TITLE:
The Impunity Loop: Executive Dismissals without Accountability and Their Effects on Economic Growth in South Sudan
AUTHORS:
Aciec Benjamin Garang Kuot
KEYWORDS:
South Sudan, Corruption Accountability, Asset Recovery, Impunity Loop, Public Financial Management, Rule of Law, Economic Development, Anti-Corruption Law, Executive Dismissals
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.14 No.5,
September
23,
2026
ABSTRACT: Corruption functions as an arbitrary tax on economic activity, systematically degrading public sector efficiency and diverting national wealth from productive use. In South Sudan, a recurring governance pattern involves the President dismissing high-profile public officials implicated in financial scandals without any subsequent legal prosecution, forensic asset tracing, or fund recovery mechanism. This paper analyses how this “impunity loop”—defined as the absence of criminal prosecution, asset tracing, and financial restitution following executive dismissals—undermines South Sudan’s economic development and institutional integrity. It pays particular attention to the role of law, legal reform, and regulatory frameworks as instruments of deterrence and restitution. Adopting a public choice and legal-developmental theory lens, this paper reviews presidential decrees, anti-corruption legislation, Public Financial Management (PFM) frameworks, and comparative international legal instruments. It assesses the economic cost of unrecovered assets against national debt and public capital expenditure levels. Executive dismissals without prosecution or asset recovery normalise state capture and create a low-accountability equilibrium. Economically, unrecovered public funds deepen fiscal deficits, escalate reliance on predatory off-budget oil loans, and suppress foreign direct investment. Legally, the systemic bypassing of the Anti-Corruption Commission and the judiciary undermines the rule of law and signals to international lenders that public investments carry unacceptable governance risk. Executive dismissals are merely performative gestures unless tied to institutional criminal prosecution, forensic accounting mandates, and enforceable asset-recovery orders administered by an autonomous judiciary. Law and legal development offer the most durable pathway to deterrence and restitution of lost public funds.