“Weapons of Mass Corruption:” New Report Exposes Massive Corruption in South Sudan’s Army (SPLA)

[Elisabeth Janaina]

“Weapons of Mass Corruption:” New Report Exposes Massive Corruption in
South Sudan’s Army (SPLA)
Jan. 26 Featured, Uncategorized 2 comments
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 26, 2017;

A new report, “Weapons of Mass Corruption: How corruption in South
Sudan’s military undermines the world’s newest country,” published
today by the Enough Project, details massive corruption within South
Sudan’s army. Corrupt activities within the army detailed in the
report include procurement fraud, irregular spending unchecked by
civilian authority, and bloated troop rosters featuring thousands of
“ghost” (non-existent) soldiers.

Link to full report- Click Here: http://eno.ug/2iGE9Qw

Brian Adeba, Associate Director of Policy at the Enough Project, said:
“The effect of corruption in proliferating insecurity in South Sudan
cannot be underestimated. The country’s politicians can only begin to
realize the fruits of security for their citizens if they tackle the
graft in the army.”

The report, fifth in the Enough Project’s “The Political Economy of
African Wars” series, describes how despite widespread suffering in
South Sudan, including famine-like conditions and the severe economic
hardships South Sudanese people experience, massive amounts of the
country’s dwindling funds go to the South Sudan People’s Liberation
Army (SPLA), where they are diverted and misspent without
accountability.

Jacinth Planer, report editor and Editor/Researcher at the Enough
Project, said: “On paper, South Sudan’s legal and institutional
frameworks enshrine civilian, not military leadership. The SPLA is
meant to protect, defend, and hold itself accountable to the South
Sudanese people. But the destructive system and practices that have
developed now instead work against these purposes, and the South
Sudanese people who face great personal risks have paid the highest
price. The international community should steadfastly support the
South Sudanese people and especially those who try to uphold the
institutions that are being undermined today.”

The report finds that within what Enough identifies as a violent
kleptocratic system in South Sudan, a lack of financial oversight over
military expenditure, combined with heavy influence by political
appointees, has created opportunities for mass corruption in the SPLA.

John Prendergast, Founding Director at the Enough Project, said:
“There is no accountability for the looting of state resources in
South Sudan, especially with military spending. The missing piece of
an effective international response is the creation of leverage to
shift the calculations of these violent kleptocrats from war to peace,
from mass corruption—including in the military—to good governance and
accountability in spending. The incentives that reward violence and
theft must be changed. The international community needs to help make
war costlier than peace for the leaders and create targeted and
personal consequences for corrupt war-mongers.”

Selected report excerpts:

Lack of financial oversight for and within the SPLA constitutes a
major organizational weakness and creates opportunities for
corruption. This deficiency does not stem primarily from a poor legal
framework, underdeveloped institutional capacity, or lack of knowledge
about international best practice in financial oversight. The
deficiency stems from willful, systematic obstruction of financial
oversight.

An army of approximately 230,000 on paper, with a large share of ghost
soldiers has little practical purpose. A payroll for a ghost army of
that size, however, can have a very important purpose: providing a
large opaque budget line to the military. This budget line has not
successfully been subjected to rigorous public oversight and auditing.

Corruption in South Sudan has shifted from being an integrated and
self-sustaining system to a disintegrative and self-destructing system
in the wake of economic collapse.

In a nation where resources are scarce and contested, and many people
are unable to provide for their basic needs, political appointments in
South Sudan empower certain individuals to access public accounts and
manage scarce financial resources. There are few effective
institutional mechanisms to check the use of public office and public
financial resources for individual gain.

RECOMMENDATIONS: The international community, with U.S. leadership,
has the opportunity to create consequences for these predatory actors
that harm South Sudanese people. Consequences should include:

a new U.S. executive order on South Sudan that makes public corruption
and misappropriation of state assets grounds for sanctions, as current
U.S. sanctions programs do for Belarus, Burma, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe,
Venezuela, and Ukraine/Russia.

U.S. lawmakers should also leverage U.S. anti-money laundering
authorities by having the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and other financial intelligence units
issue advisories and investigative requests related to South Sudanese
military transactions.
Link to full report: http://eno.ug/2iGE9Qw

For media inquiries or interview requests, please contact: Greg
Hittelman, Director of Communications, +1 310 717 0606,
g...@enoughproject.org.

About THE ENOUGH PROJECT

The Enough Project, an atrocity prevention policy group, seeks to
build leverage for peace and justice in Africa by helping to create
real consequences for the perpetrators and facilitators of genocide
and other mass atrocities. Enough aims to counter rights-abusing armed
groups and violent kleptocratic regimes that are fueled by grand
corruption, transnational crime and terror, and the pillaging and
trafficking of minerals, ivory, diamonds, and other natural resources.
Enough conducts field research in conflict zones, develops and
advocates for policy recommendations, supports social movements in
affected countries, and mobilizes public campaigns. Learn more – and
join us – at www.EnoughProject.org.

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2 Comments

Bala
January 28, 2017 at 5:25 pm

There isn’t quantitative data available to public or any
organization about how many soldiers there are in the SPLA. The
figure, 230 000 soldiers is fictional and therefore any claim of
corruption based on allegations of ghost names to collect cheques or
salaries is a deliberate propaganda the Enough Project doctored to
tarnish the army. Coming up with such a report without quoting people
like the SPLA’s defense minister, the army’s chief of staff or the
country’s authority on statistics is a misinformation.
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info@southsudannation
January 28, 2017 at 7:03 pm

Bala,
In actuality, what the Enough Project has endeavored to do is
to simply expose the worst and massive corruption that is
ill-reputedly and factually associated with the Kiir’s SPLA (the
supposed and presumed ‘national army’).
Millions (which have added up to billions) of dollars have
been allocated to Kiir’s SPLA but the effect and impact of the money
have not been transparently verifiable because of the mafia-like
secrecy of this tribal government.
So, when someone seriously looks into the way the army is so
blatantly mismanaged and under-resourced, the only justifiable
deduction is that the monies have been STOLEN BY THOSE IN AUTHORITY.
Slowly and with time, all the facts you wanted will be
plentifully furnished for your satisfaction. But still this will never
disqualify the allegations of massive corruption in Kiir’s tribal
SPLA.
Editor