By Aaron Ross

 

NAIROBI, 20 Sept. - (ANA) - U.N. investigators on Tuesday accused South Sudanese authorities of plundering their country's wealth, including by paying $1.7 billion to companies affiliated with Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel for road construction work that was never done.

 

The payments from 2021 to 2024 were just one example of "grand corruption" in the impoverished nation, according to the report by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, where average gross domestic product per capita is now a quarter of what it was at independence in 2011.

 

"The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation's wealth for private gain," said the commission, which was created in 2016 by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

 

The report cites an annual budget allocation to the president's medical unit that exceeded health spending across the entire country.

 

In an official written response sent to the U.N. commission, Justice Minister Joseph Geng said the report was based on figures that do not match the government's own data and attributed South Sudan's economic problems to conflict, climate change and falling sales of its chief export, crude oil.

 

 

 

 

Since 2011, South Sudan has endured repeated bouts of armed conflict, including a 2013-2018 civil war in which an estimated 400,000 people died.

 

Last week, the government charged, opens new tab First Vice President Riek Machar - whose forces opposed soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir in the civil war - with crimes against humanity, escalating a feud that has fuelled fighting in recent months.

 

South Sudan is also contending with steep cuts to the foreign humanitarian aid it receives each year.

 

But the report said corruption best explains its sustained economic and humanitarian woes, with nearly two-thirds of its 12 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse.

 

The commission said the report was based on 173 targeted meetings and interviews from late 2022 to late 2024 as well as government documentation and financial data.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/20 September 2025 - - -