Western Countries Are More Fantastically Corrupt – Falana

Corruption is More Viable In Western World Than African Countries, Says Falana

Corruption is More Viable In Western World Than African Countries, Says Falana

Nigerians Human rights lawyer and activist , Barrister Femi Falana, has accused the European countries of high level of corruption over several African Money laundered to Western countries.

Mr Falana noted that “There has been a massive and accelerated transfer of much of the wealth from the developing world into developed economies around the world, much of which was looted from various treasuries across Africa and in the rest of the developing world”.

African governments and anti-corruption bodies should stop labeling Africa as a continent of corrupt people. London is the centre of global corruption. The banks of western countries receive and keep stolen wealth from Africa and other developing countries.”

“Western governments conveniently hid behind the free movement of capital ideology to fold their arms and turn the other way for many years after the end of the Cold War. This laissez-faire attitude on the part Western leaders encouraged corrupt leaders from Africa to use stolen wealth from their various countries to establish an individual presence in their economies; buying shares in major corporations, mansions and other landed properties, yachts, planes, you name it.”

“Mr David Cameron whose family name was listed in the Panama papers had the temerity to label Nigeria as a fantastically corrupt country. The Abacha loot of about $5 billion has been traced to banks in Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and other western countries. Apart from Switzerland which has reluctantly returned part of the loot no other recipient country has recovered and repatriated a dime to Nigeria.”

“Since the Joseph Kabila regime has failed to request for the repatriation of the over $10 billion kept in Zurich banks by the late Mobutu Sese Seko, the Swiss government is planning to return the looted wealth to the family of the former dictator and not to the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

“Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, money leaving Africa into Europe and other parts of the world took an upward trajectory, leaving essential services to rot and decay. What then followed was a serious economic crisis across Africa, which witnessed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) setting up offices inside the various ministries of finance in state after state on the continent, as it tried to help implement a harsh austerity programme to “re-adjust” the various economies.”

“The idea of untrammeled, free movement of capital economic orthodoxy has long been dead and buried. Western Governments, especially the USA, now freely impose sanctions against countries, for instance, Iran and Russia, even against specific individuals and companies in those countries and elsewhere in the world. Why then have corrupt political leaders in Africa and their stolen wealth not attracted the same level of vigour and scrutiny?”

“It is simply that corrupt money emanating from Africa and elsewhere had long been thought of as a ‘victimless’ crime. There is, after all, no one visibly hurt, no building being blown up, no planes flying into high rise buildings or anything of that nature. It was seen as just another typical “Third World” malaise. Well, not any more. There is a nexus between stolen wealth and human rights. It is the intersection between poverty and international (human rights) principles.”

“Stolen wealth is not an abstract idea dangling in the air; it fosters poverty, diseases and illiteracy, ill-health and general social deprivations. It also subverts good governance and the rule of law of the country from which the wealth has been stolen. Every single one of the index of underdevelopment mentioned above is interwoven with the holding of stolen wealth and it is inimical to basic human rights and decency.”