On Tuesday, July 11th, the Committee for the Safeguard of Integrity organized a debate to assess the results of the African Union (AU) convention on preventing and combating corruption, which Madagascar adopted twenty years ago. Despite the country’s leaders declaring “zero tolerance” for corruption, grand and petty corruption remain widespread in Madagascar.
Aimé Rasoloharimanana, the director general of the illicit asset recovery agency, established in 2022 as the last link of the anti-corruption system, has seized a hundred vehicles and frozen nearly 400 bank accounts. He noted that they are still in the provisional stage of freezing and seizure, as decisions are often appealed and no final confiscation decisions have been received yet.
The balance sheet remains mixed for the Big Island. “In terms of compliance, we still have a head start compared to other African countries. In terms of effectiveness, or more precisely, the application of standards, we have efforts to make”, explains the director general of the agency for the recovery of illicit assets.
It should be noted that several important texts referred to in the African Union convention to make this fight more effective have not yet been adopted or contain gaps, notably the laws governing the financing of political parties and the protection of human rights defenders and activists.
“Everyone must work together and there must be a real political will both at the level of the State and of the institutions, of the National Assembly”, considers Bakolalao Ramanandraibe, the president of the NGO Ivory, president honorary of the Court of Cassation and former Keeper of the Seals.
Madagascar’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index has stayed stagnant at 26/100, which is below average. The national anti-corruption strategy established in 2015 aimed to increase the score to 50/100 by 2025.