By mid-September 2024, Caritas has no other option but to stop its international operations. The fallout from the multi-million-euro fraud is being felt far beyond Luxembourg’s borders. In some of the world’s poorest regions, the consequences are immediate. Around 100 employees in Laos and South Sudan lose their jobs, and vital humanitarian work comes to a halt.
Why was a solution found for Caritas’ national programmes, but not for its international ones?
Listen to Episode 7 with English subtitles in the video below, or read the full transcript.
Pia Oppel So, it’s 14 September 2024. It’s now two months since it was revealed that €61 million were stolen from Caritas. And this morning it was officially announced that Caritas will have to end its international activities in their entirety.
I feel like today marks a particular low point in the story of this affair. I hope that the people who are affected, that they can tell us what impact this is going to have on their lives in real terms. They are without a doubt part of this story.
Pacoto David Hi Pia, I’m happy to get back to you with some responses regarding the questions that you’ve asked me earlier. It’s something that’s difficult to imagine. It’s a really difficult situation, Pia.
Léonardo Kahn On 14 September 2024, it is official: Caritas Luxembourg must end its international activities. A decision that impacts development projects and humanitarian aid for thousands of people in dozens of countries. In South Sudan, in Laos and in Luxembourg, 130 people who worked for Caritas lose their jobs. Neither the government, nor the Diocese nor private donors were prepared to cough up the money needed for a major rescue operation.
Djuna Bernard Our question is, where is Mr Bettel?
Xavier Bettel I’m sorry for the people abroad.
Djuna Bernard To be frank, it’s deplorable that he wasn’t here today.
Christian Billon I can tell you that I had people in front of me who were in tears. That’s just scandalous.
Xavier Bettel Well, the mistakes made are not the government’s.
Léonardo Kahn The decisions made last summer have turned the lives of thousands of people across the world completely upside down. What are the consequences of that?
My name is Léonardo Kahn and this is Scene Change, the 100.7 documentary podcast. Our second series of Scene Change is called The Caritas Affair. Across eight episodes, we will chart the timeline of a scandal where pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, did. An investigation by Pia Oppel and Jean-Claude Franck.
Episode 7: International Impact.
Caritas’ national activities, and the staff working on them, have for the most part been taken over by a new organisation. The same cannot be said of their international activities. Pia, Jean-Claude, why have these two areas been treated so differently?
Jean-Claude Franck There were multiple factors that made it harder to transfer the international activities, for example, to a completely new non-profit. We’ll explain exactly why it was so difficult later on.
Pia Oppel At the end of the day, though, it was obviously also a question of financial resources and political will.
Léonardo Kahn And when it comes to the international projects, both failed?
Pia Oppel Yep, at least in the first few weeks of the crisis. Because the dynamic did change a little, though tragically only after Caritas had already announced it was ending its international projects.
Jean-Claude Franck But even that didn’t change much about the fact that one of the biggest NGOs in the country is no longer providing the international aid it once had. And that Caritas had to let its entire overseas staff go.
Pia Oppel I spoke to a number of people who worked for Caritas in Laos and South Sudan. And there’s one person in particular who I’ve kept in touch with all these months, ever since the fraud was exposed.
Pacoto David My name is Pacoto David Langoya. And I’ve been working with Foundation Caritas Luxembourg since 2021.
Pia Oppel Pacoto David is 33 years old. His story and that of his family is marked by the conflicts in their home country of South Sudan.
Léonardo Kahn In what sense?
Pia Oppel So, South Sudan is not just one of the poorest countries in the world, it’s also the youngest. South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in 2011, a few years after one of the longest civil wars on the African continent came to an end.
Jean-Claude Franck That conflict forced Pacoto David’s parents to flee to neighbouring Uganda at the end of the 80s.
Pacoto David So basically, I was born in a refugee camp. And I grew up in a refugee camp. I had actually the bigger part of my teenage life spent in a refugee camp.
Pia Oppel In the refugee camp, his parents were given a plot of land which they were able to use for farming.
Pacoto David And my father also used to do some small business of buying produce, and selling it again. And my mom also used to make some alcohol locally and that used to generate some money.
