27 Nov 2017

Directorate of Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) director general, Mr Bruno Paledi has called on members of the Law Society of Botswana (LSB) to join hands and help find other means to fight corruption.

He said there was a lot they could offer, noting that they could even find some means which were non enforcement which could help DCEC to do its best to achieve its mandate.

He made the appeal during the LSB retreat when briefing the gathering about DCEC mandate, challenges, success and opportunities.

He advised LSB members to make sure that they run clean businesses, report any suspicious incidents, adding that the issue of integrity could also help.

Mr Paledi explained that corruption was a systematic problem which needed systematic solutions and believed that law practitioners could come up with better solutions which would become part of the planning in future.

He said corruption was worrisome and needed partnership of the public, private sector, hybrid institutions including LSB.

In addition, he said they might have instruments in place, but the question was, were they achieving the mandate.

He explained that DCEC mandate was to receive and investigate complaints alleging corruption; investigate alleged contraventions of fiscal and revenue law of Botswana, educate the public against the evils of corruption among others.

The public, he said used investigation as a yard stick to measure their effectiveness, not even all investigations, but specific cases, adding that they did a lot more than just investigations.

He described corruption as a multi-headed monster, stating that if one cut head it grew two more heads.

“The bottom line is there is a growing concern about the devastating impact of public assets theft on social and economic development and we must all do something about it,” he added.

Mr Paledi observed that when the economy was doing well, corruption got up, when the economy was weak, still it grew again, adding that globalisation and technology had made it easy for corrupt criminal syndicates to share information easy and fast.

“Corruption undermines democracy and rule of law; leads to human rights violations; distorts markets; eroding quality of life and allowing organised crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish,” he siad.

However, the gathering learnt that the institution continued to play an active role on anti-corruption issues affecting the nation with a view of enhancing its capabilities in the fight against corruption as well as keeping pace with corruption crime trends or patterns.

To this end, Mr Paledi said they worked with several international organizations among others the INTERPOL, Commonwealth Africa Anti-Corruption Centre (CAACC) of which the DCEC was hosting on behalf of government of Botswana.

He said since the mid 1990’s, the fight against corruption has become an integral part of the international development agenda, adding that assets stolen by public officials came to the fore of the agenda.

Mr Baladi shared some of the challenges faced by the institution such as complexities and rapidly changing patterns of crime; law enforcement agencies including his institution finding it difficult to cope with the rapid  change and complexities of crime especially corruption among others.

LSB chairperson, Mr Kgalalelo Monthe said the objective of the retreat was to catch up with other stakeholders to share ideas on how best they could work together for the benefit of the nation. ENDS