By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) of Sierra Leone has recovered Le 37 billion of money stolen from public coffers, the head of the agency has said.
Commissioner Francis Ben Kaifala on Monday presented over Le7 billion to President Julius Maada Bio at State House, where he also announced an impending Le 21 billion to be received in the next six months from former officials found to have misappropriated public funds. This follows an earlier presentation of Le 9 billion to the president.
The ACC has been able to recover a total of Le16 billion within the last one year. Others found with their hands on the till have agreed to pay back Le 21 billion which will be in the natiional coffers in the coming six months. Most of this money has been recovered through out-of-court settlements with suspected corrupt officials.
“There is a commitment to recover Le21billion in the next six months,” Kaifala said.
President Bio, who received the cheque for the amount on behalf of his government, praised the efforts of the commission and urged citizens to be stern in fighting the ‘menace’.
“We should tackle corruption with every strength that we have. It is hard, it is difficult; corruption has been fighting back in many forms,” President Bio said.
“Corruption is endemic, and it is found everywhere in this country,” he added.
The President went on to say that this tranche of payment from the ACC will be used to fund the construction of an ultra-modern diagnostic center.
Despite ACC’s success in recovering such huge sum in a short space of time, the Commission has come under increased scrutiny by the public for its frequent out of court settlement with corrupt officials.
A huge chunk of the Le16billion that has been recovered by the ACC came from out of court settlement. The ACC Boss said the judiciary has been slow and this doesn’t encourage them to take their cases to court.
“We have up to 19 convictions. The total funds recovered for these convictions is less than $100, 000. We have about 25 investigations going on. As I speak now, we are preparing eight prosecutions. And ACC has just 7 prosecutors across the country,” he explained.
“At the ACC we have a posture. We will make corruption a high risk, low return venture. The posture of the judiciary must make corruption expensive. Finding people just few millions is a waste of our time and resources at the ACC,” he added.
Kaifala’s reference to the money they successfully recovered after 19 convictions is a way of pointing out how much gains they have made with ‘non conviction-based asset recovery’ approach. An approach he said is a model most countries want to copy from Sierra Leone.
ACC’s work in recovering corrupt monies and prosecuting corrupt people also falls within the mandate of other state bodies like the Audit Service Sierra Leone and the House of Parliament. To avoid friction, the ACC Boss said they have strengthened collaboration with these bodies.
“The cooperation between the ACC and Audit has been strengthened. We have an MOU with Audit. Whiles doing their audit, they can now refer cases to us even before the end of the audit year. We have a greater coordination with Parliament and Audit Service in dealing with the Audit report. That is why you saw on the Technical Audit report Parliament wrote to us and said they have no problem with us continuing our investigations before they conclude theirs.”
The ACC say they want to make more gains in the fight against corruption, despite so many challenges. To ensure this, they have since embarked on reviewing the ACC Act of 2008. The bill is still with the legislative committee of the House of Parliament.
Among some of the recommendations are stiffer measures which include jail terms and higher minimum fines for corrupt offences.
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