Jean-Claude Franck In 2005, the Sudanese Civil War comes to an end. Pacoto David’s parents want to go back to their home country. After all, the family would have more land there.
Pia Oppel But the children probably wouldn’t have been able to go to school anymore. For the very simple fact that at this point in time, there is hardly any infrastructure, so very few schools, roads or hospitals.
Pacoto David So they made a difficult decision to stay in the refugee camp.
Pia Oppel As the eldest of nine siblings, Pacoto David is the first person in his family to graduate from school and university. His parents attend his graduation ceremony.
Pacoto David And I think my parents were excited to go the university and a graduation going on. To hear your names being called out, the excitement and everything.
Pia Oppel The family struggles to scrape together the cash for school and uni. But Pacoto David’s eight siblings also get a good education.
Jean-Claude Franck Two of his siblings are still at uni, the youngest three are still in school. All now financed by the eldest sibling.
Pacoto David So it’s like responsibility on responsibility on responsibility.
Pia Oppel Pacoto David relocates to Budapest for his Master’s, on a scholarship from the FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Pacoto David Contrary to what other people do when they go to Europe, they say, this is an opportunity, I don't want to go back to Africa. I just wanted to finish the course and come back home.
Jean-Claude Franck Then, in June 2021, Pacoto David returns to his home country. Even though the country is still witnessing armed conflict and the economic situation is dire.
Pacoto David As long as there is some sort of stability, then there is hope we can make it.
Pia Oppel Once he is back in South Sudan, Pacoto David starts working for Caritas Luxembourg.
Léonardo Kahn And what exactly is his job with Caritas?
Pia Oppel He leads a team that is largely focused on tackling malnutrition. Which is a major issue in South Sudan. Over half the population regularly doesn’t have enough to eat.
Jean-Claude Franck Caritas Luxembourg is active in one specific region: their head office is in Torit, a town not far from the capital Juba, in the far south of the country. They also had a small outpost in a very rural region called Palotaka.
Pia Oppel That’s also where Pacoto David’s family is originally from.
Pacoto David In the context of South Sudan I would describe it as heaven in South Sudan. Our area was not blessed with minerals or oil and other things, but we were blessed with very good soil.
Pia Oppel As it happens, a lot of Pacoto David’s work is focused on agricultural projects which Caritas helps get off the ground.
Jean-Claude Franck In particular, there’s a special type of flour that’s manufactured here which is enriched with nutrients. This flour is meant for children and women who are malnourished.
Pacoto David That we distribute to malnourished children, malnourished, pregnant and lactating women, and to all categories of people who are at risk of malnutrition at a community level.
Jean-Claude Franck The list of activities goes on, with thousands of people involved in the work. Honey and coffee production, tractor loan schemes, building water pumps and so on.
Pia Oppel In July 2024, there are plans to expand these activities even more.
Pacoto David I remember we had just commissioned some machines and some support. We had lots of activities planned.
Jean-Claude Franck But at that moment, around 3,500 miles away, on Michel Welter street in the Gare district of Luxembourg City, it is becoming clear that there will not be any more money for projects in South Sudan.
Pia Oppel The news that Caritas Luxembourg has been robbed of €61 million doesn’t make it to Palotaka right away. But Pacoto David starts to notice that something is wrong because everything seems to grind to a halt.
Jean-Claude Franck And when he visits the head office in Torit, he asks his CFO, Christopher Mutinda, about it. We’ll meet him again later.
Pacoto David Christopher told me that it seems there's a situation at the head office in Luxembourg. He told me the office in Luxembourg has been defrauded of millions of euros.
Pia Oppel Pacoto David reads everything he can find online about the multi-million euro fraud at Caritas.
Pacoto David It was very tough for me. Because for me, looking at the magnitude of the money that was reported to have been defrauded, then definitely you know that we are heading for something bigger.
Jean-Claude Franck For him, it’s clear that this fraud is going to have consequences in Palotaka, too.
Pacoto David Just like anywhere. If it rains heavily, you know there could be flooding and flooding carries lots of things, you know, it could be quite damaging.
