Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether his Department’s (a) anti-fraud and (b) anti-money laundering procedures review (i) payments by his Department to offshore accounts and (ii) the use of offshore accounts by his Department's (A) suppliers and (B) senior staff.

There are robust anti-fraud and anti-money laundering measures in place for all DFID expenditure. The following controls are in place:

(A) For suppliers, relevant corporate assurance assessments and due diligence checks are completed by programme teams before new suppliers are added to the system, and the Treasury and Banking team are required to select the destination country for bank templates. In addition, the team check that the final destination account does not differ from that in the payment request.

(B) All our staff are governed by DFID’s Standards of Behaviour and Conduct including the Civil Service Code for staff and the seven Principles of Public life for office holders. As part of this, both staff and office holders are required to declare any conflicts of interest including private investments.