UNB, Dhaka :
After evaluating the overall performance of its appointed prosecutors, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has planned to reshuffle its panel engaging some competent lawyers in a bid to effectively fight its cases in courts.
“We’re thinking about it as we’ve found prima facie cases of inefficiency among the ACC panel prosecutors during the course of trial, resulting in losing the legal battle against the corrupt accused,” said ACC chairman M Badiuzzman in an interview with UNB.
According to official sources, the national anti-graft watchdog now has 264 prosecutors across the country, including the lower judiciary and the higher courts.
“We expect a positive result in the ACC-filed corruption cases from our prosecutors… but we hardly get it, and we think that is for lack of competent lawyers against the high-profile counsel for the graft suspects,” Badiuzzman said.
The ACC chief said the poor investigation is also responsible to some extent for losing cases.
Official statistics show on average graft suspects were convicted in 47 percent of cases filed by the ACC. And most of the convicted people got relieved of the charges from the higher courts due to ACC’ s poor investigations and inactiveness of its panel prosecutors.
Admitting the weakness of investigation into the corruption cases, Badiuzzman said it is true that the success rate of the ACC cases 47 percent on average. “I don’t want to say there’s no weakness in carrying out investigations and inquires. We’ve detected weakness in some cases.”
Mentioning that lack of experience of the ACC officials makes the probe process week, he said adding that the Commission is trying to improve their expertise through various trainings.
“We arranged a training course for officials last year and we’ll accelerate the course in the current calendar year, 2015. Judges of both incumbent and retired and legal experts will conduct the training sessions. We’ll try to remove the weakness of the ACC investigators,” said the ACC chairman.
Asked whether the ACC has any research initiative to identity the nature of pervasive corruption, Badiuzzaman said the ACC has a ‘research cell’ to identity the nature of pervasive corruption, but it did not conduct any mainstream research.
“It’s true we can’t carry out extensive research on graft, but we’ve a plan to strengthen research activities…now, we’re actively considering carrying out mainstream research to know why the acts of graft take place and find ways to check it,” he said.
About the delay of submission of ACC’s mandatory recommendations on preventing corruption to the President, he said the Commission, generally, publishes an annual report at the end of the calendar year and the report is under process for publication.
Badiuzzman said the ACC may submit its report with detailed recommendations to the President by March next.
After evaluating the overall performance of its appointed prosecutors, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has planned to reshuffle its panel engaging some competent lawyers in a bid to effectively fight its cases in courts.
“We’re thinking about it as we’ve found prima facie cases of inefficiency among the ACC panel prosecutors during the course of trial, resulting in losing the legal battle against the corrupt accused,” said ACC chairman M Badiuzzman in an interview with UNB.
According to official sources, the national anti-graft watchdog now has 264 prosecutors across the country, including the lower judiciary and the higher courts.
“We expect a positive result in the ACC-filed corruption cases from our prosecutors… but we hardly get it, and we think that is for lack of competent lawyers against the high-profile counsel for the graft suspects,” Badiuzzman said.
The ACC chief said the poor investigation is also responsible to some extent for losing cases.
Official statistics show on average graft suspects were convicted in 47 percent of cases filed by the ACC. And most of the convicted people got relieved of the charges from the higher courts due to ACC’ s poor investigations and inactiveness of its panel prosecutors.
Admitting the weakness of investigation into the corruption cases, Badiuzzman said it is true that the success rate of the ACC cases 47 percent on average. “I don’t want to say there’s no weakness in carrying out investigations and inquires. We’ve detected weakness in some cases.”
Mentioning that lack of experience of the ACC officials makes the probe process week, he said adding that the Commission is trying to improve their expertise through various trainings.
“We arranged a training course for officials last year and we’ll accelerate the course in the current calendar year, 2015. Judges of both incumbent and retired and legal experts will conduct the training sessions. We’ll try to remove the weakness of the ACC investigators,” said the ACC chairman.
Asked whether the ACC has any research initiative to identity the nature of pervasive corruption, Badiuzzaman said the ACC has a ‘research cell’ to identity the nature of pervasive corruption, but it did not conduct any mainstream research.
“It’s true we can’t carry out extensive research on graft, but we’ve a plan to strengthen research activities…now, we’re actively considering carrying out mainstream research to know why the acts of graft take place and find ways to check it,” he said.
About the delay of submission of ACC’s mandatory recommendations on preventing corruption to the President, he said the Commission, generally, publishes an annual report at the end of the calendar year and the report is under process for publication.
Badiuzzman said the ACC may submit its report with detailed recommendations to the President by March next.
