ANCE: For the creation of a national financial prosecutor's office in Togo
All international, regional and EU anti-corruption instruments, such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, the ECOWAS Protocol on Combating Corruption and many other international standards, require States Parties to take measures to strengthen the integrity of the judicial sector in order to prevent opportunities for corruption, including prosecution services.
In the same vein, Article 36 of UNCAC requires States Parties to establish and operationalise one or more specialised bodies to combat corruption through law enforcement. Such body or bodies shall be granted the necessary independence to carry out their functions effectively and free from any undue influence.
Although Togo has carried out many reforms in the judicial sector, in particular with the adoption of the new judicial organisational code (2019), which introduced a new cartography with the appearance of new jurisdictions such as criminal courts, sentence enforcement judges, administrative jurisdiction and high courts, etc., it must be recognised that this reform needs to be supplemented by the creation of a National Financial Prosecutor's Office.
Financial crime, which has become transnational, continues to grow and become more complex, and the current mechanism has difficulties in dealing with cases relating to this financial crime, and in particular corruption and money laundering, because magistrates are not specialised in this area and have to combine this task with other particularly important jurisdictional responsibilities.
A national financial prosecutor's office will therefore have exclusive jurisdiction for the prosecution, investigation and trial of economic and financial offences, thereby promoting democratic transparency and the fight against economic and financial fraud.
This public prosecutor's office will also promote efficiency and speed in the management of public affairs litigation by honest and competent players.
ANCE-TOGO is therefore calling for the creation and operationalization of a national financial prosecutor's office in order to reduce cross-border organised crime by increasing the number of individuals and legal entities convicted, the sentences handed down to offenders and, above all, by strengthening the capacity to recover assets for the public treasury.