JUBA: South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has suspended two key ministers in a fraud investigation, the government said yesterday.
Western donors have warned South Sudan’s government that aid payments are at risk unless it tackles the corruption undermining development in a country devastated from decades of civil war with Sudan, from which it seceded in 2011.
Last year, Kiir wrote to 75 current and former officials to ask them to return $4bn in “stolen” public money, but no senior figure had been publicly put under investigation until now.
Kiir has now lifted the immunity of Cabinet Affairs Minister Deng Alor Kuol and Finance Minister Kosti Manibe Ngai and suspended them pending an investigation into the procurement of fireproof safes for Alor’s ministry for $8m, according to a government decree released yesterday.
It said the payment had been approved by the Finance Ministry, and that a high-level committee would determine whether there was “an element of fraud and forgery exercised in this process of transfer and payments”.
Reuters
