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toubab1020
12306 Posts |
 Posted - 11 Oct 2019 : 11:15:35
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I was going to post this GUEST EDITORIAL in The Point under World Politics, then I thought that's totally unfair corruption exists in many many aspects of life .
This Point article is knocking Africa and Western Countries.
When MONEY is the subject people & organisations will jump on the bandwaggon and keep it rolling along.
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Wednesday, October 09, 2019
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Gambia’s deposed dictator, Yahya Jammeh, was fabulously corrupt. A new investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reveals, for the first time, the scale of that corruption, and the mechanisms that Jammeh employed to steal nearly $1-billion from state coffers - as we report in this week’s edition of the Mail & Guardian.
But this story is not just about The Gambia. It’s much, much bigger than that.
It may surprise some - although it really shouldn’t - that a Western financial institution played a crucial role in facilitating this looting.
A key player in Jammeh’s intricate web of holding companies and dodgy tenders was a Belgian bank called KBC. This bank once financed the apartheid regime; then it turned a blind eye to illicit financial flows from The Gambia, allowing Jammeh and his cronies to loot with impunity.
It is easy to forget that corruption is a two-way street. Forget the lazy stereotypes: corruption has never been just an African thing. All too often, when evidence of corruption in African countries is uncovered, foreign financial institutions are at the heart of the scandal.
In fact, it was African leaders who led the most concerted effort to overhaul the current international financial system that makes it so easy for crooks to hide their ill-gotten gains, and fails to punish the institutions that facilitate these transactions.
In 2015, former president Thabo Mbeki led an African Union panel that sought to determine how much the African continent was losing every year through illicit financial flows, and what could be done to fix the problem. He estimated that illicit financial flows cost the continent nearly R1-trillion every year, and that the easiest solution would be to shut down the tax havens and tax loopholes that make illicit financial flows nearly impossible to trace.
South Africa, as that year’s chair of the G77, presented Mbeki’s proposals at the United Nations’ Financing for Development conference, which aimed to establish new funding mechanisms to meet the sustainable development goals. But views of the developing countries represented in the G77 were shut down by developed nations, led by the United Kingdom and the United States, which refused to countenance any substantive changes to the international taxation system - ensuring that the pipelines of corruption remain open.
That Jammeh stole nearly a billion dollars from one of the poorest countries on Earth is profoundly wrong. He will go down in history as a monster, and rightly so. But he is not the only villain in this story. The Belgian bankers who helped him to get away with it should be named and shamed. So too should the Western governments that have created an international financial system that allows corruption to flourish, and then refuse to countenance any substantive reform. Until the system changes, what is to prevent the next Jammeh from doing it all over again?
A Guest Editorial
http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/corruption-is-not-just-an-african-thing
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"Simple is good" & I strongly dislike politics. You cannot defend the indefensible.
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toubab1020
12306 Posts |
Posted - 11 Oct 2019 : 11:22:53
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From Letters to the Editor in The standard Newspaper.October 10, 2019
Dear Editor,
The Gambia government announced recently that through the sale of former President Yahya Jammeh looted assets that it has recovered and returned funds of Yahya Jammeh’s loot, kept in a special account at the Central Bank.
Is Yahya Jammeh contesting the final findings of the government White Paper?
In the absence of any evidence that Yahya Jammeh stole the money from the statutory allocation to the then Government (now defunct) after the sharing of the revenue accruing to the government as a whole, it, rightly, can be assumed that the money belonged to the Gambia.
Since Yahya Jammeh stole the money from the Gambia, and not from the government alone, is the money not that of the Gambia? Is it the exclusive property of the government? If the answer is in the negative, can the Gambia government, acting alone, spend the money? Shouldn’t the money be paid into the distributable pool in the government Account and shared in accordance with the extant revenue allocation formula amongst the three tiers of government?
The argument that the money could be stolen at the state level, like the “Paris Club refund “is not a valid reason for short circuiting the restitution process.
The money was stolen from the Gambia.
It should return to the Gambia. And the government of the Gambia is not the Justice department.
The reparation from Yahya Jammeh’s loot announced by the Attorney General for Yahya Jammeh’s torture survivors and victims is stepping aside directive should have emanated from the National Assembly. Not the President and not from the Justice Minister.
The directive has full moral grounding but is patently unconstitutional. We have a very liberal constitution that guarantees procedural and substantive rights to even the devil himself. The bottom line: – everyone is entitled to due process.
Alagie Yoro Jallow
USA
Is Fatoumatta Jallow-Tambajang the sole champion of five years?
Dear editor,
Following the announcement last week by the former vice president of the Republic of the Gambia, Madame Fatoumatta Jallow-Tasmbajang that the Coalition leaders have met President Adama Barrow and agreed to extend his term to five years, political parties have been tripping each other to disassociate themselves from that ‘agreement’.
First, we saw Mr Halifah Sallah, leader of the People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS) write to her to seek clarification as they were neither invited nor informed of the meeting and subsequent extension.
They raised concerns that as a part and parcel of the coalition, they do not know anything about it.
The deputy leader of the United Democratic Party (UDP) Aji Yam Secka also told journalists that the last time the UDP was invited or informed of any meeting of the Coalition was on 6th May, 2019.
She said that they were neither informed nor invited to the supposed meeting with President Barrow which decided to unilaterally extend the president’s mandate to five years.
The Gambia Moral Congress (GMC) also claims that they were not aware of any meeting with President Adama Baroow and distanced themselves from the extension which purportedly emanated from that meeting.
This has been widely publicized in the media in recent days.
The question one may ask is this: who did Madame Tambajang go to State House with? Did she just pick any Tom, Dick or Harry to make this extension?
It is certainly confusing to the public when a respectable lady like her says that the ‘Coalition has agreed’ only for the other partners to say, hang on! We weren’t there.
The issue of three years or five years is beyond one party, let alone one individual. It is a national issue and should be addressed as such.
A dialogue which should include all the stakeholders within and among themselves first, which should then be extended to the entire citizenry for it to have any meaningful effect.
It is not for one person or one party to decide on a matter as important as this.
Let the sitting government initiate a dialogue with the people (and not that type of dialogue which will parade men in military uniform or the SIS) let it be a real people centred dialogue on this issue and as soon as possible as time is of the essence here.
Musa Bah
Nusrat SSS
https://standard.gm/letters-should-the-national-assembly-or-the-attorney-general-decide-how-yahya-jammehs-loot-be-spent/
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"Simple is good" & I strongly dislike politics. You cannot defend the indefensible.
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Corruption is not just an African thing!
