Over $148 billion lost to corruption - AU Report
The Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States (US) Embassy, Patricia
Alsup, has revealed that according to the African Union, more than 148
billion dollars is lost to corruption in Africa every year.
Mrs.
Alsup said the figure is equivalent to 25% of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product.
She added that a World Bank study revealed that corrupt public officials
in developing and transition countries receive between 20 dollars and
40 dollars billion in bribes annually, which is equivalent of 20 to 40
per cent of official development assistance.
Mrs Alsup made this revelation on Monday at a five-day opening ceremony
of the West Africa Regional Anti-Corruption Workshop in Accra hosted by
the US government.
The workshop brought together key international enforcement agents from
across West Africa to discuss the impact of local and international
anti-corruptions and bribery legislation and its enforcement in West
Africa.
The participating countries include Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Tanzania.
She said the workshop is part of the US effort to assist in building
accountable institutions in West Africa as part of the West Africa
Cooperative Security Initiative, a new initiative to address the growing
threat of transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in West
Africa.
Mrs Alsup said corruption is a global problem and a serious threat to
prosperity, security and development and impedes economic growth, trade
and investment, perpetuates poverty and compromises markets and supply
chains.
According to her, the countries will be treated with topics such as
investigating corruption and conducting financial investigations,
prosecuting corruption and bribery, utilizing international tools and
networks and ways of using international standards on corruption to
strengthen domestic efforts.
Mrs Alsup said Ghana with the establishment of the Economic and
Organized Crime Office and other anti-corruption entities had continued
to investigate and prosecute crimes such as money laundering, human
trafficking and cyber crime.
She said in Tanzania in July 2012, Mr Emmanuel Nchimbi, Minister of Home
Affairs reported to Parliament that his Ministry investigated 625
allegations of bribery against police officials during the year.
She also mentioned that the 2012 Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)
secured more than 20 convictions resulting from the 273 corruption cases
it investigated which represented an improvement over the number of
convictions secured by the ACC in 2011.
She said Nigeria had passed a landmark law providing citizens with
access to information and provides them with critical tool in fighting
corruption while the Liberia government had been able to dismiss a
number of officials for corruption.
GNA
