MANICALAND Senator Shadreck Chipanga (Zanu PF) has called on government to establish special courts to deal with corruption which is depriving the country of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
by VENERANDA LANGA
Chipanga made the suggestion in Senate last week, while contributing to a debate on a motion in reply to the Presidential Speech in which President Robert Mugabe castigated corruption.
“To deal with corruption we must come up with special courts which are specifically set up to deal with that,” Chipanga said.
“We need to shift the burden of duty in the courts from the prosecutor to the accused person, for instance, if one has been found with a lot of money the prosecutor should be allowed to ask the accused person to account for the riches.”
Chipanga said the special corruption courts would complement the efforts of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to nail those depriving the country of millions of dollars through corrupt deals.
“The issue of corruption is now rife even in business. When dealing with corruption, handling people with kid gloves cannot work. This is because the current laws that we have say that if an accused person is arrested he is innocent until proven guilty.
“It is the duty of those that have arrested him to prove that person’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt. We are all aware that corruption, the world over, is topical and it is difficult to prosecute issues of corruption because it takes two to tango,” he said
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In 2015 Zimbabwe was ranked 150/167 countries in terms of corruption by the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
Somalia was ranked the most corrupt country in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Botswana was ranked the least corrupt.
A 2016 Global Witness report on Zimbabwe said instead of using diamond wealth to drive the country’s development, there is a real risk that diamonds sourced from Marange were funding human rights violations.
Other forms of corruption said to be happening in Zimbabwe by Transparency International Zimbabwe include flouting of tender procedures, bribes and illicit financial flows.
