$16.5 Billion Lost to Illegal Smuggling of Cash from Ethiopia.

New York ((TADIAS) – Last week police in Ethiopia conducted a high-profile corruption sweep in Addis Ababa, the biggest of its type in the Capital in more than ten years, arresting 13 people, including a Minister and his deputy in charge of the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority.

But how big is corruption in Ethiopia on the global scale? We placed a phone call to the Washington, D.C office of Global Financial Integrity (GFI), which tracks illicit financial flows out of developing countries worldwide.

According to Clark Gascoigne, a spokesperson for GFI, the organization’s latest available research data show that the amount of money that Ethiopia lost to illegal smuggling of cash out of the country, both by the government and the private sector between 2001 and 2010, totals 16.5 billion U.S. dollars.