Funny Old World

It’s a funny old world, innit? In the week that we learn from Transparency International that Sierra Leone has the world’s worst corruption record, we also learn that the scandal surrounding the 1990’s sale of the Sierra Leone High Commission (Embassy) building in London is still on the boil.

          Some of you might remember that in 1998 the High Commission’s Chancery building, 33 Portland Place, located in one of the hottest property neighbourhoods in London was sold for the sum of £50,000. The lucky buyer was a man called Lord Edward Davenport.

One and a half decades on, it is still not clear who authorized the sale or how it was arranged, but it is believed that two of the three principal players involved have gone to their graves. The whereabouts of the last surviving member of this gang of three are unknown. However, the fate of the buyer of this property going cheap in late 1990’s London, remains front and centre in the public eye. First, the “lord” was sent down for nearly 8 years in 2011 for a massive advanced fee scam of the type which, we in West Africa and elsewhere recognize as a ‘419’. Now, this week, his “lordship”, known among his friends as “Fast Eddie”, was in court again defending a confiscation bid, by the Serious Fraud Office, of wealth the office deems he had acquired from the proceeds of crime. The outcome of this action is still pending.

Number 33 Portland Place is now estimated, in 2013, to be worth up to £12 million, not a bad return on investment made just 15 years ago. So Sierra Leoneans are bound to feel aggrieved that a few of their countrymen let them down so badly.

Transparency International’s bid to highlight corruption worldwide fingers Sierra Leone as the most corrupt nation on earth. It takes the breath away just trying to say that. Apparently the methodology for estimating corruption in a country includes asking a random sample of citizens if, during a set period, they had had to bribe a public official in order to receive a public service. A whopping 84% of Sierra Leonean respondents in the most recent survey said that they had, placing us at the very bottom of the rankings. Something to ponder, eh?

Also, this week, I have been reading “Remote Corners”, the memoirs of one Harry Mitchell, a former District Commissioner, the archetypal colonial functionary in the pre-independence Sierra Leone of the 1950’s. I should warn you that you have to have a strong stomach to read this book because you are likely to retch at nearly every paragraph, not least because of its condescension. But for our current discussion, a typical paragraph reads something like this: ‘The monthly wage bills of labourers under my supervision in Bo had suddenly jumped from £700 to £1100’. Mitchell says that when he questioned his Sierra Leonean timekeeper about this increase, ‘the fellow cringed in a most abject way and confessed that he had taken on some more labourers without authorisation’.

Our memorialist then went on to say that the timekeeper had, ‘of course demanded a dash of two or three pounds from each of the illegally employed labourers and was probably imposing a levy on them every month.’ Mr Mitchell then proceeded to broaden the charge-sheet by declaring that ‘Peculation by dishonest clerks is a constant source of worry to most people in managerial positions in West Africa.’

          That was sixty years ago.

Makes you think.

Tell Fren Tru