Tunisia grants protection to figures from 40 corruption cases

The Tunisian National Anti-Corruption Unit (INLUCC) has decided to grant protection to figures from 40 corruption cases within the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries and Ministry of Higher Education.

Only one complaint was rejected for procedural irregularities and for taking place outside of the period included in the Corruption Reporting Act.

The INLUCC said on Saturday in a statement that the commission responsible for examining applications for protection and regularisation of situations made the decision after a meeting on Friday to review the corruption records in accordance to the provisions of article 39 of Basic Law No. 2017-10 of 7 March 2017 on the denunciation of corruption.

At the end of February this year, the Assembly of People’s Representatives adopted the law denunciating corruption and the protection of whistle-blowers with 145 votes in favour and none against or abstaining.

In January 2017, in a ceremony called “the whistle-blower of the year”, ten launchers in corruption cases were honored in Tunisia in an attempt to break the wall of silence around this scourge which has hampered the country’s transition as a young democracy.

Read: Tunisian journalists faced 100 attacks in the last six months

In 2016, Chawki Tabib , chair the INLUCC, revealed that about 60 percent of whistle-blowers are men because Tunisian women are still subject to a “patriarchal social model” which prevents them from denouncing these abuses, in particular those linked to “extortion of sexual favours”.

Tunisia has been fighting cases of corruption since the revolution in 2011 which ousted the government of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali where corruption was largely prevalent.