One of the most important objectives of any reform should be protecting public money from abuse by those seeking personal gains at the expense of public interest. We must admit that loopholes in our auditing systems have made it possible for corruption to become so rampant in a shameful and provocative manner.
The monitoring and control measures are not just weak, they are almost non-existent in some areas. The situation is further compounded by the lack of deterrent punishments that make corrupt persons think twice before stealing public money.
Huge amounts of money are lost on projects that in the end produced the kind of poor services that should not have consumed even a tiny portion of the funds spent on them.
Even with a policy of belt-tightening and expenditure cuts necessitated by the prevailing economic and financial conditions, there seems to be no much hope in putting a speedy end to corruption.
A recent report by the public auditing and control office has revealed that more than SR144 million in financial irregularities have been discovered in some government departments over a period of just one year.
The report detailing the violations has been sent to the Shoura Council for review, with these ranging from swindling to cases of embezzlement and theft. These are the kind of violations that are very difficult to conceal except through deliberate acts of misleading and in the absence of stiff monitoring and control arrangements.
Probably, the amounts of stolen money disclosed by the office only represent a fraction of the actual figure the state coffer is losing every year. Some public bodies may seek to justify financial irregularities by giving various justifications. Under a situation like this, it would be impossible to imagine the volume of corruption eating away at the state body.
The problem remains that even with the discovery of violations, there are always attempts to deliberately cover up and conceal these from the relevant authorities and the public.
Publicizing these violations and exposing the persons behind them would serve as a deterrent to others.
I don’t know how the Shoura Council is going to react to the report or why in the first place the report was sent to the Council. The fact that must be obvious to everyone is that the solution to this problem lies in changing the lax laws that provide fertile soil for corruption.