Jean-Claude Franck The team in South Sudan strips back all its activities to a minimum.
Pacoto David I think people had some faint hope that maybe the organisation could continue in a certain way.
Pia Oppel But then, on 11 September, there is a video conference with Caritas executives in Luxembourg.
Pacoto David And this is where the reality came out, you see, look guys, we really tried to save the International Cooperation Department, and it didn’t really work out.
Jean-Claude Franck The flood Pacoto David had been fearing since July finally arrives. The team is told that Caritas is closing the South Sudan office for good at the end of October, everyone is let go.
Pacoto David I saw people shedding tears. And me myself I became emotional. It’s tough.
Pia Oppel For years, it was drilled into the South Sudan team that they had to keep a close eye on their finances. They got the money for projects in instalments, specifically because the assumption was that it would be safer in a Luxembourg account than in a conflict zone.
Pacoto David We loved the job and we thought we did everything right on the ground.
Léonardo Kahn 55 people lose their jobs that day. What does that mean for them?
Jean-Claude Franck Most of the staff are South Sudanese. And people like Pacoto David, who has a university degree, are the exception. Most of them don’t have any formal education and now risk letting their families fall into poverty because jobs as well-paid as these are hard to come by in that region.
Pacoto David Lots of staff are sad now. They’re home. People are asking themselves, what next, what’s the future?
This is horrible. That means, someone if they can’t send somebody to school, we are killing dreams.
Pia Oppel 55 jobs have been lost. But the projects themselves cannot continue either. Which has a direct impact on the people in the region.
Pacoto David I think it’s a difficult situation. We have lots of households on the ground now who have no food. We had emergency situations on the ground, and there are some responses, but there are thousands of households.
Jean-Claude Franck Pacoto David keeps on running into people from the community day to day. And the question he is asked the most is: When is Caritas Luxembourg coming back?
Pacoto David Now for sure they’re missing Caritas Luxembourg. You could feel it, when you come on the ground that something is missing from the community.
Pia Oppel Pacoto David still hasn’t found a new job. Since November, he has had to make ends meet without a salary.
Jean-Claude Franck But he is trying his absolute best to continue funding his younger siblings’ school and uni fees using his savings.
Pia Oppel Pacoto David is convinced that his good education and his professional experience give him the best possible chance of getting out of the situation he now finds himself in because of the fraud at Caritas.
Pacoto David I think it’s all about being positive. I would always prefer to be optimistic than being a pessimist.
Jean-Claude Franck His plans for the future include getting married this year.
Pacoto David Actually, we don’t expect anything like a big wedding at this moment. So a simple traditional one.
Léonardo Kahn Pacoto David said: The executives at Caritas explained to us that they did everything to save the international projects, but that it didn’t work out. Which brings us back to the question we asked at the beginning of the episode: Why exactly did it not work out?
Pia Oppel That’s a question we asked a lot of people, including the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
Xavier Bettel Hello Madam Oppel, how are you?
Pia Oppel Good. And you?
Xavier Bettel Let me just switch this off.
Pia Oppel Remind me what that is?
Xavier Bettel That’s “Tannhäuser”.
Pia Oppel Is that the mood you’re in?
Xavier Bettel It’s called “The Pilgrims’ Chorus”.
Pia Oppel Xavier Bettel’s name didn’t feature much in the Caritas story last year. He wasn’t at either of the two main parliamentary meetings on the Caritas affair in July or September.
Jean-Claude Franck The Minister doesn’t hide the fact that he kept his distance from the entire affair. He refused to meet with Christian Billon, president of Caritas’ crisis committee, for example.
Xavier Bettel My position is this. I didn’t want to have any contact with Mr Billon myself. And I did not want a meeting on a political level. Just to listen to the man without really being able to determine what the upshot of it all was, because we didn’t have any figures.
The easiest thing would have been for me to get out the cheque book. Which I didn’t want to do.
Pia Oppel That’s been Xavier Bettel’s position since the start of the crisis at Caritas.
Xavier Bettel We’ve said from the very beginning, I can’t just unlock new funds for projects that have already been funded.
