday newspaper, he slammed the BBC?s dishonest report saying: “We bought from different merchants each time,” and ?We paid in Ethiopian birr, not dollars, as BBC reported.

“We checked the grain — not every bag — but random sampling in the techniques used by professional port surveyors. We went to see the grain distributed. The idea that we just handed the money over and then walked away is preposterous. We had proper systems in place and we always do.”

The money from the Band Aid Trust was perhaps the best monitored. “We put so many checks in place precisely to stop that kind of thing,” said Penny Jenden, who was Band Aid’s director.

“We spent our money mainly on trucks to move food, in the early stages, and then on seeds, tools and oxen. And we didn’t give any money directly to REST (the Tigreans’ own aid agency) till 1986.”

Band Aid spent less than half a per cent of all Live Aid money in Tigray in 1985. In the six years to 1991 Band Aid’s total spend there was only 11 million USD of the 100 million USD Live Aid raised.

“We knew it was a difficult situation,” said Jenden, “so our accounting procedures were doubly strict. As well as Band Aid staff we sent in independent monitors to check, and we shared all our info with the other NGOs (non-governmental organizations).”

Oxfam, Christian Aid, UNICEF , the Red Cross and Save the Children all insist that they too had robust on-the-ground monitoring in place. They have all made similar statements.

“The agencies on the ground did some serious monitoring ? from purchase to delivery to distribution,” one high-level independent monitor said.

“I saw the grain being loaded on REST trucks and then saw it being distributed,” said another according to the Independent Newspaper website. — NNN-ENA

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