Tackling fraud in UK aid through multilateral organisations

This review assesses the extent to which the UK government ensures the effective management of fraud in its core funding to multilateral organisations.

  1. Status: Completed
  2. Published: 22 March 2022
  3. Type: Rapid review
  4. Subject: Anti-corruption, tax avoidance and fiduciary risk
  5. Lead commissioner: Tarek Rouchdy

International Development Committee

A hearing is held by Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC) or their ICAI sub-committee for most ICAI reviews.

Watch the IDC hearing for this review.

ICAI follow-up

Approximately one year after we publish our reports, we follow up on the steps the government has taken in response to our recommendations. This process is a key link in the accountability chain, providing Parliament and the public with an account of how well government departments have responded to ICAI reviews.

Through our follow-up to this review we found that FCDO has taken valuable action towards implementing our recommendations. We judge the government’s response to be adequate overall. FCDO has taken notable steps to reach out to like-minded donors to collaborate on fraud issues in the multilateral aid system, including through the Multilateral Organisation Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN) and the boards of several multilateral agencies. The department has also made notable efforts to develop a portfolio approach to fraud risk management, including through introducing peer review for Central Assurance Assessments (CAAs) of multilateral organisations, strengthened guidance and templates for CAAs, and improving the sharing of CAA findings across the department.

However, action was inadequate in updating fraud risk assessment of UK aid spent through the European Commission (recommendation 3). We will therefore return to this recommendation again next year.

Read the follow-up review online or download the follow-up summary report.

Further follow-up

We published the further follow-up report in May 2024, which can be read here.

Timeline

Approach

Published 5 October

Evidence gathering

Complete

Review publication

Published 22 March 2022

Government response

Published 3 May 2022

Parliamentary scrutiny

IDC hearing 23 May 2022

ICAI follow-up

Published 18 July 2023

Further follow-up

Published 16 May 2024