So would the World Bank today lend money for an Aswan dam if it did not already exist?

ECONOMIST: Small projects often give better returns

After a series of dam mistakes in other countries, however, the Bank wants to be seen to do one right.

ECONOMIST: Laos

The scandal concerns contracts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a dam construction venture which has been partly funded by the World Bank.

BBC: Dam builders charged in bribery scandal

The company is involved in two more dams, in Uganda and Laos, which are expected to receive World Bank funding, and it has helped build enormous reservoirs such as the Three Gorges Dam in China.

ECONOMIST: A conviction for bribery could have a wide impact

The World Bank claims to have learned the lessons of equally worthy-sounding schemes that went badly awry, including a dam on the Mun river in neighbouring Thailand, which left many fishermen destitute as their catch disappeared.

ECONOMIST: But have the right lessons been learned?

Yet unless the remitters became embroiled in a serious crime, often involving drug money, Western lawmakers largely ignored them, focusing instead on trying to dam the river of dirty money that flowed through traditional banking channels--chiefly through the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, and later its amendments, which required banks to file reports of suspicious activity and high-dollar transactions, and to maintain information about account holders' identities.

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