Towards a Data Driven Anti- Financial Crime Measures
One cannot help but to wonder why corruption and other financial crimes is on the increased not only in Nigeria, but across many African and developing nations. With the increase in these crimes so does the increase in effort by the different governments to fight the menace and ensure public funds are protected and prevented from being siphoned by unscrupulous elements. These efforts range from changing the leadership and management staff of the anti-corruption agencies, change in operational style of combatting corruption, review and amendment of the legal framework, creation of new agencies with new mandates and so on and so forth. However though one may think that with all these the crime of corruption would be on the decrease, unfortunately, NO. At least not from the data I have seen.
Thus, the Analogy of the Anti-Malaria drug comes to mind. When you are suffering from malaria, and you are given any of the off-the-shelf anti-malaria medication – usually you would be instructed to take it for a few (usually three) days. Within this period the malaria would be gradually subsiding – usually after the first dose some relief is felt, and it gets better after the second dose, by the time you are taking the third dose you might not even feel a thing except for some slight headache may be (side effects – may be). In fact, in so many children, parents have to follow-up to ensure they take the last dose as they would be already up and about feeling they are completely cured of the illness. This means that the medication is working – that is taken as directed by the doctors, you should be free of malaria within the stipulated period of three to four days.
Now applying this concept to the corruption issue, we keep making leadership changes, tactics and creating new agencies with new mandates, yet the crime keeps increasing. Agencies keep priding and show casing high arrest and conviction numbers year in year out with each year being more than the previous and so on and we still clap for them for having high number of convictions as thus that is the yard stick of effectiveness of the fight against corruption or any other crime for that matter.
The fact that more arrest, prosecution, and conviction are obtained year in year our, it simply means that the measure we apply are not working, just as the case of the malaria, when the medication is effective, the malaria subsides, so should the number of arrests, prosecution of convictions for corruption and other financial crimes. It simply means that the more effective our measures are the less number we should be registered year in year out, Agreed, we can’t completely remove the crime of corruption completely within a society, just as we can’t remove any crime completely from the society, but records or our outcome should have been a reduction in the number of incidences leading to arrests, prosecution, and conviction.
For me there are several reasons why this is so. Chief amongst these reasons is that our anti-corruption measures are not informed by data – We either must have copied and pasted these measures which to a large extend may be for the fear of reinventing the wheel or simply because of a successful implementation with good results from other nations in similar situations/condition to ours (by our estimations) where the fight against corruption has succeeded. Thus, we assume that the conditions are the same as ours and we just apply it to ourselves, or we are asked by international bodies to apply it on ourselves and without recourse to our peculiarities we just do.
Secondly, the implementation process is either not followed correctly or not monitored adequately, thus, giving rise to the measures either being short circuited or even possibly abandoned completely.
Then, comes the issue of what charge we get convictions on. When we say financial crimes, do we mean fraud, and when it is fraud, what type of fraud is it? When we say corruption, do we mean bribery, abuse of office, nepotism or other.
A call for an in-depth study of data driven measures to fight Financial Crimes including corruption.
A study to be conducted on all financial crimes recorded by law enforcement agencies showing cases investigated, prosecuted, and convicted for at least three years, each with amounts involved, recoveries made, status of persons involved, type of financial crime, and modus operandi used in committing crime.
This study should determine if patterns to the commission of these crimes can be established and if there are trends that should be understood. Following these further studies of threats to these crimes should be determined in addition to system vulnerabilities that permits their commission. Given the availability of data, the resources expended on each of these (Investigations, prosecutions, and recoveries) should be tabulated and studied to show comparison across the years –
Specifically, this study should amongst other things.
- Determine if agencies adopt a crime fighting strategy.
- If the strategies are informed by the crime data
- What changes in tactical strategies to crime fighting can be deciphered? If any has been adopted and deployed earlier.
- What are the strategic policies adopted for the long term, if any.
The study will take a four-prong approach of (1) Data collection, (2) Analysis, (3) Tactical/Strategic response to the crimes and (4) assessment of response impact on the crimes.
Data Collection
This will involve a review of previous cases lodged with the identified agency, notwithstanding whether a conviction was secured or not. The idea is to classify the cases into types. Example – When dealing with EFCC, there should be two broad categories of corruption and fraud cases, under each there should be sub-types say under corruption- Abuse of office, bribery, nepotism, etc. and under fraud there should be cyber-fraud, obtaining under false pretenses etc.
Analysis
In-depth analysis of these cases would then be conducted to provide the WHO- showing profile of both offender and victim (where applicable), specifically showing status of offender and victim within the polity. The WHAT – this will be a description of the crime, showing the modus operandi, the place of crime (ministry, department, etc.), vulnerabilities (exploited avenue), etc. Established patterns? Any observable trends?
Response.
Agencies should be able to develop measures to the corresponding issues identified during the analysis phase and through which tactical and/or strategic plans can be developed to deal with them. Here, study should be able to identify if agencies have adopted this data driven method of combatting the crimes they are meant to combat based on historic record of cases, and if changes were affected in their subsequent responses. Following successful application of the measures at the tactical level, study should further find if any decision has been taken to address these issues at the strategic level, these are the issues that should form policy direction of fighting these crimes and may result to amendments of laws or change in policy directions, etc.
Assessment of Impact
An assessment of the measures taken should be conducted to determine the reaction of the crimes. Specifically, agencies should identify if there are reductions in the number of incidences of these crimes or if there is a change of tradecraft in the conduct of the crimes.