The “Arab Spring” was fuelled in part by popular desire to weed out corruption. But could graft in fact be on the rise in Egypt and Tunisia?
It could indeed be rising massively, according to Nicola Ehlermann-Cache, a senior policy analyst at the Paris-based think-tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
“Unfortunately, informal reports have been made to me – certainly in Tunisia, Egypt and Iraq – (by) people claiming that corruption is rising tremendously,” she said last week as a panelist at the International Bar Association’s (IBA) annual Anti-Corruption Conference in Paris.
Ehlermann-Cache painted a bleak picture of the state of corruption in the North Africa and the Middle East (MENA). Issues of particular concern, she said, were poorly written laws, ongoing immunity for influential officials, media restrictions, no right to access public information and weak institutions.
Tunisia’s and Egypt’s former leaders are being held to account. Tunisia’s Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, is living in Saudi Arabia where he fled at the height of the protests. In July last year, a Tunisian court sentenced him in absentia to 16 years in jail, on charges of corruption and ordered that he pay 97 million dinars ($70.65 million) in fines.
