Shawky al-Tabib, head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in Tunisia, revealed that his country’s annual losses from corruption reached about 3 billion dollars, noting that the accumulation of losses in many institutions places it on the brink of bankruptcy.
Al-Tabib stated to "Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed", that the government sector institutions that contribute about 15 percent of the country's GDP, suffer from financial and administrative misconduct.
The arrest of officials and employees of governmental companies and customs departments has increased in recent days on charges of corruption and bribery, which economists considered necessary to achieve the financial stability of many institutions.
For his part, the head of the General Observers Association and expert in governance, Sharaf al-Din Yaqoubi, saw that a new path to fighting corruption in Tunisia is about formation, indicating that there are positive indicators of a new governance phase in the country by tracking administrative corruption and authorizing auditing missions in important sectors, including licenses, exploration and extraction of oil.
Al-Yaqoubi said, through Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed, that launching a new campaign to combat administrative corruption must be accompanied by an acceleration in the judicial decision in the files referred to the courts, to prove the effectiveness of fighting corruption and holding the corrupt accountable.
He pointed out that the path of combating corruption in Tunisia is still long due to administrative and judicial complications that divide and overlap interests, considering that this interference places the Tunisian state in the position of the soft state.
Source (New Arab newspaper, Edited)
