Corruption is no respecter of boundaries – Attorney General
Madam Gloria Akuffo, Attorney General and Minster of Justice has said that the fight against corruption demanded a mechanisms for bilateral and multilateral cooperation because corruption was no respecter of boundaries.
She said no single institution or person could win the fight against corruption, “Fighting corruption, therefore, requires a firm partnership between governments and the public sector on one hand and civil society, private sector, professional associations and faith-based organisations on the other”.
Madam Akuffo was speaking at the International Forum on Asset Recovery and Money Laundering, organised by the European Union in collaboration with some anti-Corruption Institutions as part of activities to mark the Ghana’s Anti-corruption and Transparency (ACT) Week in Accra.
She said permitting the crime of money laundering to flourish and leaving culprits to benefit from their nefarious activities would rather send the wrong signal that crime pays.
She said prevention of crimes including money-laundering, fraud, and drug trafficking among others must therefore be a collaborative enterprise of all.
“It is not sufficiently deterrent to only sentence convicts of money-laundering to jail and that efforts should therefore not be spared in denying such convicts the enjoyment of the proceeds of their illegal conduct”.
On Asset Recovery, she said the process by which proceeds of crime were recovered and returned to the victim or country of origin was therefore a major tool in the global fight against money laundering as well as other financial crimes.
She said it involved the collection of intelligence, the tracing of assets, securing of assets, international cooperation, court proceedings,
enforcement orders and the eventual repatriation of the confiscated assets to the victim or state.
She called on the media, the general public, law enforcement agencies, security and investigative bodies, prosecutors and civil society organisations to play their role in this fight in a concerted collaborative and sustained manner.
Madam Diana Acconcia, European Union (EU) Ambassador to Ghana said the EU was interested in the fight against corruption in the country because corruption stifled the growth of the nations and that the EU was equally in support with the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda; and to attract foreign investors, corruption cannot be tolerated.
She said corruption was common to many nations and its eradication needed joint efforts of which the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals was adopted and EU and Ghana were part.
Mr Joseph Whittal, Commissioner CHRAJ, said the Week would focus on how to implement guidelines and reinforce commitment by implementing partners for the years ahead.
He said the ACT week sought to reinforce the need to make corruption a high risk and a low gain venture in Ghana while educating the public on the dangers of corruption.
Source: GNA