In what appeared a show of scorn and disdain for Nigeria and Afghanistan, the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron has been caught in a video tape where in the presence of the Queen, he described the two countries as “possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”.
The Prime Minister was talking about Thursday’s anti-corruption summit in London when he made the comments.
It was not clear whether he knew his remarks were being recorded.
He told Her Majesty: “We’ve got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.”
His comments caught on a live microphone recall those in 2014 when on a trip to New York Mr Cameron was overheard on an open microphone telling the city’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg how the Queen “purred” down the line when he told her Scotland had voted against independence.
The PM later had to apologise.
The latest incident came in footage from ITV News of the Buckingham Palace event – where the PM is seen chatting in a group, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Commons Speaker John Bercow – was shared on Twitter by ITV News deputy political editor Chris Ship.
The office of the UK Prime Minister declined to comment directly on the premier’s conversations with the Queen but pointed out that the leaders of both countries had acknowledged the scale of the problem they faced.
Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani and Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari have written essays for a book accompanying the summit.
Mr Ghani, they said, acknowledges in his piece that Afghanistan is “one of the most corrupt countries on earth” and Mr Buhari that corruption became a “way of life” in his country under “supposedly accountable democratic governments”.
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