UK
institutes legislation to stem corruption in Africa
Accra
(Greater Accra) 27 April 2002 - The United Kingdom (UK) has instituted a new
legal framework to stem international corruption, especially those involving
African leaders and foreign public officials, who lodge stolen wealth from
Africa with foreign banks in their names.
Mr Robin
Gwynn, Deputy British High Commissioner to Ghana, said the move was in response
to calls by international anti-corruption bodies for donor nations to join the
anti-corruption war, following allegations of involvement of African leaders
and bureaucrats in corrupt practices.
He was
speaking at the opening of a three-day anti-corruption conference organised by
the Africa affiliates of Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based
international anti-corruption organisation.
About 100
participants from 35 TI member countries are attending the conference, which is
under the theme: "Deepening and Sustaining the African Anti-Corruption
Agenda - Implementing the Nyanga Declaration." A similar forum was held in
Nyanga, Zimbabwe, two years ago.
Mr. Gwynn
said the new UK anti-corruption legislation came into force in February to
strengthen the law against international corruption. "This makes it
explicit that relevant UK anti-corruption laws apply to bribery of foreign
public officials, as well as those in the UK and means that a
UK
national company can be prosecuted in the UK for bribery even if no part of the
offence took place in the UK."
He said
recently there had also been changes in UK banking laws to bring UK to the
forefront in the anti-corruption effort, adding that the government of the UK
had goodwill towards the anti-corruption campaign and would lend its support
completely.
Mr Gwynn,
however, noted that much as the law existed the UK government would need
evidence to support allegations of stolen wealth, which were lodged with
foreign banks, saying that African governments and anti-corruption groups would
have to provide evidence to support the allegation.
He said
corruption was not about morality or cultural practices, but about weak
systems, adding that fighting corruption was much more about improving the
systems of governance as it was about detecting and punishing bad people.
"We
need to have a broad, good governance-based approach to fight corruption,"
he said. "You cannot fight corruption just by fighting corruption;
prevention, through strengthening institutions and systems, is the long term
solution."
He said
enforcement of laws alone was not enough, adding that if enforcement was
downstream action of catching and punishing bad behaviour, prevention was the
upstream activity of rooting out the causes that led to corruption in the first
place.
Mr Gwynn
said corruption was the root and a symptom of failed institutions of
governance, adding that without robust systems, corruption would flourish in
any country. He quoted a recent World Development Report, which said firms in
highly corrupt countries spent 25 per cent of their profits on corruption
payments and one-third of their time identifying and bribing key officials.
This, he
said, was the result of high level of poverty in highly corrupt nations, as
much of the profits from the business community went into the pockets of
corrupt officials and bureaucrat to the detriment of the poor masses. "Through corruption, people are
denied access to education, health care, medicine and even justice because they
cannot afford to make extra payments and bribes usually demanded by corrupt
officials," he said.
"It
is not justifiable for the poor to keep paying for the corrupt practices of
bureaucrats." Mr Gwynn said in a
donor country like the UK, citizens were forming coalitions against corruption
in countries that benefited from British Overseas Development assistance
because "our people are getting increasingly angry with the stolen wealth
problem."
Mr Emile
Short, Chairman of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice
(CHRAJ), said fighting corruption was not about signing agreements and
protocols and making pious declarations, but about developing and implementing
specific and precise measures to combat the menace.
He said this
called for collaboration between anti-corruption organisations, governments,
civil society and the private sector as well as skilled personnel that
understood the operations of corrupt people to ensure effective anti-corruption
machinery.
GRi../
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