It is time to prosecute embezzlers of state funds

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has, time without number, made public incidents of embezzlement or misappropriation by public officials, as reported in the Auditor General’s reports on the public accounts of the country.

There has always been public furore over the exposé at the sittings of the PAC, some of which have involved huge sums and the non-observance of very rudimentary accounting principles.

Although the actions of civil servants have resulted in huge losses to the state, the best action by the PAC has been a request to the officials who have been found to have shown complicity, to refund the misappropriated funds.

Most of the times many years elapse before the accounting anomalies are detected, yet the percentage of inflation is never factored into the amounts the officials are asked to refund. Sadly, however, these misappropriated funds are never refunded by the public officials.

There is a school of thought that if the misappropriated funds had been used by the accused officials for business ventures, the officials would have made so much on it that just being asked to refund the misappropriated amount would not be deterrent enough.

The government’s response to the public outcry over the spate of cases of embezzlement has most often been a statement from the President to the effect that “I have instructed the Attorney General to prosecute”. 

Yet there is no single incident of a public official being hauled before court has ever been recorded. This, to many people, has encouraged more public officers to engage in shady deals involving state funds, with the foreknowledge that the worst that could happen to them would be being asked to refund the said amount, by which time they would have profited immensely from its usage.

The Daily Graphic believes that the days of issuing verbal warnings and asking for refunds are over, especially if we are to nip the high incidence of corruption in the public service in the bud.

Spending the taxpayers’ money on a series of reports that unearth massive irregularities in public service, without applying the appropriate sanctions on those found culpable, will only result in the wastage of the same resources from the nation’s kitty that we are trying to protect.

Officials who embezzle state funds are all paid for the jobs that they do and on no account must they be provided with another salary source through misappropriation. The principles governing the keeping of books must be made to work to cut down on losses to the state.

The Daily Graphic believes that it is to keep errant officials in check that rules are provided to govern their work and laws put in our statute books to sanction them. 

We, therefore, urge the government not to renege on its promise to properly account to the people by not letting nation wreckers get away with their activities.

The Attorney General must rise to the occasion and bring corrupt officials exposed by the Auditor General’s reports to book. It is the Attorney General’s mandate to prosecute and the courts have been established to bring sanity to all sectors of the nation, including the public sector.

We pray that state prosecutors are put on the heels of officials who have developed long hands that drain the state coffers or whose non-adherence to simple accounting principles results in financial loss to the state. This will serve as a deterrent to like-minded officials.

We reiterate that officials who misappropriate our money must be made to face the music without fear or favour, else the compilation of the Auditor General’s Report will be another waste pipe.