A new report by an Independent Review Panel on corruption allegations against the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi Adesina has completely exonerated him of any ethical wrongdoings, an official source confirmed Tuesday.
Anonymous whistleblowers had initially accused Adesina of embezzlement, preferential treatment of Nigerians in senior appointments and promoting people accused or found guilty of fraud and corruption.
Adesina is a former minister of Agriculture in his native Nigeria.
The distinguished three-member panel include Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, an ex United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Chairperson of the Elders, a global body of wise persons concerned with the world’s wellbeing.
Gambian Chief Justice Hassan B. Jallow and Mr. Leonard F. McCarthy, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and the ex Director for the Office of Serious Economic Offences.
He is also a former head of the Directorate of Special Operations of South Africa who also served as the Vice President of Integrity for the World Bank for nine years.
In January 2020, sixteen allegations of ethical misconduct were levelled against Adesina by a group of whistleblowers.
The allegations which were reviewed by the Bank’s Ethics Committee of the Board of Directors in March, were described as “frivolous and without merit.”
The findings and rulings of the Ethics Committee were subsequently upheld by the apex Bureau of the Board of Governors in May, which cleared Adesina of any wrongdoing.
The report by the panel states that it “concurs with the (Ethics) Committee in its findings in respect of all the allegations against Adesina and finds that they were properly considered and dismissed by the Committee.”
The panel once again vindicates Adesina, stating: “It has considered the president’s submissions on their face value and finds them consistent with his innocence and to be persuasive.”
The conclusions of the Independent Review Panel are decisive and now clear the way for Governors of the Bank to re-elect Adesina to a second five-year term as president during the annual meetings of the AfDB scheduled for August 25-27.
Adesina is a highly decorated and distinguished technocrat and globally-respected development economist.
He was awarded the prestigious World Food Prize in 2017 and the Sunhak Peace Prize in 2019 for global leadership in agriculture and for good governance.
Since taking over the reigns of the Bank in 2015, he has introduced several innovative reforms including a High5 development strategy; a restructuring of the bank including setting up offices in several African nations to get closer to its clients; an Africa Investment Forum that has attracted $79 billion in investment interests into projects in Africa between 2018 and 2019.
He successfully led a historic General Capital Increase campaign that culminated in the Bank’s shareholders raising the institution’s capital from $93 billion to $208 billion, in October 2019.
 |
CU/as/APA