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It comes as no surprise that large sums of money illicitly leave Ghana each year, but the scale of this movement, as revealed in a new report by the UN Economic Commission for Africa, is shocking. The report, compiled by a high-level panel probing the illicit financial flows from Africa and chaired by Thabo Mbeki, the former President of South Africa, says between 2000 and 2008, the average illicit flows of money from Ghana and other parts of Africa, amounted to $50 billion per year, which is also the estimate for the current year. �Despite all the pious statements about social responsibility made by multinationals, the trend is getting worse,� the UN report has stated. The panel points an accusing finger at the global multinationals that use a variety of means to siphon off vast amounts that the developing world, including Ghana, desperately needs. The panel described this horrendous practice as �economic sabotage� adding that the illegal transfers undermine trade and threatens the socio-economic fabric of poor communities in Africa. According to the report, Africa has lost an estimated $854 billion over a 39-year period from 1970�2008. This works out at an average of $22 billion per annum � an amount that could have easily made a huge difference in the lives of the continent�s poorer communities. The report says that �just one third of the loss associated with illicit financial flows would have been enough to fully cover the continent�s external debt which reached $279 billion in 2008�, and that for every $1 received in aid, $10 is lost in illicit transfers. According to Global Financial Integrity, illicit financial flows refer to money that is illegally earned, transferred or utilised. This is different from capital flight, which encompasses both licit and illicit cross-border transfer of funds. Who are the main culprits involved in this massive drain of Africa�s resources? The report says that two African regions � West Africa and Central Africa � are responsible a large chunk of illicit flows from Africa of about 49 per cent, while North Africa follows with 18 per cent; the other parts of the continent � East and Southern � account for the rest. In terms of individual countries, Nigeria leads the bottom 10 hall of shame with cumulative illicit transfers of $212.7 billion, followed by Egypt with $105.2 billion, South Africa with $81.8 billion, Morocco with $33.9 billion, Angola with $29.5 billion, Algeria with 426.1 billion, Cote d�Ivoire with $21.6 billion, Sudan with $16.6 billion, Ethiopia with $16.5 billion and Republic of Congo with $16.2 billion. The most popular method of illicit transfers is trade mispricing. This involves both local companies and multinationals. The panel believes that multinationals, with their strong global presence and influence are the main perpetrators. According to the World Trade Organisation, corporations control around 60 per cent of world trade, amounting to $40 trillion. In addition to mispricing, corporations are involved in the equally damaging practice of tax avoidance and evasion and laundered commercial transactions. These activities, says the report, shift money beyond the reach of domestic authorities and, in effect, denies them the ability to put such resources in their own development. Throw into this mix illicit and illegal transfers involving theft, bribery and other forms of corruption by government officials, drug trading, racketeering, counterfeiting, contraband and terrorist financing and you have a witch�s brew of malfeasance. The report quotes studies from Global Financial Integrity which pinpointed a number of African countries in which the national wealth has been captured by unaccountable elite and also the multinational banks that do business with these elites. Africa, with its underdeveloped governance structures, is particularly vulnerable to this form of exploitation. While the outside world has always been very quick to pin the corruption label on Africa, we have always argued that it takes two to make this deadly dance work. Now it is obvious that powerful multinationals are as complicit, in fact more so, in sucking Africa�s lifeblood as the worst local despot.