The American international public radio company Voice of America said that The organization intends to dismiss fifteen employees of the African division. This happened after an investigation revealed that they had accepted improper payments from a foreign official from West Africa.
The alleged payments were made at or near the Voice of America headquarters in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. The Director of a government-funded news organization, Amanda Bennett, said the layoffs began after simultaneous investigations into Voice of America and the inspector General’s Office, FCPA blog reports.
The investigations focused on “allegations of misconduct by members of the service that involved the acceptance of improper payments from an official in the coverage area”.
“So it is with a very heavy heart that I have to tell you that we have terminated or (under all applicable Federal laws and regulations) offered to terminate 15 members of house’s African division Service,” Bennett said.
Staff from the African division of Voice of America reported that the investigation “did not provide any evidence that any programmes were affected by the alleged payments”. “A separate investigation was launched to determine whether any investigation had affected Voice of America,” Bennett said.
As a result, the team shrank from 26 people to eleven permanent government employees and contractors to produce content for the Department, which reaches an audience of 20 million people a week in Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon. House is spoken by about 63 million people, most of whom live in Nigeria and Niger.
Voice of America is a Federal news Agency that provides news in more than 40 languages to more than 230 million people every week.
