A just-released infographic by Sierra Leone’s Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) indicates that Superior Courts in the country presided over 49 cases of corruption in 2020, of which 12 were new cases, and 37 were unfinished cases from 2019.
Of these, 17 cases were concluded with a ruling. The High Court ordered payments of fines and restitution totaling a little over 1 billion Leones restituted by 15 convicted felons.
There were no imprisonments as a result of a conviction in 2020. The convicted felons chose to restitute the money and escape jail time.
ACC further mentioned in the Infographic that in the year 2020 the Commission received 775 complaints of corruption, which represents an increase of 22% compared to 2019, when the ACC registered 603 complaints.
However, almost half of these complaints, representing 49%, lacked sufficient evidence and/or included malicious complaints not meriting an investigation, or an allegation falling outside the purview of the ACC.
The ACC recovered almost 20 billion Leones from out of court settlements in 2019, and just 7 billion Leones in the year 2020.
The corruption prevalence in Sierra Leone went down from 70% in 2015 to 40% in 2020. This means that in 2015, about 70% of Sierra Leoneans believed corruption was a problem. And in 2020 about 40% of Sierra Leoneans believe that corruption is a problem.
According to the Afrobarometer, only 49% of Sierra Leoneans approved of the government’s performance in fighting corruption in 2019. Only one-third of Sierra Leoneans said that the country was going in the right direction, “a significant decline after some optimism with the change of the government in 2018,” the Afrobarometer wrote in its report released on August 19, 2020.
The assessment was conducted in March 2020.
Transparency International ranked Sierra Leone’s corruption perception index (CPI) 119th out of 180 countries, which is an improvement from 129th place in 2018, and 130th in 2017. The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people.
