Over the last 15 years large public-private partnerships (PPPs) many very similar to what before that was called "Quango" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango ) were created often with near zero real-world accountability (i.e. on paper those might have accountability rules but they are not enforceable or controllable).

The "Global Fund" mentioned in the article (98%+ financed by tax payers in the largest industrialized nations) is one of those vehicles - it has financed (some of the worst and most corrupt) governments in developing countries for more than 10 years.

Besides that, the "Global Fund" is certainly one of the biggest marketing shows on this planet. It calls itself a "financing instrument", what it actually does is receiving $3-4B p.a. tax payers monies, and disbursing those (after a 10%+ "cut" for running a "secretariat" in Geneva full with people getting paid $300K+) to entities in developing countries that are de-facto controlled by the local governments (please note that the "Global Fund" does not select which "programs" & countries are financed - this is done by an external "expert panel"). It has done that over almost a decade with nearly zero oversight on what and where the monies were spent, an almost complete lack of functioning management systems or any accountability (at one point in time a few years ago existing internal controlling & risk management system were "switched off" when they showed too many problems and any institutional oversight was kept at bay by not funding the function or keeping the posts vacant for very long periods or even firing the incumbent(s) - as the BBC showed this month - when those actually do their jobs).

The "Global Fund's" biggest claim "saving lives" doesn't stand minimal scrutiny. In short, it's like the HMCR (the UK's IRS) would claim that it saves millions of lives every year because hospitals / the NHS are financed with taxes. Another visualisation of this claim would be - if you give $10 to the Red Cross you have saved millions of lives (the "Global Fund" does not report "results" it shows "results" of programs contributed to - the official new speak is "influenced by" - often these "results" are non-measurable / non-impact and have been double / triple / quadruple counted in the past). It does all that at 8-10 times the "cost" of comparable organisations (yes other government funded financing organisations exist), i.e. disbursing $1M through the "Global Fund" costs 700%-1000% more than doing that in other ways. This does not count in the "slack" lost until the monies reach the implementing agencies / NGOs that do the actual work (medical aid, training people, creating & running health infrastructures, reducing poverty, saving lives). Another way of looking at this: Funds provided to the "Global Fund" are actually diverted away from the implementing agencies / entities (a lot could be said about this as well - only so much - even UN agencies like government agencies have to comply with at least basic accountability rules).

Anybody looking beyond the shiny surface gets threatened, press and oversight muffled, staff trying to do their job fired and their lives destroyed. Those looking "the other way" often for up to 10 times the salaries they would "normally earn" got promoted for years and received glorious "performance reviews". When the whole "show" became too smelly a few years ago, more than 1/3 of the staff were removed with scapegoating a few (while some of the biggest "culprits" were already before that moved to senior posts in other organisations), those "part of the system" leaving with golden handshakes and millions in pensions and quickly found/finding themselves on new posts again.

Like with similar "constructs" anyone looking deeper into this is hitting an invisible wall of silence.

And since a few years it is officially possible to count military aid into the development aid statistics.

With the "Global Fund" it would already help if people like Bill Gates would ask the right questions or sometimes any questions at all.