OPINION > One Thing & Another Perception About Anti-Corruption Sierra Leone Under its Current Mandate and Capacity Posted by Dylan Sogie-Thomas of London United Kingdom on Jun 21, 2008, 09:03

On Thursday 12^th June 2008, I received response from ACC stating that ACC does not have power to investigate forgery under the ACC Act 2000. I have therefore listed some of the most common offences that might be concealed through the act of forgery. Forgery in most cases will lead to no audit trail and ACC  will not achieve its objectives without proper fraud/forgery investigation and prosecuting powers.

-Fraud or theft which may involve falsification of accounting records

-Misappropriation of assets and conceal such acts by forging documents

-Insider dealing when awarding contracts

-Dishonesty which may involve the payment and receipt of bribes

-Claims submitted for services or goods not actually provided to the organisation

-Offences in relation to skimming and taxation and

-Money laundering by government officials

Sierra Leoneans have trust on ACC and independence will only be apparent when ACC listen to their cries.

In reality the present mandate given to ACC are not sufficient in order to meet the public expectations. Sierra Leoneans have been calling on ACC to intervene such as; NPA electricity contract, Ministry of Health drug contract, Press secretary financial evidence to IMC. ACC should setup mechanism that will ensure that state funds are not used for payments of fictitious goods or services, inflated invoices and invoices for personal purchases.

ACC staffing Capacity

At the moment ACC is being dominated by lawyers and lacks the required staffs to review various general ledger accounts which might reveal unusual or unexpected events. Our able lawyers in Sierra Leone are specialised in traditional cases such as traffic offences, robbery, human right, marriage and tenancy cases. They are specialised in cases where the defendants uses threats or force and the perpetrators identity is known, whilst in corruption cases the embezzler steals and cover up the theft. Corruption cases are more complex in terms of time and political pressures.

According to Herbert Edelhertz:

One of the characteristics that most distinguishes the investigation of white collar crime from that of common crimes is the necessity for the investigator to establish the intent and underlying motives of the subject by placing together jigsaw puzzle pieces of apparently legitimate activities to add up to a picture of illegitimacy-rather than by a simple showing of one event which by itself demonstrates wrongful intent.

Fraudulent acts are usually of financial nature. ACC should therefore have capacity of lawyers, auditors and fraud examiners. In order to discover concealment or fraud by embezzler ACC should have staffs that can examine the accounting records as most legitimate transactions leave an audit trail. They start with source documents, such as invoice, a cheque, a receipt and goods received note.

Transitional Team Report/Circumstantial evidence

When President Koroma took office he promised to prosecute SLPP ministers and top government officials found wanting for fraud or embezzlement. He selected experts to identify red flags in each government departments and these red flags were compiled as the Transitional Team report. It has been confirmed that this report will be used to prosecute perpetrators, however I believe that the above report will be inadequate as legal evidence against perpetrators.ACC or Commission of Enquiry will need to change the report to legal evidence and in order to achieve this, the following steps should be followed:

-Interview neutral third parties witnesses: ACC can interview co-workers, subordinates as corroborative witnesses’ .Interviewing them will help develop information about their subject/suspect.

-Co-conspirators: ACC needs to carry out further work by interviewing co-conspirators to the alleged offences. These co-conspirators will be used as the ‘’inside witnesses’’ and will include contractors and business outlets giving or receiving kick backs.

-Subject/Suspect: ACC has failed to follow the above steps in most cases. ACC most of the time will arrest or detain the subject first and will later report to media/press that there was no arrest it was just questioning. ACC should know or learn that in embezzlement cases the subject or suspect is the last person to be interview after all facts necessary to resolve the allegation are obtained. Even if it is felt that the subject will not offer a confession an interview is usually scheduled; in many instances it might give a good idea of what defences the subject might raise.

Competitive bidding: ACC should ensure that they monitor bidding procedures for goods or services over $ 20,000. ACC should send out questionnaire after the bidding process has been completed to both successful and unsuccessful bidders. This questionnaire can reveal areas that had shortfalls and also opportunity for bidders to express concerns over questionable or fraudulent activities.

ACC should try and get President Ernest Koroma and his ministers to declare their assets now. ACC staffs should know the characteristics of fraud, the types of frauds associated with government activities and sign a Fraud Reporting and Investigation Policy (FRIP) with President Ernest Koroma, his ministers and department heads.

I am looking forward to receive any comments or feed back via email: sogiethomas@yahoo.com