Bou Alaaq stresses smugglers stronger

The General Secretary of the National Authority for Combating Corruption (NACC), Katheir Bou Alaaq, stressed that smugglers who control more than 50% of the national economy are necessarily stronger than the state financially. He pointing out that there are a lot of them are taking large sums of money because of smuggling operations and parallel activity, adding that combating corruption has become fateful issue.

Bou Alaaq indicated in a special interview with Arabs Today that the campaigns targeting Prime Minister Yousef al-Shahed against the backdrop of his war on corruption, as well as the head of the body, Shawki al-Tabib, are carried out by the dangerous lobbies willing to do anything to protect their interests. "It is natural that the war on corruption represents a nuisance to them and a threat to their interests," Bou Alaaq added.

In another context, the Tunisian official called for the withdrawal of the draft basic law on good governance and combating corruption body.
 
The General Secretary of the Commission noted that drafting the law by the executive branch violates the distribution of power approved by the Constitution of 2014 through the creation of independent constitutional bodies.
 
He reviewed the problems related to the constitutionality of the text, especially with regard to the lack of access to the prior opinion of NACC, as required by the provisions of Chapter 13 of the framework decree No. 120 of 2011 on the fight against corruption.

Bou Alaaq criticized the lack of provisions regulating the organization's structure and the mechanisms for exercising its powers in relation to the tasks entrusted to it under other legal provisions, such as the law on reporting corruption and protecting whistleblowers.

He also pointed to the absence of provisions that clearly enshrine the financial independence of the body stipulated by the constitution in Chapter 125.

Bou Alaaq spoke about what he considered as a rebound from the gains that had been established through the legislative framework of the work of the current body, what restricting its absolute powers in accordance with the requirements of the constitution and reducing the effectiveness of its work in the fight against corruption.

In this context, he called for the creation of a procedural mechanism that would enable the commission to follow up the files referred to the judiciary and to initiate civil advocacy by granting it the right to sue in cases of corruption as a private right.