By John Macartney

In his presidential campaign last year Koroma promised Sierra Leoneans a “zero tolerance” approach to corruption, writes Reuters. And as he signed the bill into effect Koroma declared: "What we are doing today is unique, not only within the sub-region, but even in Africa. It is a clear message to all Sierra Leoneans that this cancer that has taken up our society must be addressed with all seriousness and commitment," reports Voice of America (VOA).

According to Africa News: “The new law now makes it mandatory for all public officials, including ministers, heads of para-statetals to declare their assets before assuming power.” Asked to estimate the worth of his assets by the BBC, Koroma said they included “properties, vehicles, interest on shares, and a few other items” and that they “would be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - not millions.”

Sierra Leone’s anti-corruption commissioner Abdul Tejan-Cole commented: “The Act will bring the country's laws in line with our international commitment” and “enables us to enter into an international cooperation agreement, and makes provision for the extradition of those who are corrupt -- not only Sierra Leoneans who are corrupt in Sierra Leone and who go abroad, but also foreign nationals who come into Sierra Leone having committed corrupt acts in other countries” (Agence France-Presse).

According to VOA, the new law “increases the number of corruption offences from the nine already on the books to 29. It also provides for stiffer penalties.”

“Corruption is seen as one of the reasons for the outbreak of civil war in the country in the 1990s…It is also seen as the reason the country has been almost consistently at the bottom of the UN's human development index, despite its huge mineral resources,” says the BBC's Sierra Leone correspondent Umaru Fofana.

Sierra Leone scored 1.9 in Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (where 10 represents highly clean and 0 represents highly corrupt).

By Myroslava Purska

Traditionally granted by the country’s president to celebrate the Independence Day on 15 August, the amnesty covered 341,000 executives, politicians and bureaucrats this year, including Hyundai Motor chairman Chung Mong-Koo, SK group chairman Chey Tae-Won and Hanwha group chairman Kim Seung-Youn (Reuters).

"I am aware that there is criticism of the amnesties and personally I oppose them," said Lee said in a statement. "But I considered slowing investment and decided that businesses may be facing difficulties"( Asia Times).

Business lobby groups, such as the Federation of Korean Industries, praised the amnesty, saying the convictions had “deterred big businesses from making aggressive investments”, reports Financial Times (FT).

However, the move has been met with strong criticism from opposition parties and civil society who argue “the practice of pardoning wrong-doers risked suggesting that businessmen and politicians would not suffer severe penalties for serious crimes,” writes FT. “By tolerating corporate crimes, the government has damaged the spirit of law observance, which threatens the long-term growth of the Korean economy,” said Kim Sang-jo, a trade professor at Hansung University, reports Yonhap.

Amnesty for high-ranking business people is apparently not unprecedented. AFP reports that “South Korean judges have a long record of leniency towards bosses of chaebol -- giant family-run conglomerates -- and other prominent white-collar criminals”. However, this year's pardon did not include Lee Kun-hee, the former Samsung chief convicted in July for tax evasion (Associated Press).

By John Macartney

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), “The tightknit business community here has been rocked by a series of probes into alleged financial misdeeds at some of Dubai's biggest and best-known financial and real-estate firms. As word of fresh arrests and police interrogations leaked out over recent months, government officials and executives at companies involved have disclosed little about the probes. That has raised fresh questions about transparency and due process in the emirate.”

In response to the news, Dubai’s public prosecutor Issam al-Humaidan has commented: “The strictness with which some violations that emerged in the recent past were dealt with, confirms the government's commitment to maintaining the highest global standards in fighting corruption and enhancing its achievements in the economic, financial and legislative fields," reports ArabianBusiness.com.

Similarly, the office of Dubai leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum has warned that "there will be no tolerance shown to anybody who tries to exploit his position to make illegal profits" (The Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU).

"It's a message to those inside as well as the outside. Insiders have to play by the rules," said Eckart Woertz, an economics analyst at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, in an interview with WSJ. "And to outsiders, that [are] here, we do play by the rules."

However, according to a report in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, critics argue that “the anti-corruption drive merely addresses the tip of the iceberg, ignoring some of the underlying problems of doing business in Dubai, where state-owned companies rarely issue economic data and regulations are sometimes applied unevenly.”

The same report quotes Christian Koch, director of international studies at the Gulf Research Center, who claims: “The authorities are having to bring these cases to light because if they did nothing, they were bound to emerge on their own…Fighting corruption may be painful in the short term, but it is absolutely necessary for sustained economic growth.”

On 23 September, the EIU reports that none of those held in connection with the cases has been put on trial yet.