Tibor P. Nagy, US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs. (Getty images)

A senior American diplomat says the U.S will not provide financial assistance to the government of South Sudan unless it addresses key issues of corruption.

Last year, Transparency International ranked South Sudan as the third most corrupt country in the word.

It attributed the reasons to weak democratic foundation, and the manipulation of undemocratic and populist politicians who use it to their advantage.

A report conducted by the Sentry last month, also showed top government officials as profiteers in the South Sudan conflict.

According to the report “kleptocratic” South Sudan leaders and international individuals and companies have accumulated billions of dollars.

The Taking of South Sudan urged the US government to update sanctions designation criteria to include family members of those involved in corruption as one of the recommendations.

Others include blocking of corrupt officials from accessing luxury goods and property abroad, going after entire networks, including international facilitators, and sounding the alarm on corrupt real estate acquisitions.

Tibor Nagy is the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs.

He said the government of South Sudan must address corruption and be transparent with the oil revenue its generating.

Tibor was speaking during a telephonic press briefing from Washington DC yesterday.

“The international community point of view is as we all know there have been issues with corruption in the past, South Sudan has tremendous oil assets, South Sudan has significant revenues, we believe that using some of its own resources towards that process [reform], making strict accountability for the revenues, for the expenditures and once the international community if satisfied, what use of that money has been put to, that point maybe we can discuss additional support. As far as paying to help the transition we believe South Sudan has its own resources that can be used towards that.”

Recently, the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway called on the parties in South Sudan to create clear mechanisms on how they spend peace funds for better implementation of the agreement.

South Sudan is said to receive about 5 million U.S dollars a day from the oil revenue.

The government pledged to provide the necessary funds for the implementation of the peace agreement.

Troika said such funds should be spent transparently in order to create trust between the international community and the government of South Sudan.

They also said peace funds must be used as budgeted for and made public for South Sudanese to view their expenditures.