As the world celebrates the International Anti-Corruption Day, we are discovering the sordid underbelly of our island. Angus Road with its suspicious payments and serious allegations suddenly seems like a distant memory, fading away as we sink deeper and deeper into the underworld.

A suspicious death and the scorched body of a man hitherto an ally have now come to haunt a country hardly used to crimes of this nature.

In the middle of the confusion, the accusations and counteraccusations, a small, helpless widow makes very serious allegations about a minister or his brother in relation to her husband’s death and she is asking for justice. Her lawyers are openly talking about “a mafia operating in the political arena”.

Minister Yogida Sawmynaden did not deem it fit to respond to possible accusations of murder. We hear however that he replied to the allegation that he had created a fictitious job for Simla Kistnen and started pocketing her Rs15,000 allowance as a constituency clerk – a very serious offence. His explanation seems to be that the lady was indeed employed by him and that he was paying her husband. Did he keep sending the money to the husband in his grave for the last two months as he continued to pocket the allowance? Since the husband is no longer here to tell the tale, you can either take the minister’s word for it or think that he should have tried a bit harder to find a slightly more credible excuse. I am one of those who believe him. I even commend him for that.

Sawmynaden is right to pay the husband for work supposedly done by the wife. Women are good enough to do the work but money matters should be kept between men. They are really too important to be left to women. On that basis, did Sawmynaden himself personally pick up the Rs7 million cheque Ciel wrote to his wife when Apollo Bramwell changed hands? Did he do the same when contracts by government, parastatals and some banks started raining non-stop on his wife since 2015, when her competence suddenly came into the light?

The minister will therefore just have to confirm that he reasons along those lines and that he believes that women should work and their husbands pick up the cheque. He will naturally have to produce proof that a Rs15,000 cheque was being drawn every month in the name of Soopramanien Kistnen or show cash withdrawals from his bank account amounting to Rs15,000 at around the same time, including when the husband was dead but still receiving his wife’s pay cheque! The minister will this way be able to clear his name of one of the most heinous of crimes – robbing a poor person when one is on a package of over Rs350,000!

Once his name cleared of this, it will be easier to believe him when he gives his defence against the accusation openly made by Kistnen’s widow that Sawmynaden or his brother killed her husband to prevent him from revealing scandals that might send the minister reeling to jail.

In the meantime, it is worth pointing out that the minister is still…a minister! But then again so is boss, the owner of Angus Road. Welcome to the dark and sordid underbelly of the island! Welcome to a country that is likely to adorn the EU blacklist for a long time. Welcome to a jurisdiction that has little to celebrate on the International Anti-Corruption Day.