Jean-Claude Franck Already funded because obviously, when the fraud comes out in July, we’re only half-way through the year, but the money the Foreign Ministry has provided for the international projects is all gone.
Pia Oppel So, the Foreign Ministry co-finances Caritas’ international projects. And usually pays out most of the budget at the start of the year.
Jean-Claude Franck What that means, in concrete terms, is that as a result of the fraud, around €2.5 million in state funding has gone missing. Funding that was needed to keep the international projects going.
Léonardo Kahn So they needed cash in a hurry to stand any chance of financing their activities until the end of 2024.
Pia Oppel Exactly, and the thing is, once the funding for a project stops coming in, then there’s a huge risk that everything on the ground will grind to a halt like that.
Jean-Claude Franck Which would mean that before you know it, there won’t be much left to save.
Xavier Bettel I was perhaps also hoping that someone or other could have helped out. International partners, or perhaps the Diocese.
Léonardo Kahn And did Caritas try to find money from somewhere else?
Jean-Claude Franck Yes, in particular from their network of international partners. And a lot of them sprang into action, we’ll come back to that later.
Pia Oppel As we explained in previous episodes, the Diocese isn’t much help. And the private donors who helped set up a new non-profit in order to take over the national activities aren’t interested in the much more complicated international projects.
Léonardo Kahn Complicated how?
Pia Oppel So, from a financial perspective it’s not quite so simple. The national activities are basically financed almost entirely by the state. With international projects, NGOs have to finance a part themselves. Meaning with the money that comes in via donations.
Jean-Claude Franck There are also legal hurdles because an NGO has to be involved in development aid for several years before it can get co-financing from the state.
Pia Oppel Which is exactly what the idea is in August 2024. That a new Caritas could potentially take over these activities. But allowing them to then get state funding for those activities would have meant making an exception. Which the Ministry wasn’t willing to do.
Léonardo Kahn So the idea for saving the international activities was actually off the table from the very beginning?
Pia Oppel Interestingly, no, not immediately. Because it takes a while, until the 3 September in fact, for the civil servants at the Foreign Ministry to actually discuss all these issues with Caritas in detail.
Léonardo Kahn OK, so on 3 September there are discussions between Caritas and civil servants at the Foreign Ministry. By this point, the facts are pretty clear. There’s no money to extend projects until at least the end of the year, not from the government, not from the Diocese. And any attempt to transfer the activities to a new NGO is doomed to fail from the very get-go – because it would be years before it got any co-financing from the state. Have I understood correctly?
Pia Oppel Yes, exactly, that’s how things stand at the start of September. But then Xavier Bettel changes his approach.
Léonardo Kahn Ah, meaning?
Jean-Claude Franck A brief bit of context, by mid-September it’s clear that Caritas is ending its international activities. Prompting criticism from the opposition in Parliament.
Franz Fayot I find that quite hard to accept. And we’d like there to be a greater political willingness to make sure that they do indeed find new partners who can continue those activities.
Marc Baum There’s a risk of this developing into a humanitarian disaster. And that would be down to the decision the government has taken: We’re not giving Caritas another euro more.
Pia Oppel And as multiple sources have told us, it took Xavier Bettel until mid-September to agree that his Ministry could play a more active role. And provide some funding to save at least some of the projects.
Jean-Claude Franck An idea that had already been discussed previously. But which didn’t align with the position the Minister adopted initially. That he wasn’t going to finance a project twice.
Pia Oppel Xavier Bettel didn’t explain why the Ministry waited until mid-September to take concrete steps to look for solutions. Instead, in our interview, the Minister for Cooperation read from a memo prepared by his staff.
Xavier Bettel So it says here ... Yes, the Ministry’s priority was to limit the impact on employees and beneficiaries on the ground as far as possible under the circumstances. So my departments worked with Caritas to examine, project by project, under what conditions each could be continued.
Léonardo Kahn And does it work? Saving the projects?
Pia Oppel To an extent, yes. Certain projects continue receiving support, in some cases only for a limited time and with only a small amount of funding. But some longer-term initiatives are also set up.
Jean-Claude Franck In places like Turkey, but also in Bangladesh, Mali, Laos and Moldova.
