First, a quick flashback. In 2002, Lamsal Aayog or Judicial Commission on Property was established. Remember, this took place at the start of royal regression, post palace massacre in June 2001. This is also the period when Surya Nath, the then Chief of the CIAA, could be seen taking actions after the enactment of the new anti-corruption law 2002.

The Commission ordered 41,000 politicians and public officials to submit their property details; data records show 11,300 did not comply. Nearly 30,000 public officials complied property declarations. These declarations became a raw material for the CIAA to investigate akut sampati, that is, illicit enrichment or catching big fishes in anti-corruption jargon. You have ready-made data at your disposal, and, literally, you can hand pick anybody for anti-corruption action. The normal way of investigation will be: somebody is being accused of corruption charges, you collect data about him and file corruption charges. What we have here is an opposite situation: You collect data first and then bring in corruption charges.

Illicit enrichment: Hard nut to crack

The cases of illicit enrichment are the hardest nuts to crack for the CIAA. My case study of nine illicit enrichment cases reveal, on an average, it took ten years to settle the cases.

One reason why I call them difficult nut to crack is the our system of paitrik sampati or inherited property system. If you don’t believe me, I suggest to read recent property declarations of the Cabinet members. There is no seriousness, it is all smack of rituals. This is somehow verified by recent resignation coming from the Home Minister.

Clash of two values or principles

The legal and constitutional experts may argue on the ground of rights to property or rights to privacy. This comes in direct clash with the values of transparency and accountability demanded by anti-corruption campaigns. Because of this clash, probably, we have introduced a system whereby declared property are kept confidential till specific corruption charges are made against the official concerned. To my knowledge, Ghana is the only country where property declarations have to be audited before submission. There are many other countries where property declarations to be made “before” and “after” the completion of the public service. Instead of selective approach, we have introduced an absurd blanket system that is to be applied to all public officials. Such a blanket approach demand huge monitoring system. For effectiveness, a regular monitoring of public officials holding sensitive or corruption vulnerable positions is enough.

Monitoring life-styles

From an anti-corruption point of view, monitoring “life styles” is more effective then ritual declarations of properties.

I do remember, may be a decade back, NVC warned 200 army officials for not submitting property details. As per the law, every public servants are suppose to submit their property declarations, within six months of every fiscal year. Failing to do so entails Rs. 5000 penalty. In the case involved, the army officials opted to pay Rs. 5000 than submitting property details. The actual spirit of the law is that those failing to declare their properties would have to pay fines plus they come under the radar of further investigation.

One more property inquiry commission

The government forming a five-member property inquiry commission is another joke. It will meet the same fate like that of Karki Aayog even though the mandate is for a year. The scale of work is too big for the team to dig into property details. One news media reported it involved investigation of 12,000 public officials, this included 300 ministers, occupying public positions since 2006/7. Digging the past could be a never ending task. This may stretch way back to the regime of Bhimsen Thapa.

Goals of inquiry commission

The digging of graveyards entails two purposes. One, recovery of stolen wealth from the state. Two, a deterrence measure to prevent future corruption. Best approach should address both goals. Anti-corruption efforts entails resources and they come in limited form. Digging into past corruption may take away resources to prevent future corruptions. Anti-corruption efforts have paid results when they address preventing future corruption rater than recovering resources lost through corruption in the past. This does not mean we should promote impunity. Equally, there are dangers of settling political scores. Therefore, investigating into the past must be selective, of specific high value cases rather than taking all encompassing blanket approach.

The deterrence goals flows from the first goal. People are calling for harsher punishment system. China and Vietnam are two countries having provisions for death sentences for corruption crime. But the two countries are not at the list of clean countries of the world. One psychological study on the behaviour of corrupt people tells that corrupt people are prepared to face any kind of punishment. They are prepared even to go to the gallows. If they are scared of anything then it has to do with the state confiscating their looted properties. This does signal that the first goal, of recovery of lost money, has significant relations with the second goal, i.e., deterrence measure. Given the dearth of resources for development, the government may be tempted to use anti-corruption as a resource mobilization strategy. This calls for reviewing the whole gamut of anti-corruption strategy. I have been calling that the financing of the CIAA should be based on certain percentage reward based on the total amount of recovery of state resources from the corrupt people. This is something similar to the way we are currently rewarding traffic police. We must be careful on haphazard implementation of this policy. Often, this may backfire. The anti-corruption agency may be tempted to file corruption cases in random, just to increase its resource flows. The best and politically viable solution is to prevent future corruptions than addressing past corruptions. If the government listening? The good governance agenda of the government seems to have boiled down to investigation into property held by the key decision makers in the past.