Health official hounded through the courts for exposing corruption

Ravo Ramasomanana joined the public procurement unit at the Ministry of Health in Madagascar in June 2018. It wasn’t long before he began to notice serious irregularities taking place with the issuing of major tenders, including for the construction of a kidney transplant centre at a public hospital. He subsequently detailed these in a complaint filed with the Antananarivo Anti-Corruption Centre.

Ramasomanana reported that tenders were being rigged so that they would be awarded to companies belonging to relatives or associates of senior politicians and officials. He reported that 44 billion Malagasy Ariary (about 10 million USD) had been earmarked for improvements to 13 hospitals and clinics had been misappropriated.

In his complaint, submitted with supporting documents, Ramasomanana described how he had been asked to regularise contracts that contained fraudulent documentation, violated procurement policies and were tainted by corruption. In 2020 he resigned rather than authorise these contracts. 

The following year, after falling seriously ill with COVID, Ramasomanana made a YouTube video denouncing the massive looting of public healthcare funds while health workers went without proper protective gear, medicines and equipment. In the video, he displayed documents supporting his allegations. He also reported his concerns and evidence to Transparency International Madagascar. 

“I was facing death; that was the trigger, what pushed me to denounce the shenanigans I had been witnessing for months,” he told RFI. “I had to share this and not take it with me to my grave, that’s what gave me the courage to make the video.”

The video was widely shared on social media, and Ramasomanana filed his complaint with the anti-corruption centre. But instead of investigating the evidence of alleged corruption that he had disclosed, the authorities retaliated.

First of all, Ramasomanana was summoned to appear in court by the police’s Cybercrimes Unit to face charges of criminal defamation. Madagascar’s controversial cybercrime law criminalises defamation of government institutions published online.

When Ramasomanana reported to the national gendarmerie, he was informed an additional charge had been laid. The head of the Cybercrimes Unit had been sent insulting messages on his phone after Ramasomanana’s summons was posted on Facebook. As a result, Ramasomanana was also charged under Article 91 of the Malagasy Penal Code with “acts and activities of a nature to compromise public safety or to cause serious political unrest or to provoke hatred of the government or to incite breaking of the current laws of the country”. If convicted, he faced a five-year jail sentence.

Ramasomanana’s lawyer Eric Rafidison highlighted how his client was being denied his right to freedom of expression for denouncing corruption. 

“If someone tells you that a thief has entered your home, who are you going to file a complaint against? Against the thief or against the person who reported it?” Rafidison told the court. “Instead of helping my client to ensure that justice is done, the State is prosecuting him criminally, in response to the information he revealed... This means that in Madagascar we cannot say at this moment that we are free in our speech.”

The charges sparked a public outcry, with Amnesty International calling on the authorities to cease intimidation, harassment and attacks on whistleblowers in Madagascar. Amnesty demanded that the “trumped-up charges” against Ramasomanana for disclosing “information in the public interest” be dropped, and to “ensure he is able to freely exercise his right to freedom of expression without any reprisals”.

In a subsequent statement, Amnesty pointed out that “whistleblowers in Madagascar remain in an extremely dangerous situation. Vulnerable, exposed to reprisals and pressure with psychological impacts on both themselves and their families, whistleblowers face a wave of intimidation and often risk abusive defamation proceedings.”

Ramasomanana’s disclosures also led to an investigation by the MALINA network of investigative journalists in Madagascar that supported the suspicions he had raised.

In November 2021, Ramasomanana was convicted of defamation but acquitted of the other charges. He was sentenced to a six-month suspended jail term and fined 1 million Malagasy Ariary (225 USD).

Ramasomanana says he has lodged an appeal against his conviction, which suspends his penalty. But he has little faith that the Malagasy judicial system will process his appeal in the near future. “Who knows? Maybe in a few years …”

Blowing the whistle has taken a heavy toll on Ramasomanana, and he was forced to seek psychiatric care. Since then he has reapplied for a job at the Ministry of Health but was subjected to a disciplinary hearing, which last September ruled he should be reappointed at a lower grade. Despite this ruling, he remains “without a position and without renumeration”.

“But I avoided prison and have a roof over my head, so I’m doing well,” he says. “Thanks to my wife, who by the way is a doctor at the Ministry of Public Health, which provides for our needs.”

Despite enduring these trials, Ravo vows he would blow the whistle on corruption again if he had to.

Ravo Ramasomanana shares the Blueprint Africa Whistleblowing Prize for 2024.