The West African country of Sierra Leone is struggling with massive problems: corruption, organized crime and resource exploitation are just some of them. Journalist Chernoh Alpha Bah focuses on precisely these problems in his home country and makes them understandable to the public in order to improve conditions in Sierra Leone for the good of society. In this exclusive interview with the Swiss-based Aufbruch Magazine, Bah discusses his investigative work on corruption and organized crime in Sierra Leone and West Africa.
Read the Original German publication here: Engagierter Kampf gegen Korruption und organisierte Kriminalität
Interview conducted by Ugochi Anyaka
aufbruch: Chernoh Alpha Bah, you are a journalist and historian. Can you tell us about your work?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: I am a journalist and historian from Sierra Leone currently living in exile in the United States of America. My specialty is the medical, legal, and economic history of West Africa. I received my PhD in history from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where I also served as a postdoctoral fellow in public service at the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies (CCHS). I am currently a postdoctoral research associate with the Africa Initiative at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. As a historian, my research focuses on the history of medicine and medical experimentation, prisons and punishment, and forced labor issues in West Africa. As a journalist, I study organized crime and corruption in West Africa. For the past few years, I have been working on a transnational research project investigating and documenting the sources of illicit financial flows (IFF) in West Africa. The Illicit Financial Flows project focuses on the West African Mano River Corridor, which includes the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. The project aims to examine the history of multinational corporations and economic activities in the region from the 1970s to the present day. The project aims to create a comprehensive database on IFF in the Mano River region to illustrate the historical roots, transnational dimensions and current networks that support and sustain organized crime in West Africa.
aufbruch: Why did you have to leave Sierra Leone?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: As I mentioned earlier, I have been working as an independent journalist in West Africa for more than twenty years. I am one of the founding editors of Africanist Press, an independent investigative journalism organization established in December 2002 with the aim of investigating corruption and organized crime and promoting freedom of expression and democratization in Africa. Since its inception, I have been involved in almost all of the organization’s work on corruption and human rights. For example, as of 2020, I worked with other academics and journalists on a multi-year investigation that produced more than 70 investigative reports documenting large-scale financial crimes in Sierra Leone. The reports relate to unexplained wealth involving high-ranking government officials, including Sierra Leone’s current President Julius Maada Bio and his wife, who are said to have spent 7.89 billion Leones (more than US$750,000) of public funds on personal purchases, according to one of the reports, and how President Bio and First Lady Fatima Bio have cumulatively withdrawn more than 71.4 billion Leones (about US$8 million) as international travel allowances through 2022, violating the country’s legal procedures.
Our investigation also uncovered evidence of embezzlement of public election funds by the country’s electoral commission and showed how opposition parties and parliament were jeopardizing Sierra Leone’s June 2023 elections. Our work has had far-reaching consequences and attracted international attention, including from the U.S. State Department, on the issues of democratic governance and corruption in the financial sector. Because of this investigative work on corruption and resource exploitation, I am currently in exile in the United States and have been unable to return home due to constant death threats and other forms of harassment. For more than four years, I have been the target of death threats and constant cyber harassment orchestrated by well-known government officials and other political figures in the country. Unfortunately, international cyber organizations and foreign intelligence agents are also complicit in my harassment and attacks on our work.
aufbruch: When you track funds, where does it lead you? And are there actors who make corruption possible?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: Yes, financial crime is enabled by a transnational network of banks, politicians, international institutions and highly trained professionals. When you set out to investigate financial crimes, especially illicit economic flows, you don’t know exactly where the evidence may lead. So, in tracking illicit asset movements, the journalist as a detective begins with the idea that something has gone wrong and often starts the investigation with a blank sheet of paper. But as the investigation progresses, they will be both surprised and intrigued by the discoveries they make. Organized crime of any kind is always a syndicated process and a conglomeration of organizations and individuals operating vast networks that trigger and sustain such operations. These networks have no regard for borders, and they do not respect territorial boundaries; they are often transnational and so sophisticated in their operations that it becomes a puzzle to unravel and reconstruct the evidence of the illicit operations in which they are involved.
This is because they largely operate out of otherwise legitimate financial institutions and use them for their nefarious operations. The fact is that much of what we call illicit financial flows use the established institutional network of global finance – the banking system, development agencies, large business enterprises, multinational corporations, politics, the legal system and other institutions. The enablers and active participants in these transnational crime syndicates are precisely these bankers, development experts, law enforcement agencies, politicians and lawyers. You can start your investigation anywhere in West Africa, but you can be sure that the further you go into the details, you will find a triangular operation that stretches across the entire region into Europe, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, Swiss banks and the Caribbean. This is why the investigations are always full of surprises and fascinating details and the activities involve major institutions and powerful individuals.
aufbruch : To what extent does this hinder the development of resource-rich countries?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: It hampers social and economic development in resource-rich countries, which are often exploited by corrupt syndicates and impoverished in a variety of ways. The Mano River corridor in West Africa is an example of a region with immense natural resources, such as diamonds, gold, bauxite, aluminum, uranium, timber and agricultural products. This wealth has long given rise to colonial and more recent struggles not only over how the resources are mined, but also over who gets the profits. Multinational corporations from Europe, North America and, increasingly, Asia are actively competing for control of these resources. This competition for control of resources is negatively affecting the delivery of social services, particularly reproductive governance in the region. The impact of financial corruption on maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia has a direct impact on population health. Upon closer inspection, you will see the direct link between financial corruption and poorly funded health and poverty alleviation programs. Revenues that should be used to fund public health, sanitation, nutrition, clean water provision and other poverty alleviation programs are often diverted by politicians with the active approval of the international financial institutions and development agencies. This is the reason why structural adjustment and poverty alleviation programs have failed to reduce chronic underdevelopment indices. Maternal and newborn mortality statistics in the Mano River countries are getting worse year after year. This is why we believe it is imperative to study the Mano River region to understand the historical roots, transnational dimensions and current networks that support and sustain organized crime in West Africa. We need to bring these issues into the spotlight. This is also the reason why I am being targeted.
aufbruch: It is your fellow countrymen that are targeting you. What does that say about them and their loyalty to their country?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: In Sierra Leone, politics and power are all about the opportunity to loot public funds. Officials in my country see their appointment to the public service as a license to enrich themselves through corrupt means. They have not been truly committed to meeting the country’s development needs and fulfilling people’s aspirations for better living conditions. It is a national development crisis, a kind of governance epidemic that the country has been battling since its so-called independence more than 60 years ago. The first 30 years of indigenous governance failed to address the structural obstacles to economic growth and development created by the colonial masters.
Local elites, who inherited the colonial architecture of governance, continued the same colonial economic course that stunted growth and development. Increased state repression under the command of native tyrants and an economy structurally adjusted by the IMF and World Bank undermined any potential for social and economic progress and led to a decade-long civil war that ended just over 20 years ago.
aufbruch: What is your dream for your country, for Africa and how should governments and capitalist companies work together for the benefit of the local people?
Chernoh Alpha Bah: I certainly miss my country. There has not been a day when I have not thought about the country and what can be done to improve living conditions for our people. I am worried about the stability of the country, about the prospects for real development, for prosperity and progress for the majority of the population whose living conditions are deteriorating day by day. People deserve better. International relations, foreign direct investment and geopolitics must be based on a humane approach. There must be a fair balance between the desire for capitalist profit and the collective aspiration of the majority for the quality of life they deserve.
Translation by: Wolf Südbeck-Baur. Read the Original German publication here: Engagierter Kampf gegen Korruption und organisierte Kriminalität