‘It’s not us’

…State’s legal advisers say not responsible for backlog of cases from SOCU

British financial crimes expert, Dr Sam Sittlington, has decried the slothfulness with which cases investigated by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) are being processed, but the State’s top legal advisers have denied holding up the prosecution of these cases.
Last week, Dr Sittlington, who has returned as an adviser to SOCU, expressed concern that there has been little done to take the financial crime cases, which have close to G$300 billion at stake, before the courts.

On this note, the white-collar crime expert said that he would soon be meeting with Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack; Police Legal Advisor, retired Justice Claudette Singh and SOCU’s special prosecutors to determine the reasons for the delay and work on a solution.
However, on Wednesday, Justice Singh told reporters that all the cases from SOCU that were before her were still active.
“All the matters which I have are in progress. There’re things being done like for example Pradoville, we are seeking valuations. So, I don’t know what he is talking about,” she asserted.
The Police Legal Advisor could not say how many SOCU cases were before her, but explained that certain files had to be returned to the investigators for further work to be done.
“…so it’s not like the files are static,” she defended.
Nevertheless, Justice Singh pointed out that while investigators as well as the British expert would like to see results and have the cases prosecuted, due diligence has to be exercised.
“They feel that they must charge right away… (but) we cannot just go and charge people… They would have done their investigations but even after investigations, files are not completed ,so you have to then advise on them and then you would see certain things missing and you would need certain statements, so that is it,” she added.
Justice Singh noted that she too was awaiting a meeting, which has not been scheduled as yet, with Dr Sittlington to discuss the matter.
Meanwhile, DPP Ali-Hack also denied having a backlog of cases, revealing that only four files from SOCU were before her Chambers presently.
“We only received four files from SOCU last week and those files have received attention,” she said. The DPP added too that one of those files was returned to SOCU last week, while the other three should be back by the end of today (Thursday).
At a press conference last week, Dr Sittlington also lamented that recommendations like hiring in-house legal counsel for SOCU and special prosecutors to assist the Police Legal Advisor (PLA) are languishing in much the same way as some of the cases he left.
“I do not make decisions on behalf of SOCU,” Dr Sittlington related. “(But) there’s a number of recommendations I made last year, which although approved have not yet been implemented. The five special prosecutors that we have also have private practices so they are conflicted between two different areas.”
“Ideally, we want one good lawyer in SOCU who can work with the cases … they can finalise a case before it goes to [the] PLA or DPP to try to quicken that actual process of getting that case to court,” Dr Sittlington noted.
He also noted that conflict sometimes arose between the PLA, the DPP and the special prosecutors. At the end of it all, Dr Sittlington acknowledged that undue delays were unfair to those being investigated from a human rights perspective.
Dr Sittlington pointed out that with only four forensic audits resulting in court charges, SOCU presently has to deal with 26 forensic audits that could result in over 300 cases. Of these, he said, an estimated G$170 billion could be at stake. In addition, Dr Sittlington revealed that SOCU was handling a number of referrals from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).