Judge blows whistle on corrupt lawyers
- Some lawyers pay court staff to misplace or destroy court files
- Bribed staff prioritise work for certain legal houses.
- They remove documents of counsel representing the other party so as to mislead the court that the party failed to file the necessary documents prior to the date of hearing.
- They insert documents in files when the same was not done at the right time.
When court documents or whole files are reported missing from a court registry, who do you suspect? Incompetent or reckless clerks misplacing records?
That could be right. But Justice Esmie Chombo, Judge president for Lilongwe Registry, has another culprit you probably did not think of—lawyers.
In a letter to Malawi Law Society (MLS) chairperson, dated January 18 2018, Chombo says she has been informed that some lawyers pay court staff to “misplace or destroy a court file so as to frustrate case proceedings.”
In an interview, MLS chairperson Khumbo Soko refused to comment on the allegations, saying the letter was a matter between the Judiciary and the Malawi Law Society.
“I cannot comment on the information that was leaked,” Soko said yesterday. “This is an internal matter.”
It was also not clear if the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Mary Kachale or the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) director Reyneck Matemba, who are lawyers themselves, would probe the damning allegations and let the law take its course against the bad apple within their fraternity.
Both Kachale and Matemba could not be reached for comment yesterday afternoon.
But Blantyre-based lawyer John-Gift Mwakhwawa, who is former MLS president, said allegations made against the profession were serious and it was important that MLS takes action.
He also called on the ACB to investigate the allegations.
Said Mwakhwawa, who confirmed seeing and reading Chombo’s letter: “Some of us have had suspicion, and we cannot just sweep these allegations away. We have the mandate to go deep and investigate. We should engage the Anti-Corruption Bureau to investigate these allegations.
“The moment people lose trust in the justice system, it is the beginning of anarchy. The matter needs to be investigated for the integrity of the profession and for public confidence.”
In the letter, Chombo welcomes consultations between MLS and judges to nip “these obnoxious practices before they took deep roots.”
The judge also complains that court reporters and secretaries abandon legitimate court work to do typing and printing for some lawyers who offer them money for the services, a development which she says is “clearly unacceptable”.
The judge has asked MLS to inform all lawyers “to desist from [such] malpractice”.
Over the years, court processes in the country has been riddled with missing files or missing pages in case files, misplacements of files, a development which another judge Justice Anaclet Chipeta, in an interview with Weekend Nation on Wednesday, cited as one of the reasons that leads to delay in delivery of justice in the country.
