He said the Commission will appeal because it disagrees with the judge’s interpretation of Misappropriation of Public Funds.
Francis in his own words said: “While I was away in Vienna, the judgement was sent to me, I had reviewed it and my preliminary observation of the judgement is that the ACC has discontent at the way the judge addressed the issue of Misappropriation of Public Funds. The precedent that he has established is very dangerous for the fight against corruption, particularly when the court rules on what constitutes Misappropriation. We have no issue with his general judgement, he is the judge and we respect his decision but we believe those issues have to be looked into by a higher tribunal and that is why we are constituting appeal against that. We at the ACC are doing the right thing and we are doing this in the interest of the country. Corruption is a very dangerous thing and for so long we have been babysitting corruption in Sierra Leone. For the first time the people can see that real effort has been put in fighting corruption. We have won seventeen state cases this is the first case that we have lost”.
