Dear Editor

If finding the stolen monies and cars and lands and gold is taking this long, then imagine what time it will take to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators. Just about every department that has been audited so far – including the Office of the Presidency – is found to have had contemptuous levels of fraud and skullduggery obtaining within them. And the audits are far from over.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the police force, to which these matters will have to be turned over, have their own problems with tainted officers and those still loyal to the last administration. It is very possible that there will be internal manoeuvers to foil the investigations of certain persons, who might have secrets for some of the investigating officers. The quandaries that the government faces are many-sided. There are the plethora of investigations on the one hand and the insufficient staffing on the other. Additionally, there are the possibilities of interferences and disruptions of the resultant investigations.
Mr. Editor, in light of these realities, I am wondering if the government should not now allow for some kind of a financial amnesty. The United Nations has signalled its interest in assisting the government with the recovery of the people’s money. This means that those who thought that they could hide money will soon realise that there are persons trained in finding hidden monies and that those monies will be found.
However, because of the looming complications which will arise from the sheer volume of crooks and fraudsters who will be unearthed, I am thinking that those who have stolen from the treasury should be made to fess-up, beforehand. Just like those with illegal guns were given the chance to return them without lawful incrimination, just so those who have embezzled the country’s money should be given a chance to come in with the money or tell the authorities where the monies can be found. And those who do should, similarly, not be subject to indictment.
However, just like the Prime Minister and the Minister of Social Protection asked the judiciary to look warily upon those committing gun-related crimes (after the gun amnesty period), the judiciary must be alerted to maximise the penalties for those found guilty of stealing the taxpayers’ money (after the financial amnesty). There will be those in the upper echelons of the political and societal strata who will foolishly think that their arms are longer than that of the law and will not acquiesce to any such amnesty. Those should be made to feel the full weight of the law when it is proven that they have raped our treasury.
Pastor W. P. Jeffrey
Practical Christianity Ministries
Founder/President