STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It is hard to trace the money for President Trump's Board of Peace. This international body formed to support reconstruction of Gaza was set up like an exclusive club. Lifetime membership for countries was supposed to cost $1 billion. The World Bank administers the funds. But the official account has not received any contributions from donor countries, including the United States. So where did the money go? Abigail Hauslohner broke the story in the Financial Times.
ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER: This started as a tip that I was exploring about the legality of the board to begin with, to be able to receive money and spend money. And in talking to people who are intimately familiar with this setup, I found out there is no money that has been put into this account managed by the World Bank.
INSKEEP: And that is clear to you from talking with sources, people who know, people who get...
HAUSLOHNER: That's from talking to five different sources with direct knowledge. Confirmed.
INSKEEP: OK, $0.
HAUSLOHNER: That's right.
INSKEEP: Does that mean that nobody paid the money?
HAUSLOHNER: No, so what's interesting is there have been some donations to the board. They have just gone around this mechanism that was set up for this purpose. So instead - and this has been done in a sort of secretive, roundabout way. But we've learned about donations from the United Arab Emirates and from Morocco - there may also have been from private groups that we don't know about - that have gone directly into the J.P. Morgan account that the board has direct access to.
What's noteworthy about that is there's no requirement there - right? - that they report, that anyone reports who's donating, how much, how it's being spent. Whereas the World Bank account allows the donor countries to have a say, effectively, in sort of policy that guides this spending. With this, there's no such reporting requirement. It's a private bank account. We only know that some of this money is meant to go towards Palestinian police training.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
HAUSLOHNER: Towards the board's salaries.
INSKEEP: But has any money gone to Gaza?
HAUSLOHNER: No. This fund was established, and the Board of Peace was established, with the idea that this was going to be this international body to oversee the rebuilding of postwar Gaza. None of this money is being spent inside Gaza. There's still no Palestinian transitional government operating inside Gaza.
INSKEEP: There's nobody to receive the money?
HAUSLOHNER: There's no one to receive the money is what the Board of Peace says, yeah. There's also been no resolution to the laws or regulations that would govern this kind of spending, this kind of reconstruction.
INSKEEP: Has the Board of Peace been able to use the power of its backers - the United States, the U.K., other countries - to force any changes in Gaza?
HAUSLOHNER: No, look, Gaza is still effectively a war zone. There was this big ceasefire announced last fall. That's what, you know, sort of gave rise to Trump's concept of a Board of Peace. The ceasefire is largely a ceasefire in name. Fighting continues. The vast majority of the population continues to live in very dire humanitarian circumstances. There's aid flowing in. But none of this next phase for Gaza that was outlined by Trump in unveiling the board, we never got there.
INSKEEP: What has the Board of Peace told you when you asked about your findings?
HAUSLOHNER: They said that multiple different accounts were set up and that donors just so happened to prefer the J.P. Morgan account as a destination for their funds over the world bank account. They couldn't explain why exactly that would be the preference. They just said that that was their preference.
INSKEEP: Abigail Hauslohner of the Financial Times, thanks for coming by.
HAUSLOHNER: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Now, the Board of Peace told Hauslohner, as we heard, that there's nobody in Gaza to receive and spend money for rebuilding. And, quote, "we're not hoarding money in a bank account and then awarding contracts for things that can't be delivered." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
