White-collar offences must attract stiffer punishment — Dr Jonah
A senior Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Kwesi Jonah, has advocated a stiffer punishment for white-collar offences in the country to deter the perpetrators of such crimes.
He said white-collar crimes had become rampant in the country, and anytime they were committed "they inflict serious damage on the victim, be it the state or an individual".
"Some people who wear nice shirts and jackets are stealing huge sums of money not only from individuals but also from state institutions at an alarming rate today," he stated.
Speaking at the launch of the Open Governance Project on Monday in Accra, Dr Jonah said: "If we want to prevent the kind of white-collar offences inflicting our economy, we must have stiffer punishment to deter their recurrence."
He was speaking on the topic: "What makes them go scot-free? Difficulties in catching and punishing cases of high-profile corruption and white-collar crimes in Ghana".
The governance project, among other things, seeks to empower Ghanaians to develop and use their rights to information, participation and accountability in governance to improve their lives.
Depriving state of millions
Dr Jonah said in today's age of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), people had been committing all sorts of white-collar offences by manipulating the Internet, using the mobile phones, manipulating the ATMs to steal money, saying: "these crimes are wreaking devastating havoc on the economy.
"These crimes are depriving the state of millions and can collapse an entire economy, hence they should not be treated lightly," he said.
According to him, the people who are engaged in such offences, because they have been committing them it repeatedly, have vast resources at their disposal to pay millions to bribe their way out.
Lenient punishment
He said the punishment that was usually prescribed by law for white-collar offences was either a fine or a few years’ or months’ imprisonment, which he described as "too lenient".
"If the punishment is a fine, we are joking because the culprits would be able to pay their way through and save their caught agent“ .
Dr Jonah also identified corrupt and weak security agencies in sub-Saharan Africa as one major factor contributing to drug smuggling and white-collar offences in Ghana.
He was worried that instead of the country giving the attention white-collar offences deserved, so much concentration had been focused on what he described as "minor crimes".
“We continue to face the problem of white collar offences but we pay more attention to petty corruption and minor offences, leaving the real offences that cause considerable havoc to the economy to go unpunished ," he said.
The Executive Director of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Mr Vitus A. Azeem, said in spite of 20 years of being a democratic state, Ghana was still struggling to have a right to information guaranteed by law.
