By Abu Bakarr Jalloh
Sierra Leone’s anti-corruption community unanimously agrees that asset declaration is an indispensable tool to reduce corruption or establish accountability and justice.
Moreover, Georgia is a classic case of a country that employs asset declaration, public disclosure and data technology to improve the quality of government, establish peace, security and make significant progress in sustainable social development and economic growth.
Policies of Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) have been geared towards rapidly increasing the number of public officials who declare their assets every year, including the years they take and leave office.
“Public officials have realized that if you declare your asset properly it’s easy to explain what happens with your assets. If you don’t declare, the burden is on you to explain that it is not criminal. If you don’t declare, it is more likely that people would distrust you at that time five, six years down the line,” said Francis Ben Kaifala, the ACC’s Commissioner.
Kaifala’s successor, Ady Macauley said “if you had declared your assets when you took office and there are allegations that you acquired those assets when you were in office it is simply to show your asset declaration form and say ‘this is my defense and I say no more’”.
With the help of the European Union (EU), the Commission in 2017 introduced an electronic form that enables public officials to declare their assets online, according to Mr. Macauley, who served as Commissioner from 2016 to 2018.
Also, the ACC has been given enormous power to force public officials to comply with the asset declaration provision of the law. It has the power to suspend asset declaration defaulters from their positions, seize their salaries, deny them promotion and get them sacked, among others.
Moreover, the Anti-Corruption Act 2008 was amended in 2019 to make provision for asset declaration to be limited to public officials above pay grade 7, a reform the ACC said was aimed at allocating more resources to where the country stands to lose the most to corruption such as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), especially presidents, ministers, parliamentarians, judges, heads of departments, agencies and public enterprises. However, public workers such as customs officers who hold positions highly exposed to corruption but are under pay grade 7 also have to declare their assets.
The asset declaration regime has increased compliance sharply among public officials. When it is time to declare, long queues build up in most of the country’s towns and cities, especially the capital city Freetown. Mr. Macauley said during his second year annual asset declaration increased from 25,000 to 45,000. While Commissioner Kaifala says “Compliance has jumped from 30 to 60 percent”, suggesting that the sharp increase is largely due to his organization’s policies of zero tolerance to corruption.
However, history shows that “zero tolerance” approach of preventing and fighting corruption in Sierra Leone weakens public support and is most times perceived to protect the government of the day or going after the opposition. “Most of our institutions in Sierra Leone are regime protectionist institutions,” the Executive Director of Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) Marcella Samba Sesay said to highlight the weakness of state, political and social institutions.
While law enforcement approach is being emphasized, the ACC has been slow to employ data technology and public disclosure which has the potential to reduce corruption significantly. Mrs. Sesay said that asset declaration reform is not only about increasing the number of public officials who declare their assets but also using that information to lower corruption that has plagued Sierra Leone for far too long.
“Asset declaration proves beyond a case load of information about the assets of public officials. It’s about collecting, it’s about documenting, and it’s about using, accessing and disclosure. You might want to know what value the asset declaration regime is adding or if it’s useful,” she said.
Asset declaration loopholes
The dependence on paper to manually collect and store data weakens Sierra Leone’s institutions, creates more red tape or opportunities to engage in corruption and a number of asset declaration loopholes easy to exploit by public officials.
“We have seen how top government officials using their drivers to hide their assets,” Mr. Macauley said while sharing his experience trying to close organized crime and money laundering loopholes.
The slow adoption of data technology means the ACC has to depend heavily on paper forms to collect and store asset declaration information. “I have not seen the ACC continue developing the electric form since I left. Now in fact I think everyone is using the paper form to declare their assets,” Macauley said.
However, the corruption risks associated with asset declaration paper forms are similar to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) use of paper. WAEC has not been able to stop leakages and many other examination malpractices largely due to its dependence on papers. Therefore, the ACC will find it difficult to stop public officials from, for example, being provided with a new paper form where they could declare their proceeds of corruption as wealth acquired before taking office.
Unlike WAEC that has to use papers to conduct in person national examinations across the country, the ACC does not have to depend on papers to collect asset declaration at a time when data technology is highly sophisticated. The Commission will have to make dramatic progress towards data technology if the new asset declaration regime is to add the kind of value Mrs. Samba Sesay is talking about: accountability, justice, low corruption and development.
The Commission has always argued that they are slow to employ data technology primarily because of inadequate resources. “We have challenges with personnel, we have challenges with resources. We don’t have computers, we don’t have software, we don’t have sophisticated data technology,” Mr. Kaifala said.
