Jubilee debt cancellation raises other concerns Jubilee debt cancellation raises other concerns John Dillon and other members of the Ecumenical Coalition for Economic Justice prepared this article on behalf of the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative. We welcome Mr. Gue s thoughtful contribution to the debate. There is no doubt tyrants like Ferdinand Marcos and Baby Doc Duvalier absconded with some funds lent to their countries. Exactly how much is hard to say because of the inadequacy of international financial statistics and bank secrecy laws. The Jubilee 2000 debt campaign maintains that innocent people of the Philippines and Haiti should not have to pay debts incurred by former dictators.
Precedents exist under international law for cancelling odious debts contracted by despotic regimes.
Authorities in countries like Switzerland are beginning to collaborate with police to track down ill-gotten gains of drug lords, arms smugglers and corrupt officials. But progress has been slow and more needs to be done to seize stolen money while protecting innocent people from having to pay. Mr. Gue questions how much of the debt paid for utterly foolish investments. Again no accurate data is available. One estimate by John Cavanagh, a former United Nations economist, is that about half the money lent to Latin America in the 70s and 80s cannot be repaid because it was never invested in projects that could generate revenue.