Allegations of deep-seated corruption are being highlighted by the Korag, an oversight body established last year in Burkina Faso. This institution is tasked with supervising the nation’s strategic vision during its transitional period. Through an extensive statement, the Korag has revisited a four-year-old case involving customs officials accused of extorting money from road transporters seeking to move their vehicles.

According to the Korag, investigators possess irrefutable material evidence of these illicit activities. This includes substantial cash discovered in the officers’ offices and homes, along with witness testimonies and video footage capturing them in the act of racketeering.

Despite this compelling evidence, the suspects were surprisingly acquitted, a development that the junta condemns. The transitional government now alleges that an lawyer and ten senior magistrates from the Ouagadougou Court of Appeal accepted bribes to secure the release of the customs officers and to expose the identities of key prosecution witnesses.

The Korag has vehemently labeled these events a “judicial masquerade” and a “severe breakdown in the justice and witness protection system.” These factors, the body asserts, provided ample justification for the magistrates’ arrests last month. The junta has pledged to enforce “disciplinary sanctions against unethical members of the judiciary, without ruling out criminal prosecution.”