"Zero dollars": there are no receipts in Donald Trump's Peace Council fund. The few donations made to the fund have financed the activities of the office of the High Representative Nikolay Mladenov, including salaries.
Despite promises from several countries to allocate a total of $17 billion to the Peace Council, created by US President Donald Trump, four months after its establishment, this organization has still not received any funds. This is what the “Financial Times“ newspaper writes today, May 27 (FT), citing four informed sources.
No progress on the Peace Council's goals
“Not a single dollar has been received“, one of the interlocutors told the publication. Because of this, the organization found itself in legal and political uncertainty, which delayed the implementation of its projects for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, the FT notes.
"The Jerusalem Post" also writes that "zero dollars" have been received in the Fund. In addition, it is clear that there is no progress on any of the Council's three main goals, which include the disarmament of the Palestinian group Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the reconstruction of the region. And not a single US dollar has been transferred to rebuild the Palestinian enclave, it further states.
The Peace Council accepts donations, bypassing the fund
A representative of the Peace Council and another source familiar with the new organization's operations have indicated that it accepts donations directly through its bank account at JPMorgan, instead of using the fund managed by the World Bank and approved by the UN. Moreover, there are no independent transparency requirements regarding the JPMorgan account, while the World Bank is required to report the financial status of the Gaza relief fund to donors.
As it further notes, Morocco's contributions of about $20 million have helped finance the activities of the office of the "High Representative of the Peace Council for the Post-War Reconstruction of Gaza" Nikolay Mladenov, as well as the salaries of members of the Palestinian technocratic committee formed by the Gaza Strip Management Council.
Reuters: only Morocco and the UAE have allocated funds
In February, Donald Trump announced that the organization's member states - Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kuwait - had promised to allocate $7 billion for the Gaza Strip. The United States was to add another $10 billion to this amount, and the United Nations - $2 billion. The money was to go to finance the National Committee for the Management of Gaza (NCAG), led by the Peace Council, to which control over the region was to be transferred - after the disarmament of Hamas.
Of the nine countries that promised to provide funds for it, only the UAE, Morocco and the United States themselves did so, Reuters reported in April. The total amount raised is less than $1 billion. The agency now quotes Mladenov as having informed Palestinian organizations that “there is currently no money“. However, the organization itself denied reports of a lack of funds.
Bulgaria has not ratified its participation in the Council
Bulgaria is also among the signatories to the Peace Council Charter – the document was signed in Davos at the end of January by the then-resigned Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov. At the time, he assured that no financial commitments would arise for Bulgaria from this.
In March, at the proposal of Delyan Peevski, the National Assembly obliged the Council of Ministers to submit a draft law on the ratification of Bulgaria's accession to the Trump Peace Council. Instead, the caretaker government of Andrey Gyurov referred the matter to the Constitutional Court, which in turn filed a case to establish the unconstitutionality of the parliament's decision.