NEWS

Evidence of tardy justice presented

The man responsible for identifying and rooting out corruption in the public sector yesterday lived up to his word, handing over to the Supreme Court hundreds of documents confirming the judiciary’s failure to dispense justice in dozens of cases involving civil servants suspected of being corrupt. Public Administration General Inspector Leandros Rakintzis appeared to rile the Supreme Court last week when he appeared before a parliamentary committee and slammed judges for foot-dragging and incompetence. The country’s top judges immediately asked him to produce evidence to support his claims. Rakintzis’s primary source of frustration with the judiciary is that over the last six years he has referred cases involving more than 450 allegedly corrupt civil servants to justice but no final verdicts have yet been issued for any of them. Yesterday, he was questioned for two hours by deputy Supreme Court prosecutor Roussos Papadakis about these cases. Rakintzis provided Papadakis with the details of all the cases. «We are all anxious about the state of the justice system,» said Rakintzis, who was a judge for 38 years, on exiting his meeting. «We are all trying to improve its quality and the evidence I have given is in this direction.» Rakintzis suggested that in cases where his investigations have led to a reasonable amount of evidence of wrongdoing being collected, prosecutors should not then launch a separate probe of their own, holding up the process unnecessarily. Sources said that the Supreme Court is determined to find out why so many important cases have remained unresolved, as part of a wider effort to speed up the dispensation of justice. Papadakis, meanwhile, pleaded with the media to refrain from sensationalizing the delays within the justice system. «Let justice carry out its work,» he said. «Any political or other type of speculation should stop, especially when judges have not intentionally gone beyond the limits. Trial by TV or radio does not help promote justice or the justice system.»

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