ACB silences judge’s corruption complaint after 5 years

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has not said whether it has investigated a complaint lodged five years ago by High Court judge Esme Chombo, who told the Malawi Law Society (MLS) that lawyers had allegedly colluded with court clerks to destroy court documents . .

In a letter to MLS dated January 18, 2018, Justice Chombo, who was then Chief Justice of the Lilongwe Registry but has now retired, complained that some lawyers were paying court staff to “lose or destroy court materials to disrupt the proceedings “.

In 2021, Justice Chombo, speaking through the then Registrar of the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal and the High Court of Malawi, Gladys Gondwe (now a judge), said she had not received any response to her complaint.

MLS president Patrick Mpaka said in an earlier interview that when MLS received the complaint from Justice Chombo, representatives of the bar, then led by lawyer Khumbo Soko as president, referred the case to the ACB for investigation.

But Mpaka said in a WhatsApp reply last week that he was not aware of any recent updates on the issue and asked for more time to check.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Blantyre-based lawyer and former MLS president John-Gift Mwahwawa said MLS was under the sway of the ACB, adding that lawyers were ill-equipped to conduct such an investigation on their own, especially since no rogue lawyers had been named .

When Weekend Nation Sent a questionnaire to ACB spokesperson Egriti Ndala last week, she said she was looking for information but no response was received as we went to press last night.

Governance expert Charles Kajoloweka criticized the ACB for its inaction, describing it as an example of the failure of law enforcement agencies to tackle deep-rooted impunity in the justice system.

In an interview on Thursday, Kajoloveka said: “One would expect such a call to action from a judge to be taken with due seriousness, given that it comes from a place of information and evidence. ACB should explain such inaction.”

However, Kajoloweka, who is also the executive director of Youth and Society (YAS), said he was aware that the ACB’s efforts to tackle corruption among some lawyers had been thwarted by questionable injunctions from some judges.

He said: “This is a scheme to protect ‘corruptors of the justice system’. Speaking about the accountability of judges, we must remember that lawyers are the basis of promoting corruption. They are midwives of corruption in the justice system.”

Concurring with Kajoloweka, Center for Social Accountability and Transparency executive director Willy Kambwandira suggested that the ACB’s silence indicates collusion between law enforcement agencies.

“The inactivity of the bureau in this and other cases clearly indicates its compromise and conflict of interests. He appears to be serving the interests of a few privileged Malawians at the expense of the majority,” Kambwandira said.

He added: “One might assume that the ACB is even more corrupt than corruption itself. It is time that both the ACB and the judiciary were held to a serious level of accountability.”

In her letter to MLS, the judge also complained that court reporters and secretaries are leaving legitimate court work to type and type for some lawyers who offer them money for their services, which she said is “plainly unacceptable.”

Over the years, judicial processes in the country have been riddled with missing files or missing pages in case files, misplacing files, as Judge Anaclet Chipeta, now retired, gave a past interview Weekend Nationcalled one of the reasons leading to delays in the administration of justice in the country.