Corruption rife

Cover Stories

What is

happen ing in the region?

At a time when it is fac

ing economic downturn and focus should be on ways to reverse this, governments seems to be involved in ways of trying to stop corruption or fraud in the island nations. Corruption has become a major worry in the Pacific with most if not all countries having their share of it. This white collar crime seems to have taken a hold of the Pacific and gov ernments will have to find a way to rid this problem before it gets out of hand. Name the scam and one will find it here - pass port, customs fraud, police are just a few.

The biggest one in the past couple of months has to be undoubtedly in Papua New Guinea where Prime Minister Bill Skate is shown on video allegedly offering bribe to the media through his Internal Affairs Minister, Thomas Pelika.

The footage which was aired on the ABC in November last year, shook the political roots of the nation. Of course.

Skate denied it all calling it a set-up and branding the former government advisor Mujo Sefa, who secretly filmed the alleged deal, a blackmailer. There were calls by former prime ministers, members of par liament and political leaders for Skate to resign but he refused. He maintained his innocence and even brushed aside calls for an inquiry saying it was a waste of public funds.

He has now referred the matter to the police and the ombudsman. Fiji has also had its share in this field. The major one also in the past couple of months has been in its Customs Department. There were allegations of duty evasion and customs officers being offered bribes to speed up the work. There was always talk about this but nothing was done as there was no proof - this was until a senior officer came for ward and admitted to receiving bribe from a well known businessman to speed up his customs clearance.

This revelation send the department into panic and in the next couple of days the then acting finance minister called for an inquiry. The report was released later

last year with the inquiry commission pointing out that corruption was rife at all levels of the department. A few months after the release of the report, Finance Minister Jim Ah Koy invited new Zealand lawyer and former head of NZ’s Special Fraud Office, Charles Sturt, to look into the Fiji situation. Speaking in general on cor ruption to The Sunday Times, Sturt said it was a problem that surpassed national bor ders. To a greater or lesser degree, this affects everyone, regardless of geographic position or degree of"development. Sturt said the dynamics, complexity and trends of worldwide fraudulent networks have on many occasions overwhelmed the ability of many governments to foresee and react.

He said that without doubt serious fraud - which includes corruption driven frauds shatters social cohesion and coherence.

“It is essential to prevent the progres sion of this phenomenon and to ensure that its negative effects will not endanger the rule of law. Th Samoa scandal is to do with the illegal sale of Samoan passports. The first person to be arrested in this scam was a Chinese businessman in April last year.

He flew into the country carrying a local passport as identification. Police arrested him for holding fraudulent documents and unlocked the scandal of the year.

Since his arrest, a number of immigra tion officers have been suspended in con nection with a racket involving the sale of passports for upto $26,000 each in Hong Kong and possible Apia head office.

Suspicions that something was amiss should have been raised earlier. Despite meagre salaries - the 1995 budget had the chief officer earning about $19,000 a year - flash lifestyles that included the late model cars, trips abroad, rental houses and investments that went way beyond the offi cers' earning were never investigated.

Many blame the poor economic situa tion while others just put it down to plain greed. Corruption exists around the world, but for a region the size of the South Pacific, it seems to be quite dominant. As government and other bodies try to look for ways to combat this white collar crimes, all the ordinary person can do is raise the alarm and watch what happens next. ■