8 May 2009

Africa Directorate

King Charles Street

London

SW1A 2AH

Tel: 020 7008 3597

E-mail: [email address]

Stephen Nash

By email: [FOI #4612 email]

Dear Mr Nash,

INTERNAL REVIEW OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST - REF: 0977-08

You requested an internal review of the decision, conveyed to you in a letter of 8 January 2009, to refuse to answer your request as it exceeded the appropriate cost limit as identified under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”).

I have conducted a full examination of your request, including the process that was used to determine that your request exceeded the appropriate limit, and have concluded the following.

Search for information

You originally requested any information that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) held on White Nile Ltd, in particular in relation to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As you did not specify a time frame the officer dealing with your request contacted the department that is responsible for the FCO's records. They advised that to meet the request the search would involve manually looking through thirty years worth of files for the DRC. In addition, as your request was not limited to the DRC, the search would also have to cover thirty years of files for all other countries. To carry out such a search would involve considerably more than 3 ½ working days.

A search was also carried out within the department and of the electronic files and no information was found.

Use of exemptions

The officer replying cited Section 12 of the Act. This makes provisions for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit. For central government the appropriate limit is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one or more persons spending 3 ½ working days in determining whether the central government Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting it. Given the scope of your request I have determined that the officer correctly used the provisions under Section 12 of the Act.

Should you wish to proceed with your request I recommend that you resubmit it using a narrower time frame of two or three years and that you restrict your request to focus on one country.

If you are not content with the outcome of this Internal Review you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Sheena Lavery

Sheena Lavery

Africa Directorate

2

Foreign &

Commonwealth

Office