By Joseph A Kamanda
With emerging testimonies which have implicated the former Sierra Leone Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Dr Alie Kabba.
And much is now probably left with the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) prosecution team to rope-in suspects as Kabba and Nabila Tunis witnesses to also testify in the continuing public sector corruption trial to help the court avoid further delays and the denials of justice in the end.
One of such testimonies was the one carried out on 21 September 2022 by the fourteenth prosecution witness, PW14, Allan Ebu George. Testifying before Hon. Justice Adrian Fisher of High Court No. 2, George, a former staff of the embassy, informed the bench that the country’s former Permanent. Representative to the UN in New York, Dr Alie Kabba, received and saved into his personal account the sum of One Million United States Dollars ($1M). This implies Kabba’s level of involvement in con deal even though he has never been brought forward by the ACC for his role. Kabba is regularly seen roaming around campaigning for his failed ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party in the east of the country with impunity. Kabba’s evasion undermines the Bio’s selective ACC fight.
Hence much is expected from the court to equally apply the laws of the land to all, irrespective of one’s status in society, which is seemingly absent now.
George recalled that a charitable partner donated funds towards the reconstruction of the Sierra Leone UN Chancery Building in New York. He said the then Permanent Representative, Dr Kabba, received $1 million into his account and the mission never received the full $1 million from him.
Previous PWs including Planning and Economic Development Minister Dr Francis Kaikai recently told the court that he knew the 4th accused person Dr Samura Kamara not in the context of his job as Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Kaikai, said he knew Dr Samura Kamara as former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation.
He added that he was briefed by the first accused and former Head of Chancery, Saidu Nallo. Dr Kaikai said there were challenges with slow transfer of funds.
However deliberate delays and selective dispensation of justice in the continuing investigations into the alleged Four Million United States Dollars ($4M) corruption scandal at the Sierra Leone Permanent Mission to the United Nations, for the renovation of the Chancery Building in New York, allegedly involving the former All Peoples Congress 2018 presidential candidate and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, and five others. The trial continues to expose system failures, reflecting vividly on the President Julius Maada Bio-led New Direction ACC vows. Government, the ACC and the Sierra Leone Judiciary in their collective anti-graft fight have also been exposed for failing to get it rightly done. Investigations into the matter, took off late last year by ACC court which is prosecuting the case, at a very snail’s pace, after several reports by the US-based Africanist Press, on who did what, and who should be held accountable for the mismanagement of the $4 million, which was granted to the Government of Sierra Leone, by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, for the renovation of the Sierra Leone Permanent Mission to the UN Chancery Building in New York. These credible media reports are enough to have served as evidence in prosecuting the matter to a speedy conclusion, to avoid delays in the dispensation of justice, especially when the process is widely seen as selective. Selective in that former government ministers of foreign affairs, Dr Alie Kabba and Nabila Tunis, have not been seen in court as part of the accountability process.
The truth is that the investigators, be it the ACC or the court, should have the moral courage to bring to book Kabba and Tunis as suspects in the probe into the missing $4 million donor fund, meant for national interests. They both served as Foreign Ministers at specific times, and they must thus give account of their stewardships as part of good governance principles of transparency and accountability.
Conversely, with the protections of both former foreign ministers – Tunis and Kabba from being subjected to investigations and face prosecution in the court of law much as the ACC is legitimately obliged to look into the matter objectively, one must be urged to say that the New Direction is not getting it right in its anti-graft war as the ACC has Kabba and Tunis as their sacred cows.
Bio during his presidential campaign in 2028 promised to leave no stone unturned if elected to office and that his government would have no sacred cow. But Bio now tames more sacred cows within his failed administration than his predecessors. What a deception Mr President? Besides the alleged corruption offenders under the canopy of his presidency hardly face the full penalties of the law. The most unfortunate and unfair aspect of the New Direction anti-corruption campaign is that whilst others are always in court for alleged misappropriation of $4 million, Kabba and Tunis are busy on their private affairs mostly claimed to be special presidential assignments.
The New York Chancery Building refurbishment funds doled out in 2018 to the Government of Sierra Leone, by the Government of the PRC, unfortunately landed in the wrong hands, and was reported to have been diverted for the wrong purposes, instead of it be utilised for its intended renovation drive, for which it was given to the Government, leaving the country’s diplomatic mission office as an eye sore in New York.
Disgracefully though, the country’s Chancery Building in the New York neighbourhood caused discomforts for its neighbours, to a point that the municipality management of New York City had almost wanted to take the Government of Sierra Leone to the US Federal Court for proper redress mechanisms. Sierra Leone Government officers who were assigned to the UN Mission as Foreign Service staffers by the line ministry, include the Minister, an ambassador after the other, Head of Chancery, First and Second Secretaries, a Financial and Military Attaché are yet to appear before the ACC court for prosecutions. As for Kabba and Tunis; they are nowhere to be seen, since investigations into the alleged ACC matter commenced, unto prosecution state.
Wrong! The ACC, Government and the judiciary should live above such selective justice dispensation, bringing in mind that all suspects allegedly involved in the matter should be brought to book to give proper account of their various stewardships. And whoever is found wanting for any wrong doing should face the full penalties of the laws of the land as part of international best practices to end the culture of impunity. With that rightly done as required by law, the ACC, Government, President Bio and the judiciary would be better placed as sincere anti-graft warriors, getting things right in their New Direction anti-corruption crusade. That besides, they are actually not getting it right.
The prolonged prosecution of Dr Samura Kamara, Saidu Nallo, former Head of Chancery, and others must be expedited to void deliberate and unfair denial of justice.
Although the ACC sometime late last year (2021) reportedly received refunds of certain amount from unnamed suspects as part of the commission’s out of court settlement and refunds measures of the moneys allegedly mismanaged by one of the workers at the Sierra Leone Permanent Mission to the UN, in New York, the ACC didn’t clearly explain who exactly made the refund.
The ACC was also expected to have charged to court Dr Alie Kabba and Nabila Tunis but it didn’t because of the protection they continue to receive from the powers that be. Dr Alie Kabba was later sent to New York as ambassador to the Permanent Mission at UN. There and then he assumed multiple roles, key of which was a vote controller of finances allocated to the mission from the consolidated revenue fund at the Ministry of Finance in Freetown. However Dr Kabba has never been in court to say a word nor answer to any question from the ACC prosecution team for allegedly swindling of $4 million meant for the renovation of the country’s Chancery Building at the UN.
So far in the prosecution of the alleged ACC corruption matter, if witnesses testifying before are yet to implicate principal suspect, and the first accused, Dr Samura Kamara, for any corrupt offences, then why the delays of the trial and dispense of justice where it is due? With the snail’s pace of the prosecution, one would be left with no alternative but to say the New Direction is actually getting it wrong in the continuing investigations of the alleged $4 million New York Chancery Building anti-corruption investigations.