Pia Oppel They also save an important humanitarian project involving three healthcare centres in South Sudan which Caritas had been giving financial support to with the help of the Foreign Ministry.
Xavier Bettel Those three centres, the largest has 100 beds and employs 30 people. The others have a capacity of 10 beds each and a medical staff of between 15 and 20 people.
Jean-Claude Franck And so in the autumn of 2024, when Caritas shuts down, it’s clear that these centres will have to close too.
Pia Oppel At this point, the Dutch Caritas is the first to jump to the rescue in order to stop the thousands of people in South Sudan losing access to healthcare overnight.
Jean-Claude Franck The Luxembourg Foreign Ministry only decides later to resume co-financing the project, with funding starting in January 2025.
Xavier Bettel At the moment, they’re being taken care of by Caritas Netherlands with financing from the Foreign Ministry of 1.1 million for 2025. Voilà. That’s all the information I have on the, on that case, on the Sudan case. That’s all we’ve got.
Pia Oppel There was no solution, however, for the nutrition project which Pacoto David and over 50 others had been working on in South Sudan.
Xavier Bettel I can’t, the taxpayer can’t be responsible for problems at Caritas.
Jean-Claude Franck So Xavier Bettel’s position is this: His Ministry did more than they had to. And Caritas bears the responsibility for the fact that its overseas staff had to be let go because of the fraud.
Léonardo Kahn What’s Caritas’ assessment of the end result? All those projects being discontinued and staff being let go?
Pia Oppel That’s what I spoke to the Director of the International Department at Caritas about. It was a department he had spent decades helping to build.
Michael Feit My name is Michael Feit. I’m a doctor and I’ve been with Caritas Luxembourg for 27 years.
Pia Oppel I visited Michael Feit and his team at their offices last November. The large building on Welter street in the Gare district of Luxembourg City is now all but empty.
Michael Feit It’s become incredibly lonely and it feels like it’s falling apart a bit.
Pia Oppel Downstairs, a sign above the main entrance bears the name of the new non-profit, Hëllef um Terrain, which has taken over most of Caritas’ national activities and staff, but moved some of its operations to other premises.
Pia Oppel So you don’t see too many people?
Michael Feit You don’t see too many people anymore.
Jean-Claude Franck The 30 people working on international cooperation at the Luxembourg office were not absorbed into Hëllef um Terrain. Almost all of them have since found new jobs. Some with in the public sector or in positions the government helped find for them.
Pia Oppel Michael Feit is not one of them, but he is fast approaching retirement. His plan is to continue his involvement in the humanitarian relief work as a volunteer.
Pia Oppel So this experience hasn’t made you bitter then?
Michael Feit Bitter, no, I mean ... no.
Pia Oppel All summer long, Michael Feit held out hope that a solution would be found and that the international activities could somehow be saved.
Michael Feit All we really knew was that that hope was being extinguished piece by piece, as it were.
Jean-Claude Franck The first blow comes immediately in July when PM Luc Frieden announces that Caritas is cut off until further notice.
Michael Feit Of course, I’m also fully aware that politics is politics. The Ministry can’t just give us millions and millions of euros while we’re in the midst of such a scandal. That has to be dealt with first, obviously.
Pia Oppel Michael Feit also attended the meeting with civil servants at the Foreign Ministry in early September.
Michael Feit Together, we reached a consensus that it was a Catch-22 and we weren’t going to find a way out. No-one was going to come and wave a magic wand.
Léonardo Kahn So what does Michael Feit do, then, with that knowledge at the start of September? As in, the fact that Caritas has to abandon all of the international activities he spent decades helping to establish?
Jean-Claude Franck He tries to make the best of a bad situation and save as many projects as he can. Drawing on the limited help provided by the Foreign Ministry, plus assistance from other NGOs abroad.
Pia Oppel In particular, he travels to Vienna in the autumn for a meeting of European Caritas organisations. In the hopes of finding resuers for projects. He sent me a message from the station in Vienna while waiting for his train back home.
