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Vulture Funds: Feasting on Poverty

In 2007 SCIAF campaigners spoke out against corporate opportunists in a campaign against “Vulture Funds”.

Campaigners called on the UK government to help outlaw the morally bankrupt practice, where companies buy up the debts of developing countries at a discount rate when the country has defaulted on the debt.

They then wait until that country’s government receives debt relief and sue for the full amount plus interest.

In Zambia, for example, the vulture fund Donegal International demanded five times the price of the country’s original debt, which it bought from Romania. At the same time 68% of people in Zambia live on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy is 37 years, and one in three children are unable to attend school.

After lots of hard work from campaigners across the UK, the parliament finally came together in April 2010 to pass the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill - which prevents vulture funds from suing through the UK courts.