Democracy Now! | Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
In response to Greg Palast’s report last week on BBC and Democracy Now, the debt-relief and economic justice group Jubilee USA is launching a new effort today calling on
Greg Palast reporting for BBC Newsnight First Broadcast 15 February 2007 WATCH THE REPORT (Democracy Now! Re-Broadcast) READ ABOUT IT Note: Due to the BBC player link being currently broken we are temporarily providing a link from Democracy Now! which re-aired the program
Greg Palast reports on Vultures for BBC Newsnight — Watch the Report
By Meirion Jones
BBC Newsnight
February 14, 2007 — On Thursday 15 February a high court judge in London will rule whether a vulture fund can extract more than $40m from Zambia for a debt which it bought for less than $4m.
There are concerns that such funds are wiping out the benefits which international debt relief was supposed to bring to poor countries.
Martin Kalunga-Banda, Zambian presidential adviser and a consultant to Oxfam told Newsnight, “That $40m is equal to the value of all the debt relief we received last year.”
By Kavita Puri
Programme producer, BBC Newsnight
VULTURE FUNDS
Remember Make Poverty History that campaigned to cancel third world debt? And the lofty proclamations by politicians at the G8 in Gleneagles to reduce debt?
Tonight, we have a shocking investigation into vulture funds that make a mockery of these pledges.
