AN APPRAISAL OF THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE RESTITUTION AND DISCONTINUANCE OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE SPECIAL CRIMINAL COURT
Keywords:
Special Criminal Court, Corruption, Restitution, DiscontinuanceAbstract
After having been crowned as world champion of corruption by Transparency International in 1998 and 1999, a cornucopia of national instruments and institutional mechanisms were put in place to fight against corruption in Cameroon in mid-2000. This saw the arrest of top-ranking functionaries and managers of public enterprises and establishments charged with the management of public property. This anti-graft campaign was baptized by the press as ‘operation sparrow hawk’ which was brutally jettisoned by many as a means by the President of the Republic to silent all his allies who could be his contenders at the helm of the State. In order to intensify the fight against the Misappropriation of public property and discard all speculations that it was politically motivated, the Special Criminal Court was created by Law no. 2011/028 of 14 December 2011 as amended with a provision allowing for the discontinuance of proceedings in case of restitution of the misappropriated property. Decree no. 2013/010 of 4 September 2013 lays down the modalities for the restitution of corpus delicti which can be in cash or kind. Unfortunately, this Court has recovered very little since its 8 years of its existence because restitution does not automatically entitle the offender to benefit from discontinuance of proceedings thereby serving as incentive against non-restitution. This article holds that the discretionary powers of the Minister of Justice in deciding who benefits from discontinuance after restitution defeats the purpose of restitution and proposes that the powers of the Ministers should be well defined. Moreover, the penalties provided for the sanction of the misappropriation of public property should be reviewed and plea bargaining adopted in the prosecution of the offence. Where there is no restitution, confiscation can be ordered in case of availability of asserts. We further suggest that the legal framework for assert recovery should be put in place and an organ in charge of recovery and management of stolen asserts created.
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