Editorial: How to catch embezzlers without asset declaration!.

President Paul Biya, who has used every opportunity to condemn what he calls "illicit wealth" promulgated "Law N° 3-2006 of 25 April 2006, relating to the Declaration of Assets and Property".

The law requires the creation of a commission comprising a Chairperson and two other members appointed by the President of the Republic, another appointed by the Speaker of the National Assembly, one by the Senate and one each by the Supreme State Audit and Public Notaries. Two more are to come from the Supreme Court, including the Audit Bench.

Seventeen long years of waiting after that law, members of the commission have not been appointed. Declaration of assets thus has been a dead letter but the pragmatic Chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, CONAC, Rev Dr Dieudonne Massi Gams, is not giving up in what President Biya once described as a "war" against corruption.

In every country in Africa where corruption is most pervasive and ruining its development, assets declarations are seen as "trampling" on the "virus" as Douala-based international legal consultant and peace crusader, Ntumfor Barrister Nico Halle calls it.

Numerous research on corruption in Africa is unanimous that "asset declaration regime can help prevent abuse of power, reduce corruption and increase public accountability, public trust in institutions and government legitimacy".

In Africa, the scope, coverage and level of enforcement of assets declaration laws vary from country to country, according to the local context, political situation and capacity to manage such schemes. 
However, any credible assets disclosure programme must clearly establish who should declare what to whom and how, provide for content verification and sanctions of intentional failure to declare as well as ensure public access to declarations. 

Most of that are found in the Cameroon law on assets declaration that has been in hibernation after being promulgated. 

If those in power in Yaounde fear appointing members of the Assets Declaration Commission, seventeen years after it was provided for by the law; because it is like setting up a trap that would send to jail, the CONAC Chairman has devised another strategy to ensnare them.

While receiving New Year wishes from members of CONAC, his close collaborators and staff of the commission at the Yaounde Conference Centre Wednesday January 31, Rev Dr Massi Gams warned categorically that: “2024 will be a year committed to the fight against corruption”.

Given that banking laws make it difficult to hide illicit money and ceilings are known to have attracted armed robbers, many corrupt officials now conceal their loot in chains of mansions across the country and even abroad, land grabbing and luxurious cars their genuine income cannot buy.

Rev Dr Massi Gams used the occasion to divulge that CONAC is “going to look at buildings that are constructed within just months and we don’t know their source of revenue”. 

“It is the instruction we got from the President of the Republic in his address at the end of year. We were urged to be present and to examine and see how buildings are done in our country and the origin of the funds that are used. We are ready to go to the field and verify and present a report about that,” Rev Dr Massi Gams told reporters.

The Guardian Post congratulates the CONAC Chairman for that ingenuity, vision and commitment. But he needs to expand the time limits. 

The type of sprawling mansions built by suspected embezzlers, even those that have been convicted, cannot take two just months to be constructed.

Even if their agents work day and night, some of those castles owned by public workers who end less than a million a month and ride in luxury Prados, cannot take two months to construct a mansion.

The Nigerian government, under the regime of President Shehu Shagari, used whistleblowers and  enlightened citizens with nationalistic flair to complain anonymously, report officials building or who owned  assets suspected to be above their legitimate earnings.

The assets were vaulted based on the suspect's life earnings; given that scientifically, he/she could only save 30 percent of that income, unless he/she showed proof of some inheritance or business. 

Failure to prove that the buildings or other fixed assets were acquired with justification of revenue source, they were confiscated and handed to government.

CONAC can borrow from that experience and invite whistle-blowers to identify plots, mansions being built or owned by government officials suspected to be embezzling or misappropriating public funds.

President Biya will, however, need to empower CONAC by creating offices in at least each Region and give it the power to arrest and prosecute suspects.

In the meantime, CONAC has started on the right foot this year. Even without the creation of the Assets Declaration Commission, there are still many ways to catch a rat.