corruption

Feb
01
2023

Huge corruption challenge for sub-Saharan Africa - latest Transparency International index

By Carmel Rickard

The 2022 report from Transparency International, ranking the world’s states according to their perceived levels of corruption, has a few surprises. This latest index from TI lists Denmark as the least corrupt country in the world – but several states in Western Europe have scored markedly worse than before. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Seychelles once again tops the score-sheet for the region, while Somalia scores the lowest not just in the region, but in the world.

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Perhaps the most telling take-aways from this year’s Transparency International (TI) index, ranking the world’s countries according to their corruption levels, come right at the start of the report: corruption and conflict are inextricably linked, says the report; and countries with strong and well-functioning democratic governments are often the least corrupt.

Sep
29
2022

Former minister refused bail pending appeal after conviction, sentence, over theft of laptops destined for poor schools

By Carmel Rickard

A new judgment from the high court in Zimbabwe shows the country struggling with corruption, even at the highest level. But it also highlights a loophole in the law that has seen many people, once convicted and sentenced, apply for bail pending appeal, only to disappear and never hand themselves over, if they lose on appeal.

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It was ‘preposterous’ to expect that appellants, sentenced to a jail term, would prosecute their appeal with vigour and hand themselves in should the appeal be dismissed. That’s the view of Harare high court judge, Pisirayi Kwenda, who was hearing a bail application brought by Petronella Kagonye, Zimbabwe’s former minister for public service, labour and social welfare.

Nov
18
2020

‘Unstable arithmetic’ indicates corrupt deal – judge

By Carmel Rickard

When a Tanzanian court clerk appealed against his conviction and sentence for corruptly demanding payments from a would-be litigant at court, he did not realise that his faulty sums would help confirm his guilt. What Judge Amour Khamis would later describe as ‘unstable arithmetic’ convinced the court that there was no truth in the explanation given for the payments and that conviction and sentence should be confirmed.

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No-one seems to have warned the accused in this case that faulty arithmetical calculations might actually help prove commission of a crime. For Jackson Mrefu it was a slip that was fatal to his case. It lost him his appeal against four counts of corrupt transactions, contravening Tanzania’s Prevention and Combating of Corruption Act.

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