Bono participates in the world-wide offshore tax evasion system that is to a large extent responsible for the poverty of Africa. The African Union says tax dodging by foreign companies costs it $150 billion a year - three times what it receives in aid.

The Irish Bono ran his music publishing company in Ireland, where he and his partners took advantage of a law that exempted musicians and artists from taxes on royalties. To dodge taxes on non-royalty income, Bono's interests had the help of offshore nominee directors.

The Irish royalty exemption was begun to aid and reward creative artists, in hopes of encouraging the struggling kind, not to further enrich mega-millionaires like Bono. Last year, the law was changed. From 2007, artists who earn more than $625,450 must pay tax on half their creative income. It hardly seems a harsh measure.

Bono's Dublin company earned $110 million in 2005. Taking profits through the company rather than individually, Bono would have had to pay only 12.5 percent corporate tax, a rate still below that of the local bus conductor or plumber or school teacher.

But that apparently was too much for the man who has homes on the Irish Coast and in the South of France and New York City. So, last year, Bono "moved" the registration of his business to the Netherlands, where it will pay about 5 percent tax on royalties.

Indeed, would millions be dying every year of hunger and preventable diseases if tax havens used by the very rich, including Bono and U2, did not exist? The Tax Justice Network has estimated that the amount of funds held by wealthy individuals in tax havens could generate a staggering $255 billion dollars in additional tax revenue annually -- enough alone to finance the Millennium Development Goals -- which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015. That raises a very important question: will the Task Force of which Bono is now a member address how tax havens undermine efforts to fund the life-saving needs of the world's poorest people in preventing hunger?

More specifically, how hundreds of billions are siphoned out of government coffers every year by very rich individuals and multi-national companies using tax havens to avoid tax?

This is especially serious in Africa, where the African Union has estimated that as much as $150bn is lost every year through this form of fiscal abuse -- three times what it receives in aid!