Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000
By CHITE MTONGA
ZAMBIANS must wake up to corporate corruption which is draining the country of huge amounts of money, because it is not as rigorously investigated as public graft, Peoples Party President, Mike Mulongoti has disclosed.
Corporate corruption, he said, was often overlooked and not investigated as much as corruption in the public sector, yet government economically loses out in corrupt transactions in the private sector
Mr Mulongoti , who was reacting to financial intelligence revelation of large scale transfer pricing and other vices involving corporate institutions, said most Zambians were only concerned with corruption in government because they directly remit tax to government yet economically government was losing millions due to corruption in the private sector.
Corruption in the private sector takes many forms, among them bribery, undue influence, fraud, money laundering and collusion. Corruption has the capacity to distort markets and has a negative impact on society as a whole especially in developing countries like Zambia.
And Mr Mulongoti explained that even if corruption was present in the private sector and had a negative influence on a country’s economy it was not taken as seriously as corruption in the public sector.
“Indeed corruption in the private sector affects the economy of the country and can have adverse effects on the economy, but we do not know about most of the money that is in the private sector, and how they make their transactions, so how do we ask for accountability in such companies? And in fact we cannot be concerned about how people spend their money,” Mr Mulongoti said.
He said traditionally corruption had been seen as a public sector phenomenon, but private sector corruption deserved as much attention as public sector corruption due to its equally incapacitating effects on economic activity.
The Zambian government has recently reported a growing trend by some business owners who were manipulating procedures and systems to increase profits through tax evasion. This form of private sector corruption is probably the most costly to society, as private sector corruption is inherent to profit maximization.
