Public officers who are found guilty of corruption under the amended Criminal Offences law could face up to 25 years in jail. Section 260 of the memorandum that accompanied the bill stipulates that a public officer who fails a set of accountability requirements could be jailed between 12 to 25 years.
The revised law, which was passed a week ago, is awaiting presidential consent to be effective. The new law additionally changes the Criminal Offenses Act, 1960 (Act 29) to sort the offense of corruption as a crime and give a solid punishment to any individual who carries out the offense of corruption and other related offenses.
It gives for the most part to the standards of discipline for offenses portrayed as a first degree crime, second degree crime and a petty crime. A particular category of offenses under the new law is the proposition for a term of detainment not surpassing 25 years for corruption which was categorized as crimes under the old law.
The amended law emphasizes existing offenses under different categories of the past law yet substitutes the applicable provisions by giving explicitly to stiffer punishments to bring them inside the class of a first-degree or second-degree felony.
The amending provisions also specify the base and most extreme limit. The limits fill in as a measuring stick to control decided in the determination of the term of imprisonment to impose.
Other amendments include false declaration for office or voting, false certificate by public officer, destruction of document by a public officer, deceiving a public officer, accepting or giving bribe to influence a public officer or juror, corrupt promise by judicial officer or juror, corrupt selection of juror and corruption, intimidation and personation in respect of election.
Corruption has since days of yore been a part of the world. Several anti-corruption organizations have put forth attempts to diminish its rise or conceivably stop it completely.
In numerous parts of the world, countries have been hit hard by corruption from multiple points of view, therefore some concerned government authorities are battling this ‘mischievousness’.
Ghana which is one of the countries battling this degradation has initiated this strict processes to make corruption a progressively unrewarding endeavor.
Ghana’s anti-graft body, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), which is Transparency International’s Local Chapter, in 2019 cautioned that the country loses near US$3 billion to corruption every year, which is quite risky for the country.
Progressive governments have endeavored to limit corruption through good campaigns to maintain high morals, but that there is as yet, a long way to deal with the issue, as it is a tough battle.
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