March 15, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
A release from the Anti-Corruption Commission has made startling disclosure imputing grand corruption on Members of Parliament in various forms of fraud spanning over a long period of time.
Political party leaders inclusive of the most vocal anti-corruption crusaders, Kandeh Yumekella of National Grand Coalition and Cherenor Ramadan Maju Bah of the Opposition All Peoples Congress have been fingered in the report.
The corruption related crime that they need to come clean of is failure to retire expenditure of monies obtained from national coffers, among other things.
The year 2019 Constituency Facilitation Fees has been cited as one funding stream that these lawmakers have allegedly defrauded the people of Sierra Leone in its utilization that shows no supporting document on how the money was expended and no system in place for retirement.
Lawmakers are also said to be in breach of procurement laws. This is especially true of the period 2018 -2019, where it has been established by the ACC that most of the procurements done did not go through complete procurement cycle in terms of local purchase order, request for quotation and in some instances did not form part of some of the procurement documents produced and submitted to the Commission by the Procurement Department.
“This signals a serious lack of procurement and accountability regime in the financing structures of Parliament; which need to be immediately and properly addressed,” the ACC release notes.
Since the report went viral on social media there has been no response from the especially the two opposition bigwigs that have ranting about corruption in governance. A-Z Newspaper will follow up on the story in subsequent editions.