Jail the State Looters - Isodec

By Inusa Musah

Abdallah-Ali Nakyea, a Law of Taxation Lecturer at the Ghana School of Law, has called for stiffer punishment to any person found guilty of stealing from the state's coffers.

Illicit financial flows by 'wicked' persons, Mr. Nakyea said, has cruelly rendered Ghana impotent in development, thus, the abject poverty the majority of the citizens continue to live in.

Therefore, only naming and recovering monies stolen by such culprits, he explained, would still excite other persons to engage in such criminal acts, because their actions would not attract any punishment.

Ghana, Mr. Nakyea explained, has no excuse for non-performance in all the sectors of the economy, therefore, jailing such deliberate state criminals, after the state has named and subsequently recovered its money from them, would scare others from engaging in similar acts.

Abdallah-Ali Nakyea, also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), in an interview with newsmen at a campaign to launch - 'Stop the Bleeding' by the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), said Ghana is bleeding profusely through deliberate illicit financial flows.

'Stop the bleeding' is a campaign by ISODEC to wage war against any act that causes the state to callously lose revenue through dubious means, coordinated by persons or institutions that have the mandate to ensure that Ghana rakes in its needed revenues.

"I do not understand why, after we have recovered our GH¢1.2 million from some state thief, we will let him walk free with his properties?

"A lot of such persons are walking with their shoulders high, because, after all, after they have stolen our money, and we are lucky to grab them, the state will only ask them to pay back, and that ends it.

"Such state thieves are not more important than the young man or woman who was jailed for stealing a tuber of yam or a mobile phone," the Taxation Law Lecturer said.

Abdallah-Ali Nakyea, consequently, said that until the laws of the state work to jail state looters, the war against plugging revenue leakages in the facets of the national economy would not be won.

That means Ghana would continue borrowing at high interest, when the loans the country goes cup in hand begging for, could be generated internally.

Besides, he entreated the media and well-meaning civil society groups to be inquisitive in finding out how the state's revenues are appropriated with concrete evidence.

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