Somalia (Hansard, 4 May 1994)

§ Mr. Worthington
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the recent theft of money from the United Nations compound in Mogadishu in Somalia; and what action is now being taken on this matter.

§ Mr. Douglas Hogg
The matter is being investigated by United Nations civil police and a team from the United Nations investigations unit. It would be imprudent to comment further before these investigations are complete.
555W

§ Mr. Mudie
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much of the £237,000 of departmental funds lost in Somalia in 1992–93 indicated in the appropriations accounts was(a) lost in transit and (b) lost from balances in the embassy bank accounts; how these losses occurred; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Goodlad
The loss of £237,000 occurred as follows:

(a) £130,000 lost in transit consisted of three fundings sent to the Bank of Somalia in 1989 for the credit of the Embassy account. Exhaustive inquiries with the Bank of England and the National Westminster Bank, the United Kingdom intermediary bank of the transactions, confirmed that this account had been sent to Somalia. Embassy staff investigated these missing items but were unable to locate them before they were evacuated following the collapse of law and order in Somalia. The decision to write off this sum was taken in 1992 because it was considered very unlikely that the bank of Somalia would ever be able to locate these missing funds following the extensive looting which occurred in Mogadishu.

(b) £103,000 from embassy bank accounts and £4,000 cash and miscellaneous items less some small recoveries were shown in the balances of the last imprest account submitted to the FCO before the evacuation. As the embassy and its bank in Somalia had been looted it was considered unlikely that these assets would ever be recovered.

Due to the complete collapse of law and order all diplomatic missions in Mogadishu were withdrawn and it was not possible to follow the usual procedures for protecting departmental funds overseas. There continues to be no recognised Government or banking system in Somalia.