Germany's international development agency GIZ has tightened its control mechanisms in high-risk countries such as Syria and Ukraine following fraud cases in development projects in Yemen, the agency's chief spokesman Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel told dpa on Wednesday.
"There is a whole set of rules that have been changed and tightened. We are monitoring compliance very closely in order to significantly reduce the risks," Schäfer-Gümbel said.
According to the GIZ, the stricter rules introduced since 2023 include annual checks on projects in around 30 areas that the organization has classified as risk or high-risk countries based on criteria such as the security situation and the danger of corruption.
Financial staff in those countries are also rotated more frequently and more billing processes are being digitized.
Merz: One case no reason to question development aid
Chancellor Friedrich Merz backed Germany's development cooperation in principle during a government question-and-answer session in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, on Wednesday, despite the GIZ fraud case.
He said he had no reason to generalize from a single case to the point of calling into question Germany's entire development aid work with other parts of the world, responding to a question from an Alternative for Germany (AfD) member of parliament.
Against the backdrop of a visit the previous day by Senegal's head of state, Merz added that looking at the fate of people in that region showed "how important it is that a wealthy country like the Federal Republic of Germany also contributes to enabling these regions of the world to develop in a stable way." This would continue in future, he said.