Michael Feit Just heading back now. Mixed feelings. On the one hand, very moved by the solidarity. On the other, the overwhelming feeling is still one of sadness that it’s all coming to an end.
Jean-Claude Franck Meaning Caritas Luxembourg was indeed shutting up shop. In terms of the individual projects, however, attention now turns to trying to somehow reduce the debt. With help from other NGOs and also, from the end of September, the Ministry.
Michael Feit The Ministry called, asking for details on a project because they might potentially finance it.
Pia Oppel But Michael Feit was still forced to notify the 30 colleagues working at Caritas’ Laos office that they were going to lose their jobs. Plus his colleagues in South Sudan, among them Pacoto David.
Michael Feit It’s really upsetting to see that, for the most part, our local colleagues can’t find work and are in fact ending up in poverty.
Jean-Claude Franck In budgetary terms, Caritas’ projects in South Sudan are their biggest at this point. And because South Sudan is incredibly unsafe due to the constant conflicts, those activities are also the hardest to maintain.
Pia Oppel Which equally means that stopping projects so abruptly poses a major security risk to staff. Something Michael Feit also warned his board of directors about early on.
Jean-Claude Franck The biggest problem in South Sudan is that there isn’t time to give their staff, the beneficiaries, the local partners a heads-up, the way Caritas normally would when shutting down an office.
Michael Feit Shutting down an office isn’t something they teach you at uni and it’s not something I’ve had to do very often. In the past, we always had a lot of time to prepare. We had a budget for it. So in Kosovo, in Montenegro and in Serbia, we could hand over our offices and our projects to local stakeholders. We were informed two, three years in advance. Everyone found new jobs. It was always very amenable. We’d written up exit strategies.
Pia Oppel In South Sudan, none of that is an option. Which creates tension, and the staff are worried that their offices could be attacked.
Léonardo Kahn How does Caritas deal with the fact that the situation in South Sudan is such a tricky one?
Pia Oppel They take a number of precautions.
Michael Feit We set up a safe room. Working with the United Nations we found a place where they could go if they ever felt like their lives were in genuine danger.
Jean-Claude Franck And then, at the end of October 2024, a few days before the office is due to close for good, there’s an incident.
Michael Feit We’ve got a large compound over there, we’ve got a couple of offices, all of these things have value. Whether it’s the generator, a new car we’ve purchased.
Pia Oppel There are seven cars in total – and they’re going to be gifted to various people. While office materials are to be distributed among the staff: tablets, laptops and so on.
Jean-Claude Franck Which does not go down well with the local diocese who had been working closely with Caritas Luxembourg in Torit. Because they were expecting to keep everything for themselves.
Michael Feit Some people came up to us, armed people, though of course the officers are usually armed. And it’s not as if any shots were fired or anything. Nothing like that. But the threat of violence is usually enough.
Jean-Claude Franck Caritas staff are unable to seek shelter in the safe room that day. They claim they were threatened by four priests and five police officers.
Michael Feit They just resorted to fairly drastic methods. Just took the cars themselves, or at least the keys. And our staff were also summoned or, sort of, invited in a less than friendly manner to come to them, under duress, to discuss the issues further.
Pia Oppel We spoke to two people who were caught up in this incident, including the CFO of Caritas Luxembourg in South Sudan. He was physically assaulted that day and dragged off to the police station.
Jean-Claude Franck In the general chaos of winding up the South Sudan office, the Caritas team back in Luxembourg has no way of following up on the incident. And taking those responsible to task.
Michael Feit The Bishop has a different view of the situation. There’ll be no review of the incident, no police.
Pia Oppel We contacted the Bishop of Torit ourselves. He denied that threats were ever made, but declined to explain what exactly had happened.
Jean-Claude Franck And Caritas notifies the Diocese here in Luxembourg of the alleged incident. The Diocese declined to offer any comment on the matter.
Pia Oppel Christopher Mutinda went back to his home country of Kenya following the incident. He worked for Caritas in South Sudan for 18 years.
Christopher Mutinda I feel that time I was left alone. That trauma is still within me. And at the end you are leaving the country or closing in on such miserable and very bad situation like that. It was very discouraging. Very discouraging.
