Fight against corruption shared responsibility — Mrs Justice Asare-Botwe
A Justice of the High Court, Mrs Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe, says the fight against corruption must be a shared responsibility.
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She stated that the national anti-corruption campaign would only be successful, if all hands were on deck.
Mrs Justice Asare-Botwe said this in a presentation on the second day of the 2016 International Federation of Women Accountants’ (IFWA) conference in Accra last Thursday.
The three-day conference is being held on the theme, “Building stronger institutions to mitigate corruption: development from the bottom up: role of the professional woman.”
It brought together more than 200 female accountants from Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Sierra Leone, Kenya, The Gambia and Zimbabwe.
Hosted by the Association of Women Accountants, Ghana, the conference provided a platform for the federation to rekindle the activities of women accountants towards national development.
Participants were also expected to formulate action plans to help their respective countries’ anti-corruption campaigns.
Corruption in disguise
Mrs Justice Asare-Botwe said corruption had been identified by various studies as a major hindrance to national development and, therefore, required pragmatic solutions.
“Corruption, most often, come in deceptive forms with disguised names including gifts and honorariums and, therefore, we all must be vigilant to avoid being corrupt,” she said.
Her presentation was on “understanding the factors that lead to corruption and the impact on developing countries.”
Mrs Justice Asare-Botwe said corruption had been disguised in several names making them look acceptable, and, therefore, public servants needed to be extra careful in the pursuit of their jobs to avoid being corrupt.
She defined corruption as the abuse of public or private office for personal gains and offering, promising or giving a bribe to a national or local public figure and using public resources including time of work for private ventures.
“Examples of corruption include sole sourcing of contracts to friends or relatives; contracts that lack competitive bid processes; kickbacks paid to contracting officers for issuing contracts and judgments influenced by some benefit (past or future),” she said.
According to her, the actual test was whether the “gift” would affect decision making or not, adding that whatever transaction between two persons that could not be disclosed publicly was likely to constitute corruption and must be avoided.
Some causes
Expatiating on the causes of corruption, she said they included the lack of transparency, especially at the institutional level, slow judicial processes, and downplaying or reacting mildly to corruption charges.
In her remarks, the President of the Federation, Mrs Agnes Yeboah, said the fight against corruption and fraud was on the agenda of accountants.
That ,she said, was because public and private entities relied on professional accountants most often to institute and protect financial, audit and management systems.
“Living by the ethics of the accountancy profession requires high standard of integrity making accountants well equipped to support the society to overcome the challenges of corruption,” she said.