As President Obama journeys to Africa, one human rights group believes a new strategy is needed to stop deadly conflicts in the region – by going after the money funding the warfare. This week, the Enough Project launched its initiative called The Sentry, which was co-founded by actor George Clooney. As Clooney explained, ‘we want to follow the money and find out how mass atrocities are funded.’ TheStreet spoke about The Sentry with Akshaya Kumar, a policy analyst at the Enough Project. ‘These are gruesome crimes that you hear about in places like Sudan or the Central African Republic,’ said Kumar. ‘The responsibility for those crimes lies not just at the hands of the perpetrators but also at the financial backers who help fuel these wars and conflicts.’ Kumar explained that The Sentry is working with investigators, and trying to cultivate whistle blowers to help uncover the money trail, which totals billions of dollars. She gave the example of billions of dollars in oil revenues in the South Sudan that have not been invested back into the country. ‘The cold hard truth is that some people are profiting off of this,’ said Kumar, who added that some financiers might not know where their money is going. ‘Our supply chains are not very transparent and so often with the absence of customer due diligence protocol, with the absence of requirements that force us to pierce corporate shells and look behind shell companies to find out who really owns the assets, it’s possible that big banks or money service businesses are actually dealing with these bad actors and they just are unaware.’
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