9 July, 2008 - The recent media statement, made by the newly appointed attorney general, has brought back into focus the existing disagreement between judiciary officials, the anti-corruption commission and the office of the attorney general on the ACC’s retroactive powers.
Last week, attorney general Rinzin Penjor was quoted as saying that OAG will henceforth “look into cases that came after the enactment of the ACC Act.”
In the past two years, ACC investigated and OAG prosecuted cases and ultimately the court determined guilt or innocence.
However, the issue of ACC’s retroactive application arose last year when district courts in the country dismissed most ACC cases, arguing that they happened before the enactment of the Penal Code in 2004 and the ACC Act in 2006.
The question now is what will happen if the new attorney general, who was the Punakha district court drangpon, has reservations prosecuting the pending ACC cases.
OAG officials said that there are ACC cases against 107 individuals pending court action.
However, the attorney general made an assurance that OAG, ACC and the government would find a collective solution to the confusion about prosecuting cases under ACC provisions. But he said that he will “not challenge the court’s interpretation of the law.”
“We’re not going to challenge the court’s decision but correct ourselves. We don’t want to be accused of not prosecuting in the proper way,” he said.
Rinzin Penjor added that the first thing he will do once he joins office is to study why the courts have been giving different judgments on the ACC cases. “The provisions of the ACC Act were not applied in any of these cases,” he said. “We also need to thoroughly understand why and which provisions of the law were applied to pass judgment on some of the previous cases before we send any further case to the court.”
The attorney general also said that OAG will not deal with small cases forwarded by ACC.
He said that ACC, OAG and the government will have to reach an understanding of which cases should be prosecuted by, for example, having a ceiling on the corruption amount. “If ACC forwards a case involving Nu 10,000, I’d suggest we send it back to the concerned ministries for administrative action,” he said.
An OAG official said that OAG does not have to prosecute every single case investigated by ACC but that the office will have to give substantial reasons why a case is not being prosecuted.
Source: Kuenselonline.com |
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