Corruption in Comoros

The Customs Office in Moroni

The Union of Comoros is ranked by Transparency International as one of the most corrupted countries in Africa. Corruption is everywhere in the country, particularly in the Public Administration. There are three main causes of corruption in the Comorian Public Administration.

The civil servants are the agents who work for the government. This means their sole income is the salary they receive from the government, which is actually very low. To illustrate, a bachelor graduate starts with a salary of 500 U.S. dollars at the beginning of his career. This salary is not sufficient for the public agent to look after his family because of the high cost of living in the country. In fact, one of the underlying causes of corruption, according to many experts, is low public officials’ salary. They argue that public officials generally accept a low salary only if they already know that they can accumulate bribes. For instance, many Comorian graduates in economics or finances generally accept low wages in the Comorian Customs Office because they know that they can collect bribes.

Additionally, high inflation is an integral part of the civil servant’s difficult life. While prices are increasing on an average of 15% yearly, the governmental salary stagnates. Lastly, there is not a credit card system in the Comorian banks that allows the public employee to survive temporarily by buying goods or services and paying for them later. Because of the low salary, the public civil servant is inclined to corruption by misusing the public utilities such as office supplies and equipment, the telephone, the car, or trying to get money from people for any service offered.

Irregular payment is another factor that causes corruption in the Comorian public administration. Since the independence of the country from France in 1975, the civil servants have never been paid regularly because of insufficient revenues in the government’s budget. Every year, there are at least three or four months the government does not pay. In order to survive, the public agent is obliged to borrow money from friends or traders. Consequently, many agents are deeply in debt. As a result, stealing and selling office supplies and equipment are common. For instance, many used government vehicles that are supposed to be repaired are sold to friends and traders. 

Last of all, impunity for the corruptors encourages others to do the same thing because they are sure that the law will never punish them. To illustrate, some ministers, many public company managers, and public office directors are accused of mismanagement or bribes with traders and foreign investors. They are sometimes suspended and replaced, but never judged by the justice of the country. For example, in the 1990s, a former finance minister who was accused of taking bribes from a foreign company stated in the media that he had just taken a little bit. He was then nicknamed ‘‘Mr. Little Bit,’’ but he has never been judged.  Recently in 2007, a former governor got an 18-month suspended prison term and a fine for fraud. There were also charges of corruption among the security forces.

As has been noted, corruption in the Comorian public service is due to low salary, irregular payments, and impunity among the civil servants. In 2019, the Union of Comoros was ranked 153 out of 180 countries by the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index survey. Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which is Transparency international’s flagship research product, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption. This corruption harms the development of the country and weakens the state.

In 2010, the members of the Comorian Parliament legislated against corruption. In order to enforce the law against corruption, the Comorian government has recently set up an Anticorruption Committee. Since its creation in 2010, thirty cases of corruption have been revealed in the public administration. In December 2011, a religious scholar implicated in an alcoholic beverages company trying to intervene for the reopening of its activities, was arrested, judged and sent in jail. After a new trial on appeal, the jury found a very little evidence against him. The religious scholar was hence released on February 2012. However, for many other cases, the Comorian justice has done nothing until now.

Recently the General Accounting Office was hearing many dignitaries and former officials about the eventual misuse of many millions dollars generated by the sale of the Comorian citizenships between 2009 and 2011. The hearing resulted in the arrest of the former Director General of the police. He was released on bail. He was then successfully elected Member of Parliament in 2015 and 2020. A former president of the Union of Comoros was arrested and put in jail without trial since 2018. The Anticorruption Committee was dismissed in 2016 by the Azali Assoumani regime.

Today, the government faces several challenges in terms of poverty, household wastes, education, youth unemployment, health infrastructures and pandemic diseases such as malaria, coronavirus, etc. Many people think that the Comoros cannot economically emerge in its 2030 agenda with incompetence and corruption. Can the Comorian government meet these challenges? Time will tell.

The Comorian Blog, July 9, 2020

Chami Mouzawar

Contributing writer