A member of the BU family sent the following link to the BBC story with the comment it has a feint similarity to a recent local event.
It is no secret despite our boast we are a country registering low on the corruption index, there is corrupt behaviour that goes unpunished in Barbados every day of the week. What is soft corruption?
The blogmaster has no wish to rehash the Santia Bradshaw cheque matter because the Case is closed or the $75,000 cheque late Owen Arthur deposited to his CIBC account. What the blogmaster knows for certain is that members of parliament are known to receive donations ostensibly for party coffers in a climate where there is no formal system to hold actors accountable.
Barbadians join with others to point fingers at African countries accused of wantonly engaging in corrupt practices; especially Nigeria, yet in the story highlighted that country shows there is a level of accountability enforced which has resulted in a minister being suspended. In Barbados there is a single case of a minister being incarcerated for criminal behaviour and it was done out of the local jurisdiction.
It is noteworthy former minister Donville Inniss indicated during his US trial that similar ‘corrupt’ behaviour is endemic to the Barbados business landscape. It is also instructive the incumbent Mottley government and others preceding have not prioritised the enactment and operationalizing of transparency legislation.
Nigeria has recovered 30bn naira ($24m; £19m) as part of an ongoing corruption probe into a suspended minister, the financial watchdog says.
The funds were traced to more than 50 bank accounts, it said.
Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Minister Betta Edu was initially suspended in January over the alleged diversion of $640,000 of public money into a personal bank account.
President Bola Tinubu then ordered an investigation into her ministry.
At the time Dr Edu, 37, denied any wrongdoing. Her office said she had approved the transfer into a personal account, which was not in her name, but said it was for the “implementation of grants to vulnerable groups”.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said during its nearly six weeks of investigating so far, it had found “many angles” to examine.
“As it is now, we are investigating over 50 bank accounts that we have traced money into. That is no child’s play. That’s a big deal,” its chairman Ola Olukoyede said in the latest edition of the agency’s monthly e-magazine, EFCC Alert.
He urged Nigerians seeking redress to give the agency time to finish its probe thoroughly.
“We are exploring so many discoveries that we have stumbled upon in our investigation. If it is about seeing people in jail, well let them wait, everything has a process to follow,” he said.
The EFCC chairman gave an assurance that the recovered funds were “already in the coffers of the federal government”.
The suspension of a minister is a rare occurrence in Nigeria.
BBC
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