BEEFED UP ACT
Attorney General Freundel Stuart. (FP)
by YVETTE BEST
LAWS ARE COMING to permit authorities to seize, freeze and confiscate assets of people found guilty of corruption in both the public and private sectors.
New clauses will be included in an updated Prevention of Corruption Act, which Attorney General Freundel Stuart said yesterday would deal with rising levels of corruption among enforcement officers in Barbados and the Caribbean.
Speaking at the opening of an anti-corruption workshop by the Regional Security System at Amaryllis Beach Resort, Hastings, Christ Church, Stuart told participants that the 1929 law was no longer adequate.
“Eighty years later, the realities that have unfolded before us are so much more complex, so much more difficult . . . . And we are intending to repeal it, and replace it by a Prevention of Corruption Act that is better suited and more relevant to the requirements of our present age,” he noted.
While not disclosing how soon the legislation would be in place, Stuart said the act would target all public officials.
“Anybody who holds legislative positions, executive or administrative office; anybody who performs a public function or provides public services will come within the ambit of that legislation,” he expanded.
The Attorney General said the new rules would make provision for a Prevention of Corruption Commission, “to which all persons captured by it will be answerable”.
Corruption in the private sector and the issue of bribery would also be addressed by the new measures; as well as provision for the “proper” protection of witnesses.
Stuart said the urge to make money had led to “astounding” levels of corruption in societies in the Caribbean.
“Law enforcement officials at our ports of entry, customs officers, our immigration officers, our police officers are particularly strategically placed either to be proper watchdogs against the encroachment of corruption, or equally well-placed to be corrupted if their integrity is weak. The only antedote to corruption is strong integrity,” he insisted.
He said values had become blurred in a lot of societies, and if those distinctions meant nothing to enforcement officials, one could not stop the “unrelenting march” of corruption.
He said levels of corruption among law enforcement agencies had deepened to the point where citizens were reluctant to come forward with information.
This was particularly evident in trans-national organised crime, he added, where the drug trade had proven to be able to corrupt the “incorruptible”.
He said these issues had implications for national development and national security.
British High Commissioner Paul Brummel, whose country is assisting with the workshop, said there were a number of “rotten apples” in the British Metropolitan Police and they had undertaken several initiatives to root them out.
Noting that corruption impacted all levels of society, Brummel said the issue needed buy-in from politicians, the enforcement agencies and members of the society. (YB) (Nation News)