HomeOld_PostsToward a national anti-corruption nexus founded on security

Toward a national anti-corruption nexus founded on security

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By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

THE drafters of the current Constitution of Zimbabwe went astray and misled the nation when in Chapter 13 they presumed that the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and the National Prosecuting Authority were going to be the national institutions to combat corruption and crime.
These two institutions could conceivably combat corruption and crime only if there were other constitutional provisions as well as security, intelligence, research, surveillance, fiscal and financial guarantees intended to construct a national anti-corruption and crime combating nexus or network solidly founded on security.
When the North American colonies of Britain declared independence in 1776 and set up a republic, the very first article of their US Constitution in Section 8 quickly bundled together the integrated and integrative powers to wage war and defend the country and the people with the integrative powers to create currency and control the key instruments of production and trade.
They said in part:
Security anti-corruption nexus
“The Congress shall have powers to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for a common defence.
To coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin (money), and fix the standard of weights and measures; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting of the securities and current coin (money) of the United States.”
The very first article of the US Constitution is where the US Treasury, army, navy, airforce, intelligence and the Federal Reserve derive their constitutional powers to this day.
In contrast, drafters of the new Constitution of Zimbabwe buried the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) at Chapter 17, page 122, in a document with 152 pages.
It is obvious that, in addition to Chapter 13 Institutions, the following institutions linked together would fight crime and corruption and provide security for Madzimbahwe more effectively:
l The Zimbabwe Republic Police
l The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
l The Ministry of Finance (Treasury)
l The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority
l The Department of Immigration
l The Judicial Services Commission (via the Economic Crimes Court)
l The Auditor General
l The Registrar General
l Military Intelligence; and
l Central Intelligence Organisation and
l The Office of the Attorney-General.
Chapter 13 Institutions and those listed in the preceding paragraph should be linked and co-ordinated via a national strategic network to prevent and combat corruption, crime, terrorism and the destabilisation and insecurity of national objectives, national institutions, national policies and individual citizens.
Primary, wholesale corruption is normally linked to insecurity, fear and terror.
Unknown, hidden, unrecorded and asymmetrically and illicitly obtained and distributed cash is associated with fear, suspicion, anxiety, destabilisation and terror at both the level of the state and the level of the family and individual.
The purpose of land redistribution, the purpose of African empowerment, indeed the purpose of the Economic Empowerment Programme is to enable the povo to create national and personal wealth as the material basis for the security and confidence needed to combat crime and corruption.
This presumes that there is commensurate popular capacity in the form of liquidity, in the form of a popular currency readily available and accessible to all those who create real goods of value for exchange.
But the existing US currency has empowered a cartel of importers of unproductive luxuries.
It has turned the US dollar itself into the main asset rather than a means to transact business and drive production.
Popular capacity to produce and exchange locally does not exist because there is no commonly accessible currency.
Moreover, money is not only the visible and visualised embodiment of the value of a people’s labour and assets; it is also an instrument of control.
In a capitalist economy, the power to determine liquidity is more important than the army and the police combined.
“Title III of the US Patriot Act is called ‘International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Finance Act of 2001’.
It is based on the historical reality that the fuel for organised terror is money. While most of Title III falls under the Treasury Department, it still involves the AG in parts.
In those parts, the AG works with the Secretary of State, the Federal Reserve System and others to prevent certain foreign banks from opening or operating accounts in the US, to freeze accounts held by foreigners and so on.
The control of the movement of cash on persons leaving or entering the US also falls under the Justice Department.”
The production, movement and possession of cash is regulated and monitored continuously, for example in the US, by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network which is based at the Treasury Department but is directly linked to hundreds of other institutions in the economic and financial sector.
What this means is both Treasury and the Central Bank are integral features of the national security system, as Section 364 of the Patriot Act, for example, demonstrates.
Section 365 of the same Act provides as follows:
Any person who:
l Is engaged in a trade or business and;
l Who, in the course of such trade or business, receives more than US$10 000 in coins or currency in 1 (one) transaction (or two 2 or more related transactions), shall file a report described in subsection (b) with respect to such transaction (or related transactions) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at such a time and in such manner as the Secretary (of the Treasury) may by regulation, prescribe.”
Section 371 on ‘Bulk Cash smuggling of currency into or out of the United States’ states among other things that:
“In general – whoever with the intent to evade a currency reporting requirement knowingly conceals more than US$10 000 in currency or other monetary instruments on the person of such individual or any conveyance, article of luggage, merchandise or other container and transports or transfers or attempts to transport or transfer such currency or monetary instruments from a place within the United States to a place outside of the United States, or from a place outside the United States to a place within the United States, shall be guilty of a currency smuggling offence.”
The prison term for those convicted of a currency smuggling offence is up to five years.
There are many issues which arise from the preceding account for Madzimbahwe at present.
For instance, a cash economy in which large numbers of citizens lack access to cash while significant minorities are free to keep or bring in or take out large quantities of undeclared or unknown cash is so dangerous that the people might as well be characterised as vulnerable to terror and terrorism.
This is what makes corruption involving currency a security threat.

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