Tanzania: Clamping down on corruption through media
By Elias Mhegera – Financial experts have warned of the increasing impending dangers due to illicit financial transfers, land grabbing, money laundering and secret deals between criminal moguls and corrupt politicians.
Poor engagement of Mtwara residents led to commotions when they resisted the piping of gas from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam.
Poor engagement of Mtwara residents led to commotions when they resisted the piping of gas from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam.
This was part of the resolutions after a three days experience of sharing information between financial and tax experts, journalists, and civil society representatives at the White Sands Hotel in Dar es Salaam.
The prestigious workshop that was organized by hosts Policy Forum and umbrella body of the civil society organizations (CSOs) of Tanzania in collaboration with the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC). Tanzania in the recent past is estimated to have lost 3.9% of its GDP because of tax incentives to overseas companies.
With the theme “Towards Transparency: Making the Global Financial System Work for Development” the forum turned out to be one of the major catalyst for transparency and an anti-corruption frontier.
For journalists the workshop turned out to be an eye opener in the events surrounding contracts in the oil and gas industry where according to experiences elsewhere there were a lot of similarities as to what is happening in Tanzania to what has been happening in many other places.
The forum also turned out to be a good avenue for information sharing on how corruption is conducted when it involves the bigwigs.
For instance The diamond wars mostly stopped (except in Côte d’Ivoire), and official diamond exports in the three countries most affected by war – Angola, Sierra Leone and DRC – which was skyrocketed, along with tax evasion after a strong NGO lobby and persistent media campaigns.
Everywhere, an unregulated industry, badly infected at the margins by criminality, hundreds of thousands of people died in Africa’s diamond wars. The challenge now is to prevent them from recurring and to get diamonds to a place where they can be an engine of growth in the 15 African countries where they are mined, instead of a scourge.
These experiences which were a food for thought for journalists in Tanzania include; a secrecy, a sudden rush to decisions, use of excessive force involving violation of human rights, a big mind behind the scenes, a sudden change of attitude among decision executioners and a visit by a world figure in order to divert media and public attention.
All these tenets are part and parcel of what accompanied the gas saga in Mtwara leaving behind a lot of questions than answers if at all the adduced elements are not a clear indication of what is not being told to the citizenry whose reaction in opposition to the piping of gas from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam led to some deaths.
Up to this moment Mtwara is ‘calm’ simply because the establishment chose to impose a curfew through the existence in place of the Tanzania People’s Defense Forces (TPDF), than involving the citizenry in a participatory approach.
The alarm was raised by Semkae Kilonzo, a coordinator of the FTC allied organization Policy Forum, who said: “It is hard to overstate the urgency of this issue. A large number of African countries are now on the point of issuing new licenses for the exploration of significant oil, gas and mineral reserves.
“This conference showed that the current generation of African politicians has the opportunity to learn from countries like Norway who use their oil and gas revenue to benefit all of its citizens and have transformed their economy as a result.”
Implicitly he was warning that the CSOs in Tanzania and the public at large are not against extractive industries but what they demand is transparency in the contracts and an assurance that all people are going to benefit from these projects and not a handful at the power hegemony.
“Each year at least $50bn is drained from African economies by corruption, money laundering and aggressive tax avoidance. But the civil society, allied with lawyers, journalists and academics, are determined to challenge this so we can use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ensure money from our natural resources is used to improve the life chances of all our citizens.”
Secrecy was signaled out to be one of the major sources of political instability particularly if the power of the almighty fails to fulfill their promises. Moreover it was explained that at times these transactions which are reached upon between politicians and the multinational corporations could endanger lives of their citizens.
In case was the secret deal between the former Soviet Union, (U.S. S.R) on the one hand and Patrice Lumumba on the other on uranium extraction in the Congo, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it is believed this deal which was signed at the height of the cold war tensions tempted the US, through Mobutu Seseko to eventually depose and assassinate Lumumba heinously.
Financial experts condemned illicit transfers of funds which have been in existence ever since with all kinds of justifications. Earlier it was either ideological in defending capitalism, communism or even liberation but as it turned out in many cases this had more benefits to some few people in the face of self enrichment.
Currently these kinds of justifications still exist in various shapes in neither defending special spines of influence like Anglophone, Francophone or even combating terrorism. These and many other justifications have been identified to be the major sources of illicit financial transfer, political instability and proliferation of small arms transfer.
