“It is probably also the time to return to that vexed subject of illicit financial flows out of the continent of Africa. I refer to the report of the panel chaired by the highly respected former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, on the illicit flow of funds from Africa, which states that Africa is losing, annually, more than eighty-eight billion United States dollars ($88 billion) through illicit financial outflows.
Yes, those monies too must be returned to the continent. It is difficult to understand why the recipient countries are comfortable about retaining such funds, and are happy to call those countries from whom the monies are taken as corrupt.
I believe that a joint taskforce of the African Union Commission and the OECD Secretariat, under the auspices of the UN, should be charged to find ways of stopping the damaging outflows,” H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the 78th UN Session.
He spoke and said it rather too softly. All the same, our president told the powerful nations in the face that when it comes to corruption, it takes two to tango.
Many a times, we hear the Western nations tagging African nations high on the Corruption Index and making them highly risk to invest in. With this, they will buy our products at very low prices and at buy one get ten free.
Imagine that until recently France was buying uranium from Niger at €0.80 a metric tonne while the same product was on the world market at €200.00/MT.
France forced its colonies to undertake binding agreements that favoured only France. Among these, is what is strangely called Colonial Tax, whereby the fourteen independent Francophone countries in Africa are made to collectively repatriate $ 500 billion of their hard-earned money to France, every year. As if those nations applied to France to be colonized.
There is this beautiful non-UN called Switzerland which woke up one morning and decided it must earn money without working for it.
It set up a banking system where the accounts of customers will never be revealed to a third party. No law, no force, nothing whatsoever will make the Swiss banks to reveal what is on account, even to the legal next-of-kin.
It was an attractive trap. And many African heads of states and other leaders, will rush to deposit money in Swiss banks. It was very safe there and no one would ever know how much they had.
The powerful nations pretended they never knew the corruption in this, until they were hit hard with drug monies, money laundering and funding of terrorist operations. Fearing that if they are not able to trace the sources of monies deposited in Switzerland and find the faces behind these accounts, their countries will crumple to the forces and resources of drug barons and terrorists.
So, Switzerland was begged to relax its laws on the confidentiality of bank account holders. They could not sanction their own, but they rather begged.
Then laws were made that monies deposited by African leaders should be repatriated to their countries. But instead of doing so when that leader is in office, the West would apply the laws only after the leader exited office. And here again, Switzerland comes as the best-case study on stolen monies deposited there.
1998 came with the demise of Nigeria’s leader Sani Abacha. It was soon revealed that he had deposited billions of dollars in personal accounts abroad.
It was discovered that he had at least $1.023 billion in accounts in Switzerland. Now, assuming he had done this in 1998 before he died, he would have deposited this money in a long-term account which attracted an average interest of 2.2%% p.a,,from 1998 to 2022. Working things out with compound interest, from 1998 to 2017 when the Swiss decided to repatriate only $700 million to Nigeria, the interest accrued would have shot the balance on account up to over $1.580 billion.
Switzerland decided to remit the remaining principal balance of $323 million by 2020. Whether that was done or not, all we have to ask is what about the interest accrued on the principal? And we are talking about over $650 million.
It will not be good to repatriate the principal sum and pocket the interest after all these twenty-five years, after the “stolen” money was deposited in Switzerland.
The fact is that, if Abacha were still alive and had access to the accounts, he would be able to withdraw over $1.6 billion today and not $1.023 billion.
So, who is corrupt? It takes two to tango. A thief sells you a stolen item or may be even gifts it to you. Both of you would be charged on the crime of theft and taken to court. So, why is it that the powerful nations would accept “stolen” monies from our leaders and keep them, only to turn around and call them corrupt only after the leaders exit office?
The powerful nations must return immediately monies from our leaders they suspect were stolen, or they must know that they are more corrupted than any African nation.
H.E. Nana Akufo-Addo has said it all; the revolution begins. The powerful nations must return our monies plus interest and we will also sanctify our countries. Or they should accept that in corruption, it takes two to tango.
Hon Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
