Bashir establishes Sudan’s first anti-graft agency

January 2, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir has ordered the formation of an anti-corruption taskforce, the first in the country’s history and his 22-year rule.

Corruption is perceived to be rampant in Sudan despite official claims to the contrary. For years, the country’s National Auditor has been reporting cases of fraud and embezzlement in the public sector but no top government official was ever indicted.

In a presidential decree issued on Monday, Al-Bashir kept his government’s earlier promises to establish an anti-corruption commission and tapped the former under-secretary of the Ministry of Finance and National Economy, Al-Tayeb Abu Qanaia, to become its chairman.

Al-Bashir instructed the Anti-Corruption Mechanism to “monitor and follow what is being published in the media about corruption,” and to coordinate with the Presidency of the Republic and other competent authorities in the Ministry of Justice and the National Assembly in order to complete information on what is being raised about corruption on the state level.

Sudanese newspapers have in the recent past reported on alleged corruption within institutions closely linked with the government, including telecommunication companies.

But Sudanese officials, including Al-Bashir himself, have in the past denied the existence of corruption.

In an interview published last year, Bashir said that there was not any corrupt official in the top echelon of his government. In another interview, he dismissed press reports on the spread of corruption as not “supported by documents.”

Sudan’s former Justice Minister Abdul Basit Sabdarat drew scorn in 2009 when he said that the government relies on the religious piety of its officials to fight corruption.

Sudan ranks 176th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009.

(ST)