"Corruption is not an African problem, it is everywhere where there is greed, when individuals are greedy, they do bad things, and the question is to make sure they don't do it with state money," replied Akinwumi Adesina, when asked by Lusa about the impact of the disclosure of the financial scandal known as 'Luanda Leaks'.
"As an ADB, the most important thing for us is good governance, transparency and accountability in the management of public finances," said the ADB president, answering the question of whether the case of the former president and his daughter, businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, can weigh on investment decisions in the country and on the African continent.
The banker added that "investments have to be fair".
"We have to fight the illicit flows of capital, and we have programs against that," said Adesina, encouraging countries to join the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative and recalling that the ADB has a program on valuing countries' natural resources and monitoring their commercialization, "so they can know, in a transparent way, who is selling them, where and how.
In addition, the president of the institution added, on the sidelines of the presentation of the report on the African Economic Perspectives, "the ADB has a programme called African Legal Support Instrument that allows countries exporting raw materials to know, in a transparent way, the value of the resources".
"Corruption is such a bad thing, it takes what belongs to the state and makes it into something that belongs to an individual, state resources do not belong to an individual, they belong to the collective", concluded Akinwumi Adesina.
