ACCS puts speculations to rest |09 September 2020
Ms De Silva (Photo: Joena Meme)
The Anti Corruption Commission Seychelles (ACCS) is doing its job as best as it can to put criminals behind bars but the speculations and accusations being made by some members of the public are hindering its work.
Speaking to the press yesterday afternoon, the chief executive of the ACCS, May De Silva, said that the reason things are going so slow for the organisation is because of a lack of investigators as they only have six and recently their budgets were cut short.
Although the Commission deals with all manner of corruption cases, one particular case stands out – the 50 million dollars which went missing eighteen years ago.
According to reports, the US $50 million was a gift to Seychelles from the United Arab Emirates in 2002 to purchase food for the country by the then Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB). The money was apparently transferred from the Central Bank of Seychelles account in New York to an account in the Bank of Baroda in Britain belonging to SMB. Since then, there is no trace as to where the money has gone.
“We cannot give a statement regarding allegations that the money was used to purchase commodities or if it was actually deposited in SMB’s account as we are still conducting the investigation,” Ms De Silva said.
She also noted that ACCS has interviewed many witnesses while conducting its investigation, one of whom being the former President of the Republic, France Albert Rene, who made a sworn statement in 2018 in front of the investigators in the case.
With rumours circulating about the involvement of presidential hopefuls being part of the corruption scandal, Ms De Silva noted that presumption of innocence is very important regarding this case as investigation is still ongoing and no one has been found guilty of any crime or is being looked at as a suspect for the time being.
In order to be more efficient while conducting the investigation, ACCS had partnered with the National Crime Agency, which is a law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom and has been receiving assistance from the Financial Intelligence Unit.
While answering the question about why the case is taking so long to be solved, Ms De Silva remarked that some banks are unwilling to give out their information.
“We are now working with the UK-based Baroda Bank which provided us with new information and evidence,” she said.
“For all investigations involving money the investigator needs to follow the trail of money which takes time and we also have to make requests to the Attorney General of Britain through our own Attorney General and this sort of process takes time as we are not the one doing the ground investigation in Britain,” she noted.
She said that the case is expected to be wrapped up in a year.
Christophe Zialor