To support this stance the FTC manager, Porter McConnell had this to say “This conference is evidence of growing public awareness that the scale of corruption money and tax avoidance perpetuates conflict and condemns hundreds of millions of people to poverty.
He assured the conference: “I believe we are moving into a new era of global pressure on policymakers and regulators to ensure they constructively respond to the huge flows of illicit flows leaving Africa every year.”
He was positive that the significant role played by the CSOs in verifying public expenditures and the role of investigative journalism in unveiling corrupt tenancies would eventually transform this continent which is for quite some time has been prone to power abuse and financial malaise.
It was realized that from the mid 80s financial transparency and firm tax monitoring became a serious political agenda in the developed countries a culture which is now being adopted in many developing countries although with a lot of resistances.
He was positive that the conference in hand was just one of the initiatives to bring hope to the downtrodden whose money have been subjected to extravagance by a few in power positions.
“The encouraging thing is we have a real opportunity to introduce new policies that will significantly reduce the profound damage corruption and aggressive tax avoidance inflicts on hundreds of millions of people.” He commented.
The training was coupled with monitoring testimonies of some investigative stories which have brought positive impacts elsewhere. “The week in Dar es Salaam was incredibly positive and I think we will see this FTC and Policy Forum conference as a real turning point in the fight to reduce and eliminate illicit flows.” He asserted.
For his part Alvin Mosioma Director of Tax Justice Network-Africa from Kenya said that tax evasion is interwoven within the poor governing structures and that because in many cases tax is left upon a single entity in many African countries.
The role of the media in unveiling corruption, tax evasion, money laundering and other social ills was overemphasized by media experts Nick Mathiason from the FTC and a South African based investigative journalist, Craig McKune.
They called for Tanzanian journalist to think ‘outside the box’ of normal reportage and investigate why some contracts are involving use of force, brutality and human rights violations, because the common practice is such are elements of corruptive deals.
It was strange to realize that the problem of land grabbing is now becoming a global phenomenon and the justifications are almost the same everywhere, either the land is going to become a protected land for public utility, for large scale investment or for environmental protection.
Weak land laws are a calculated move to evict the downtrodden who in many cases are evicted without any form of compensations. But also some bigwigs are involved in drug trafficking and money laundering to the extent that law enforcers fail to take action because of a ‘big hand’ influence.
In this bid, scribes were called to intervene in the supply chain structure whereby many businesses interests are involved including some employees in the financial sector. The rule of the game is all these processes are complex, and interconnected with the advance in global commerce.
The role of the media in this particular juncture was signaled as creating awareness and pushing decision makers to deal with due diligence in cases of illicit transfers whether for furthering terrorism, drug trafficking or even human sales.
The press has to set the public agenda since globally there have been a lot of efforts in this bid. For instance the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have set standards in assisting campaigns with regard to Anti Money Laundering (AML), and Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT).
Illicit financial transfers have been supporting other malpractices like illegal logging and the international trade in illegally logged timber is a major problem for many timber-producing countries. Illegal logging degrades forests, costs governments billions of dollars, promotes corruption, and funds armed conflict.
Thorough investigations eventually exposed illegal logging and corruption in the forest sector. As witnessed in some African countries including Madagascar and Liberia, These efforts involved coordinating with local civil society to monitor and expose illegal activities and unsustainable trade.
In Tanzania there have been reported cases of transportation of live animals and even networks that are supporting piracy along the international waters by Somalian pirates.
Presenting on Illicit Fund Flows in the Arms Trade, the BAE Systems Case Study was Paul Holden, from Corruption Watch UK. He said that this company has been implicated in 40 percent of all corruption in global trade related to the arms trade (Joe Roeber). In Tanzania this company was implicated in the controversial security radar scandal.
Further he explained that BAE admitted, in 2010, that it had ‘made payments to certain advisors through offshore shell companies even though in certain situations there was a high probability that part of the payments would be used to ensure that BAES was favoured in the foreign government decisions regarding the sales of defence articles.’
A senior economic justice adviser, Christian Aid Joe Stead said that from $21-31 trillion of personal assets are being held in tax havens $7-9 trillion from developing countries, while a lot of gains of Foreign Direct Investment are being offset by offshore personal accounts.
Amongst analysis at the event was how transparency could foster development and Tanzania’s performance in poverty reduction by adopting the Organization for economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) model.
