 Local Government, and Gordon Benjamin, the KBE's US-based lawyer. Spending spree on lavish purchases Despite the poverty on the Marshall Islands, in 2018 and 2019, Mr Jibas and Mr Benjamin went on a spending spree with money from the funds splashing out on lavish purchases worth millions of dollars ostensibly for the government. They bought a large, twin-engined Dash-8 plane for $3.25 million, ostensibly to help resupply the remote Pacific islands. But it is now reportedly being kept in Taiwan, incurring storage fees of $7,500 a month. A pair of cargo ships were also bought, at a cost of $1.5 million, also to aid in resupply efforts. While popular at first, last month, furious locals tried to sink one of the vessels in an act of protest. They also bought property, including the Good Earth Apartment complex in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, for $1.3 million, and a tranche of land in Hawaii, paying $4.8 million for a 283-acre site that was on the market for $1.8 million Locals claim that Mr Jibas has spent around $200,000 of trust fund money on a new 'mansion' being built on the island, while $100,000 was put aside for his frequent, first class trips to America purportedly for official business. The pair also acquired a fleet of new luxury cars for the government, costing $640,000. 'Out here, you don't have a Porsche,' said Mr Niedenthal. 'The car to have is a double door pick-up truck. And Jibas, he's got a nice one.' Speaking to the Telegraph, Mr Jibas admitted using money from the trust funds to buy 'assets' for the Bikini people, including the plane, the ships, the land and property,){kind=link}
Marshall Islands officials went on spending spree to buy ‘assets’ for the Bikini people leaving no money for healthcare and living costs
The hydrogen bomb exploded at 6.45am, vaporising three islands in a fireball four-and-a-half miles wide and sending a tower of radioactive debris high into the atmosphere.
At 15 megatons, the Castle Bravo device – detonated on March 1, 1954 – was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States, with a yield a thousand times greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The fallout from the test, and the 22 other nuclear weapons detonated in the Marshall Islands until the late 1950s, devastated the lives of the people who lived on Bikini Atoll, on the northern tip of the country. Hundreds of families had to leave when testing began in 1946, never to return because of the dangerous levels of radiation.
It was only in the 1980s that the US government created two trust funds to compensate victims of its nuclear testing programme, with the payments scheme to help with health care, housing and living costs running like clockwork for decades.