Online Reporter
THERE are several aspects to combating and defeating corruption and all need to be used to create a corruption-free society where people advance on merit and by producing value, not by cheating, lying and stealing.
One bundle of measures to fighting corruption is the most obvious one, where we hunt down those who offer and accept inducements using a big basket of measures such as traps and observations in order to catch someone in the process of taking or giving a bribe or soothing similar.
But just as effective is to make sure corruption does not pay, that a person getting a large sum in cash or a set of assets never enjoys this, the authorities having tracked down the money or assets and presented proof to a court that allows them to be confiscated.
Often the person hiding away the assets is the one who acquired them corruptly so we have the double effect that they go to jail for the initial crime and then when they come out have nothing to enjoy.
There are people who might well risk a few years in jail in order to have a comfortable life when they are released, and one path that those fighting corruption must make sure they close off is that one, so the corrupt person finds that crime does not pay.
Those hiding their ill-gotten gains go further. Often the proof that they were involved is the possession of the results of the crime.
Detectives and prosecutors need to show that the person they have arrested is the one who committed the crime. If this also produces enough evidence to seize and confiscate the money or assets that is a minor bonus when it comes to closing the whole case.
We have aa lot of the corrupt moving their loot outside Zimbabwe and building up assets outside the country.
Frequently churning the cash they might have moved, and which might be easier to trace, and converting it to asset funds and other vehicles that people in those countries quite legitimately use to safeguard and grow their assets.
This means those following the Zimbabwean criminal have to be more sophisticated.
It is not just the fruits of corruption that are moved around. Every country has people who try to avoid taxes and often the systems they use to do this require holding money outside the country and spending money outside the country.
The latest effort involves the National Prosecuting Authority as the lead agency, simply because in the end the lawyers are the ones who are going to have to prove in a foreign court that the money or assets hunted down were illegally removed from Zimbabwe and must be returned.
This agency will be backed by the police, the tax assessors at Zimra, the Financial Intelligence Unit at the Reserve Bank that can trace the flows of money in an out of Zimbabwean accounts and the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission with its wide remit and growing pool of skills and staff who can move against the dishonest.
In many cases the investigation teams will have an idea of how money or assets are being moved and where they are being moved to.
The dishonest have limited options. The problem is then proving that the money and assets have been acquired dishonestly or corruptly and this can be a lot more complex.
But it is possible as some assets have already been repatriated after a foreign court has come to an agreement with the Zimbabwean legal teams that this has been proved and we can build on these successes.
The present pool of assets and cash outside the country that is vulnerable to a solid investigation and then successful law suits totals around US$70 million. There will be other sums almost certainly, but this is the sober assessment of what we can definitely reclaim if we all co-operate and build up the cases.
This is not impossible and has been done before, with the present programme having the stress of doing this better so we can climb into the piles of cash sooner and destroy the chances of the dishonest of trying to clean up their dirty money or move it further afield into countries that might turn a bigger blind eye to hiding foreign loot.
We are fortunate that most of our neighbours are now equally determined to end corruption and use a corruption-free society to build a better and bigger economy, so we can help each other as we trample down the dishonest.
Zimbabwe has already seen the advantages of having a clean economy, with some major investors coming in. They have not been shy about making it clear that the corruption-free society being built by President Mnangagwa is a major attraction.
Some indeed declined to come in sooner when it would have been really useful for that extra investment because they were concerned that Zimbabwe was not going all out to defeat the corrupt.
We have also seen errors in software and like helping the corrupt, but every time we uncover a weakness we must move decisively, arrest those who went through the loophole and rebuild our system so there is no longer a loophole.
