SARA rolling out anti-corruption campaign

The State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) has started an anti-corruption campaign in order to encourage reporting of corrupt activities to the body.

“The approach of the campaign is to bring awareness and to change the culture and narrative of corruption,” SARA’s Media Communications Officer Clayton Halley told Sunday Stabroek recently, while noting that in addition to government agencies, school-aged children at the primary and secondary levels are among the groups that will be targeted.

Halley said that the idea of the campaign, dubbed ‘Corruption is everybody’s business,’ is for those in the target groups to spot corrupt activities and report same to the agency.

SARA’s Director Professor Clive Thomas explained that in addition to the recovery of state assets, the agency also has to develop and mount a broad platform for anti-corruption activities in the country and to promote transparency and accountability in the use and treatment of all type of state assets. “So our primary mission is not just over the long run to collect stolen property but [also] to prevent ultimately the theft of such property so it becomes less and less a problem,” he said.

Thomas said that in confronting this issue, the agency has to promote the anticorruption platform, which will be achieved through a working relationship with other agencies. “We can’t do it alone. The [UN] convention [against corruption] states that clearly and because of that we have to work with certain international bodies like the United Nations Stolen Assets Recovery [Initiative],” he noted.

As a member of the international antimoney laundering architecture, Guyana has to fulfill a number of obligations, Thomas added, while noting that the

Abram Zuil Secondary School students Ravendra Singh (left) and Renaldo Naraine (right), who placed third and second, respectively, in SARA’s anti-corruption essay competition. Standing at centre is the agency’s Chief Administrative Officer Mandie Mickle.