Assessing the effectiveness of the fight against public-sector corruption in Mauritius: Perception v reality

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to examine and analyse public corruption by comparing citizens’ assessment of the perceived performance of the anti-corruption agency of Mauritius (ICAC), in terms of its prosecutorial efficacy, and comparing such perception with the reality reflected by court judgments.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A survey was carried out using a structured questionnaire, to gauge public opinion on the perceived effectiveness of the ICAC in fighting public corruption. Specific results were then cross-validated against an analysis of court judgments.

Findings

The survey findings reveal that citizens have a negative opinion on ICAC’s effectiveness and this perception is justified and validated by a content analysis exercise, to confirm poor prosecutorial performance.

Originality/Value

The study seeks to sensitise decision-makers on the need to instil public trust by clarifying specific provisions of the anticorruption legislation and adopting a proactive approach by setting up an integrity system within public organisations to address public corruption.

Introduction

There is a growing concern among citizens of Mauritius that the national anticorruption agency (ACA), the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), is ineffective in fighting corruption in the public sector; particularly in prosecuting cases of alleged corruption offences against public officials, under the Prevention of Corruption Act 2002 (PoCA). While, this also seems to be the case on the European continent, where the majority of Europeans believed that corruption cases are not prosecuted successfully,¹ in Hong-Kong, citizens generally have a positive perception towards their ACA.² Although, corruption, commonly defined by practitioners as “the abuse of public office for private gain” (World Bank, 1997; López Claros, 2015), is generally understood and accepted as morally wrong across different cultures, there exists variation in how it is perceived, depending on how societies value the difference between public and private goods (Rothstein and Torsello, 2013). Notwithstanding this argument, Mungiu-Pippidi (2015), who carried out a cross-national study to evaluate the efficacy of anticorruption programmes by ACAs, showed that these agencies in general, have not only failed to fight corruption effectively, but countries with ACAs have higher levels of corruption than those without, all things being equal.

In Mauritius, statistics on the success rate of prosecutions in respect of public officials charged for offences under the PoCA are not published. The only available indications are the latest findings of Transparency International's (TI) Global Corruption Barometer report released on 11 July 2019 which revealed that 61% of respondents believed that corruption level had increased as compared to the past years and they had a pessimistic outlook about the government's capacity and willingness to fight corruption (Pring and Vrushi, 2019). While this seems to be the situation, there is a paucity of literature on the actual effectiveness of the ICAC in prosecuting public officials charged with corruption offences. The main purpose of this empirical research is, therefore, to examine and assess the performance of the ICAC in terms of its prosecutorial efficacy with a view to sensitising policy-makers to take appropriate policy measures to enhance the fight against corruption in the public sector. This research paper is organised as follows: After the introduction, a brief literature review on ICAC's performance is presented in section 2. The mixed-methods study design, which is described in section 3, explains the methods used in this study and presents the results, which are analysed in section 4. Findings and policy implications are discussed in section 5. Section 6 concludes the study and offers suggestions for practice.