Jean-Claude Franck Shortly after the incident, the Caritas office in South Sudan winds up operations for good. The days before that, however, the staff have other things to worry about.
Léonardo Kahn Even more bad news?
Pia Oppel Well, there are only a few days left before the office is due to close, but the staff’s salaries and pensions still haven’t been transferred.
Michael Feit Which naturally sours the mood among the employees, and further afield too.
Jean-Claude Franck In the autumn, Caritas is no longer able to rustle up the roughly €300,000 it still owes its staff.
Michael Feit We did end up finding a solution in the end, in that the Diocese declared that it was willing to transfer the salaries and the pensions to South Sudan via the Dutch Caritas.
Pia Oppel But right as it’s about to actually transfer the money, Caritas is targeted by another attempted fraud.
Léonardo Kahn Another fraud? What happened exactly?
Pia Oppel So at 20:13 on 16 October, the CFO of the Diocese, Marc Wagener, gets an e-mail that appears to be from a Caritas employee.
Dear Mr Wagener, Please we are so sorry for any inconveniences this might cause. Can you please contact your bank to cancel the transfer and send the transfer again to our below bank details?
Jean-Claude Franck The e-mail mentions a bank account in the USA. Even though the money is supposed to be going to the Netherlands so that the Dutch Caritas can wire it to South Sudan.
Pia Oppel Because the Dutch Caritas was previously CC’ed into this exchange, the e-mails regarding the transfers were written in English.
Jean-Claude Franck But the CFO of the Diocese notices that the message was sent from a fake Caritas e-mail address. In the end, the money is not wired to the US and does reach staff in South Sudan.
Pia Oppel But the fact that Caritas is being so deliberately targeted precisely as it’s preparing to wire money abroad obviously raises a lot of questions.
Léonardo Kahn Because it looks as if Caritas has been hacked?
Pia Oppel Yes, exactly. Because the timing and the surrounding circumstances have been chosen with such pinpoint accuracy that it looks as if an outside party is able to read Caritas’ e-mails in real-time, as they are being sent.
Jean-Claude Franck At which you obviously wonder whether the same wasn’t happening in the months leading up to this case, while the huge fraud was going on. And whether that’s how the criminals knew exactly how to manipulate and steer the CFO so that nothing came out.
Pia Oppel But there’s something else that needs mentioning here that hasn’t previously been revealed.
Léonardo Kahn Which is?
Pia Oppel Caritas was frequently targeted with e-mails like this in the past, where someone is asking them to wire money to a wrong account.
Jean-Claude Franck As in, well before the CFO gets that e-mail in February 2024 that prompts her to wire a full €61 million to Spain over the course of five months.
Pia Oppel Because Caritas has a lot of previous experience with this sort of fraud. And with e-mails that look as if they’ve been sent by the CEO, Marc Crochet.
Kindly email me when you are ready to process the payments, so I can email you the payment details.
Regards,
Marc Crochet
Jean-Claude Franck Join us next time to find out how Caritas tackled this issue and what that meant for the CFO.
Léonardo Kahn That will be our eighth and foreseeably final episode in the Caritas Affair. We will publish the episode on a Monday as usual. But you will have to wait until 2 June, after the holidays.
Thank you, Pia and Jean-Claude!
Jean-Claude Franck Thank you, Leo!
Pia Oppel Thank you.
Léonardo Kahn You’ve been listening to Scene Change, the 100.7 documentary podcast.
Scene Change is produced by Pia Oppel, Charlotte Bruneau, Tessy Troes and me, Léonardo Kahn. With additional help by Jean-Claude Franck, Yves Stephany, Semir Demic, Jo Diseviscourt, Anke Meiser, Ana Angel and Chris Zeien.
Sound and mixing: Sam Erpelding and Ingo Dumlich.
Thank you to Pacoto David who recorded the ambient noises you heard in this episode in the area around Palotaka, in Juba and in the Kiryandongo refugee camp in Uganda.
To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to Scene Change wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have any questions or want to give us feedback, drop us an e-mail at doku@100komma7.lu.
Translation: Rob Myatt and Pia Oppel.
