Corruption is no respecter of boundaries - Attorney General

Madam Gloria Akuffo, Attorney General and Minister of Justice has said that the fight against corruption demanded a mechanisms for bilateral and multilateral cooperation because corruption was no respecter of boundaries.

She said no single institution or person could win the fight against corruption, "Fighting corruption, therefore, requires a firm partnership between governments and the public sector on one hand and civil society, private sector, professional associations and faith-based organisations on the other".

Madam Akuffo was speaking at the International Forum on Asset Recovery and Money Laundering, organised by the European Union in collaboration with some anti-Corruption Institutions as part of activities to mark Ghana's Anti-corruption and Transparency (ACT) Week in Accra.

She said permitting the crime of money laundering to flourish and leaving culprits to benefit from their nefarious activities would rather send the wrong signal that crime pays.

She said prevention of crimes including money-laundering, fraud, and drug trafficking among others must, therefore, be a collaborative enterprise of all.

"It is not sufficient deterrent to only sentence convicts of money-laundering to jail and those efforts should therefore not be spared in denying such convicts the enjoyment of the proceeds of their illegal conduct".

On Asset Recovery, she said the process by which proceeds of crime were recovered and returned to the victim or country of origin was, therefore, a major tool in the global fight against money laundering as well as other financial crimes.

She said it involved the collection of intelligence, the tracing of assets, securing of assets, international cooperation, court proceedings,

enforcement orders and the eventual repatriation of the confiscated assets to the victim or state.

She called on the media, the general public, law enforcement agencies, security and investigative bodies, prosecutors and civil society organisations to play their role in this fight in a concerted collaborative and sustained manner.