According to the World Bank, Sierra Leone recorded only $1,670 as Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in 2019, an income that classes the country among the poorest in the world. Mrs. Sesay suggests that Sierra Leone lacks infrastructure such as energy, internet connection and devices to allow the ACC to use electronic forms to collect asset declaration data. “Quite recently the ACC noted that asset declaration could be done electronically. We find out that a majority of public officials within this category outside Freetown do not have the facility to declare their assets online,” she said.
“I found it extremely difficult to go after people to have them declare their assets when we do not provide them with the infrastructure to be able to do so,” Mr. Macauley said, to illustrare some of the common challenges he faced as a Commissioner. Moreover, the cost of maintaining the status quo or paper forms might be more expensive than providing sustainable and reliable energy, devices, internet connection and data technology.
According to Mr. Kaifala, despite delegating four staff members to the Asset Declaration Unit (ADU), the ACC relies on consultants to do asset declaration cross analyses to study trends and identify red flags, a service that could increase operation cost significantly. Moreover, Mr. Macauley said “it was costing us about 50 to 60 million Leones a year to print out hundreds of thousands of asset declaration forms. The distribution cost was so high because we had to go the length and breadth of Sierra Leone to deliver those asset declaration forms,” he said.
Rights to access information vs rights to privacy
Many experts argue that ACC’s policy of keeping secret asset declaration information such as plots of land, houses and bank accounts has contributed greatly to the Commission’s slowness to employ data technology.
Different from Sierra Leone, citizens in Georgia can go online with their devices and look up, for example, the value of assets declared by PEPs when taking up and leaving office.
Sierra Leone’s Parliament passed the Right to Access Information Act 2003 to give citizens freedom of information at all public institutions. The law even gives citizens the right to access public information. On the other hand and in contradiction of the freedom of information laws, the asset declaration regime does not make provision for public disclosure of assets declared by public officials and their spouses.
The ACC argues that post-conflict Sierra Leone is not ready to give citizens access to asset declaration information for many reasons. Public disclosure will put heavy burden on public servants, according to the Commission. Public institutions in Sierra Leone are usually crowded with people who request financial assistance from public officials to pay their bills such as their next meal, healthcare, children’s school fees, house rents, etc. “When I come here in the morning the request on my table for financial assistance is more than the salary I expect at the end of the month. Imagine if they knew the balance in my account” Mr. Kefala said.
Secondly, the Commission suggests that public disclosure of asset declaration data will also put the security of public servants at risk and they might not feel safe to even go to their villages. However, unlike in Nigeria where reports of wealthy individuals being kidnapped for ransom are common, robbery and kidnapping targeting public officials is very rare in Sierra Leone. “Don’t forget these government officials have well-armed security at office and home,” Mr. Macauley said, adding that security risk is minimal if asset declaration information is made public.
The other argument for non-public disclosure of asset declaration information is the right to privacy. The Constitution, drawn up under British tutelage, makes provision for the protection of citizens’ rights to privacy. “A mandatory public release of all assets of public officials has constitutional privacy issues. I think every human being is entitled to [their] privacy and that privacy could only be compromised if there is a need for it,” Commissioner Kaifala said.
Moreover, some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) including CGG suggest that some public officials perceive they have the right to disclose the information of their assets to only those they feel comfortable with. “Citizens’ perception is that people will have to trust and feel comfortable with certain people before they declare their assets to them,” says the CGG boss, Marcella Samba Sesay.
However, the risks of insecurity associated with keeping asset declaration secret seem to be far higher than public disclosure, especially when modern technology makes it easy to leak information such as bank balance and financial statements to the public. The “Panama Papers” leaked in 2016 suggested that rights to privacy is not hundred percent guaranteed even in tax haven jurisdictions, let alone in Sierra Leone.
Therefore, Sierra Leone will have to figure out how to make the cost of leaking to the public government information such as their assets minimal on democracy and security. Moreover, data leaked by whistleblowers might add to the inability of many citizens to differentiate fact from fake information, a scenario that might deepen division and distrust among Sierra Leoneans at a time when fake news and social media have gained momentum while creating their alternative narratives.
Finally, Sierra Leone will have to understand Georgia’s anti-corruption model to appreciate asset declaration, data technology and public disclosure as indispensable tools to reduce corruption or establish accountability and justice.
Abu Bakarr Jalloh is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sanusi Research & Consulting
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