FAST TRACK COURT ON CORRUPTION IRRELEVANT - SACCORD

SETTING up fast-track courts on corruption is not necessary because the courts are adequate to handle any form of corruption case, Southern African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD) ex ecutive director Boniface Cheembe has said.

Mr. Cheembe said there was no need to set up a fast- track court on corruption because they believe that the current judicial structures could handle the cases in the asset recovery process.

“We believe that the judi cial infrastructure we have is adequate to handle those cases,” he said.

He said the government was supposed to assess the capacity of the courts to han dle the cases of corruption so that they could know wheth er there was need to improve if there was anything lacking.

The government will in troduce a mechanism to fast-tract recovery of stolen assets and prosecution of corruption cases through specialised fast-track stolen assets recovery mechanisms and courts for corruption and economic crimes would be introduced in the fight against corruption.

Mr. Cheembe said the gov ernment could still expedite the process of recovering assets that were believed to have been plundered from the nation.

He said SACCORD does not believe that duplicating the judicial systems by creat ing special courts that would be focusing on corruption, would be helpful.

He said that the recovery of plundered national assets would be something that would be beneficial to the people but fast-track courts would not be a lasting solu tion to that problem.

Mr. Cheembe said that working with what was available and increasing its capacity would have been a better choice than a special court which they were not sure whether they would be permanently there or not.