Corruption

70 percent of $370 billion in Jamaican public body contracts skipped competitive bidding last year, using single-source or emergency procurement instead. The Integrity Commission itself raised the pattern publicly.

70 percent of $370 billion in Jamaican public body contracts skipped competitive bidding last year, using single-source or emergency procurement instead. The Integrity Commission itself raised the pattern publicly.

A client paid a real estate attorney $19 million toward a $57.5 million house purchase, leaving a $37 million shortfall the disbarred attorney has now promised, again, to repay.

An attorney was found guilty of professional misconduct ten separate times and remained in practice throughout, now facing a separate fraudulent conversion charge over $8.2 million from a client’s property sale.

Residents of Harare’s Borrowdale suburb who won a High Court order halting a United Methodist church project on a residential stand accused a council planning official of issuing a temporary permit that let work continue.

Cameroon sealed 200 of 615 churches in Yaoundé’s 4th subdivision after a ministerial warning to unregistered congregations, in a country where only 47 are registered and approval requires the president.

India’s Madras High Court ordered a federal investigation into claims that Church of South India officials sold 31.10 acres valued at over 220 million rupees for 12 million rupees, land first granted to a mission in 1912.

Nicaragua has repealed the tax exemption for churches and religious bodies, which now face income tax of up to 30 per cent, as President Ortega’s government also shut 151 more NGOs in a wider crackdown on civil society.

Kenya’s anti-graft commission went to court to recover five Nairobi plots meant for railway and road use, including one registered to Neno Evangelism Center, seeking Sh1.6 billion on two parcels.

Ghana’s national cathedral, pledged by the president, had cost about $58 million mostly in public money by 2023, with the estimate up from $100 million to $400 million and construction on its cleared site near Parliament stalled.

Rev Dr Devon Dick told his Boulevard Baptist congregation he had counselled a former Stocks and Securities Limited wealth adviser who confessed to fraud, in a scheme that cost Usain Bolt US$12.7 million, and asked whether noble motives can excuse wrongdoing.

New York’s attorney general says three senior clergy took nearly $2 million in undisclosed payments while steering seven financially stretched Harlem and Brooklyn churches into sales to a single developer who allegedly failed to deliver.

The Vatican sold its scandal-hit London building at 60 Sloane Avenue to Bain Capital for £186 million after investing about €350 million, a loss of more than €200 million that led to a criminal trial and a cardinal’s conviction.

Former Public Defender Earl Witter called for a moratorium on incorporating new churches, criticising statute incorporation of tax-free churches and pastors who get houses and cars from collections, and calling it a racket in plain sight.

Pakistan’s churches are fighting dozens of court cases to keep their property, with 86 at Lahore’s cathedral alone, as forged sales and alleged official collusion threaten land they have held for generations.