Afghanistan takes on the rich and powerful in war on graft
KABUL: Afghanistan’s anticorruption court has held its inaugural public hearings in Kabul, the first steps on the long road to transparency in one of the most corrupt countries in the world – and expectations are immense.
Afghans hope the Criminal Justice Centre against Corruption, created by presidential decree, is destined to prosecute the rich and powerful behind major cases of graft.
These, according to anticorruption NGO Transparency International, are numerous.
Afghanistan is at the very bottom of their authoritative global ranking, alongside North Korea and Somalia.
The anti- corruption centre, the fulfilment of a promise made by President Ashraf Ghani to the international community last May, is armed with prosecutors, judges and police criminal investigators, and had a war chest of half a million dollars for its first four months.
It is headed by a 32-year- old judge, Mohammed Alif Urfani, who sits in prefabricated offices in a heavily guarded compound between the headquarters of the special police and the anti- drug units.
“I see two types of threats: within the government, some do not want the centre to work; and the Taliban, they do not want the government to be strong,” he told AFP.
A father of two young children, Urfani is guarded by two soldiers and one member of the Afghan intelligence service.
“I have not received any direct threats, but this is just the beginning.
The pressure will inevitably increase when the biggest cases are reached,” he says, citing threatening phone calls received by police officers who arrested a three-star general at the Ministry of Defence.
Thirty-five people, including 14 judges, have been assigned to the centre, which comprises a court of first instance and a court of appeal.
“Whoever they are, they have been checked and cleared,” the spokesman for Attorney General Jamsheed Rasooli told AFP.
To date, they have taken 55 cases and 31 suspects are behind bars, with “five ministries” in their sights, as well as “the Central Bank of Afghanistan and the issuing authority of identity cards”, he says, but gives no further details.
Earlier this month the court handed down its first sentence: two and a half years in prison for military prosecutor General Abdul Haye Jurat.
He was caught red-handed as he pocketed 50,000 Afghanis from a prisoner’s family, demanded to secure the man’s release at the end of his sentence.
The offence appears minor in view of the billion dollars diverted from Kabul Bank in 2010, a massive scandal that highlighted how deep the roots of corruption go in Afghanistan – but it is a start. — AFP