CORRUPTION IS NOT EASY TO PROVE

Sep 08, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Corruption is harder to prove than Pythagoras Theorem. It is easier to prove murder than to prove corruption.
With murder you have a body, suspects with possible motives, persons who may lack an alibi. When you put all this together with eyewitnesses and forensics, you may have a better chance of proving murder than you have of proving that some took a kickback or did something financially wrong within the government for personal benefit.
The main reason why corruption is so hard to prove is because witnesses are not easy to come by. Do you believe that a contractor who gives a public officer a kickback is going to come forward and confess that he did that? Very rarely that is going to happen!
Some people say that if you follow the trail you will find something. Following to trail will get you lost in the woods and literally swamped in paperwork and the perpetrators will smile at you while the paper trail leads you to a cul-de-sac. By the time you reach to the end of the trail, you may forget what the original investigation was about.
In tracking corruption, you have to stick to a few cases. You do not need to try to trace a hundred transactions; one is enough for a conviction. But even this one may present headaches and lead you to a dead end.
Something may look like corruption; it may smell like corruption; it may feel like corruption. And hell, it may even taste like corruption. But to prove that it is corruption goes beyond outward appearances or senses.
There are many people out there who, perhaps even with good cause, want to see a police probe of NCN. They believe that there is corruption and they want persons to be made examples.
It is not that easy.  Before the police can be called in there has to be basis for a criminal probe. In respect to NCN, and based only on what is being reported in the newspapers, no such basis exists at the moment. The accounting investigation that took place pointed out certain irregularities but at best these at this stage amount to abuse of power.
What has been reported seems to suggest that person or persons used their positions within the state-owned entity to solicit work for themselves. Now this may be unethical; it may amount to abuse of power but it is not yet criminal unless it can be established that company’s resources were used in undertaking the private work.
So far what we have are reports that someone issued an invoice in their same for the provision of services to a client of NCN. Payment was received from the private company not in the name of NCN but in the name of a private individual. This individual in turn paid another firm because that firm had done some work in relation to the same transaction. What this indicates thus far is that someone or persons may have simply used their position at NCN to solicit a private job. Unless, therefore, it can be established that NCN’s resources were used to deliver the service, fraud cannot be proved.
This sort of thing happens all around. There are teachers who use their positions in the classroom to solicit students for extra lessons. There are legal clerks in this country who work for lawyers but who have their own private practice on the side.
You want a document from the court and these legal clerks will get it from you without you have to approach the lawyer. They say they do it on their own free time and do not use their boss’s resources.
There are hairdressers who work with established salons and while some of them are doing your hair they befriend you and advise you quietly that you can go by their home and they will give you the same hairstyle for less than you are paying their employer. This is called a side- business
There are goldsmiths in this country who have employees who do their private work on the side and most of the customers of these employees are persons they would have met while they were working for their boss. This is not fraud; this is abuse of one‘s position.
It can, however, become fraud however is certain things are present. If the client felt he was dealing with the lawyer and the lawyer’s letterhead is used in obtaining the document but payment goes to the legal clerk, then there is a basis for a fraud investigation. If the hairdresser takes home the salon’s shampoo and dye without permission and uses it to do private work on client, this is theft.
One has to be careful when one therefore makes a charge of fraud. What may look, smell and taste like fraud may not in a court of law stand up to the litmus test of fraud.
However perhaps those who are making out that there was fraud in NCN may know something that is not yet reported. Perhaps this issue with NCN has a few more twists and turns.
Perhaps, who knows, Kaieteur News may discover a much more intricate web than what was originally thought and perhaps it may break that story. Who knows, perhaps it may break that story tomorrow. You never know.

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