For Immediate Release
October 27, 2021
Washington, DC – Today, the Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) along with over twenty organizations and individuals including Former US Ambassador Stephen McFarland, sent a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee calling for support of six anticorruption measures in the Defense Bill. If passed, “these measures will enhance the U.S.’s ability to sanction corrupt actors, increase transparency, encourage cooperative anticorruption efforts among the U.S. and its allies, and provide actionable information to victims of corruption” according to the letter.
Jacquest Bahati, policy analyst at AFJN and chair of the Accountability Working Group with the Advocacy Network for Africa (AdNA) who has been calling for increased governance and accountability measures in Africa made the following remarks:
- “It is our hope that, once these bills become law, current and future unchecked illicit financial flow from Africa to the US stop.
- “African transparency and accountability defenders need these legal instruments in order to hold accountable foreigners and local kleptocrates who continue to enrich themselves on the backs of millions of people through corruption.
- “Corruption is a serious threat to Africa’s development and it is one of the cancers which has and continues to keep many African nations socially, economically and politically weak, unstable and susceptible to conflicts of all kinds. If passed, these measures will give anticorruption warriors additional leverage to go after those who have established safe channels to continue to plunder Africa’s resources. ”
Read the October 27, 2021 “Support for Including Six Bipartisan Anticorruption Measures in Forthcoming Defense Bill”
Read the September 10, 2021 “Support for the Counter-Kleptocracy Act” letter here.