Sierra Leone could jail corrupt foreign investors

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Sierra Leone's anticorruption commissioner has a simple message for foreign investors coming to his country for its mines and oil -- offer bribes and you could find yourself in prison.

Oil was discovered off the coast in September, exciting investors but also raising fears that, as so often previously in Africa, natural wealth might bring with it greater corruption and bloodshed.

"Definitely, the oil worries me -- the resource curse," Commissioner Abdul Tejan-Cole told Reuters in an interview at a Sierra Leone investment summit in London. "It is very important that it is as transparent as possible. We are proud of what we've achieved on that but we can and should do more."

He said he was happy with Sierra Leone's new mining law and that it had signed the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, but more transparency was needed over oil deals.

Sierra Leone emerged from a decade of civil war in 2002, and this year improved 12 places in the Transparency International global corruption rankings.

The former human rights and insurance lawyer said his commission would have no compunction about prosecuting corrupt foreign investors in court in the capital Freetown, and that could land them in a Sierra Leonean prison.

"It's a mandatory sentence," he said. "And I can assure you that our prisons are not somewhere where you would want to be."

That should not deter foreign investors, he said.