The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN) welcomed the handing over by the INTERPOL of a Palestinian accused of stealing public funds to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The operation was carried out through Al Karameh crossing through the General Direction of Crossings and Borders. According to the information available to AMAN, the accused used to work in the General Directorate of Petroleum in the Ministry of Finance. He manipulated the financial records for the benefit of one of the gas stations thus allowing the station’s owner to evade paying an amount that exceeded 40 million NIS that was supposed to go to the state’s public treasury. These facts indicate that the concerned employee is either a partner of the station’s owner or received bribery, in both cases benefitting from this fraud.
It is to mention that the accused, received yesterday, had fled away a few years ago while he was being investigated. The National Anti-Corruption Committee will now continue the investigation with him based on the accusations attributed to him in order to retrieve the stolen amount of approximately 45 million NIS in favor of the public treasury. The manipulators of public funds should be held accountable of their acts and not be allowed to escape punishment. It is worth mentioning that the ex-general director of the General Directorate of Petroleum, Harbi Sarsour, was judged for a corruption case in 2006.
In a related context, AMAN represented Palestine, being the national branch of the International Transparency Organisation, in the beginning of November 2014 in the Third Arab Conference on asset recovery. The meeting discussed mechanisms and steps that should be taken to stop corrupted persons from evading punishment. It also discussed means of cooperation of all interior and exterior sides to recover stolen assets and handing over the corrupted persons. The conference came out with several recommendations that are related to the participation of the civil society in asset recovery. One of the main recommendations stated that countries should put a legal work frame and provide a suitable environment for civil society to play an active role in asset recovery. Other recommendations were introducing legal measures to protect those who report corruption cases as stated in the UN convention against corruption, and that states and civil society should cooperate to establish national strategies to reform mechanisms of stolen asset recovery.
