Corruption’s War on the Law Eva Joly, a lawyer, is a former member of the European Parliament, where she served as vice chair of the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Evasion, and Fraud.
PARIS – When you try to fight corruption, corruption fights back. Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia could tell you that – if she had not been murdered by associates of those she was investigating. Rwandan anti-corruption lawyer Gustave Makonene, who was strangled and thrown from a car, also can’t talk. Nor can Brazilian activist Marcelo Miguel D’Elia, who was shot multiple times in a sugarcane field near his home.
Police officers, prosecutors, and public officials have also faced severe consequences for trying to take on corruption. One such official is Ibrahim Magu, who became acting chairman of Nigeria’s main anticorruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), in 2015. In 2017, gunmen attacked Magu’s home, killing one of the policemen guarding it. But bullets were not what ultimately neutralized Magu. Instead, his removal from office was engineered through “lawfare” – the use (or abuse) of the law for political ends.
Last year – at a time when the EFCC was reportedly probing corruption allegations against AttorneyGeneral Abubakar Malami – Magu was arrested and detained over allegations of corruption and insubordination, leveled by none other than Malami. Although the same allegations had been investigated and dismissed three years earlier, Magu was suspended from office, pending the outcome of a Panel of Inquiry set up by President Muhammadu Buhari. Magu was given few options to defend himself. For several weeks, he was prevented from accessing the evidence against him, and he was repeatedly denied permission to address the Inquiry or cross-examine witnesses.
Moreover, the Inquiry’s mandate, terms of reference, and timeline to which it was expected to adhere were never disclosed. This left Magu – who has overseen the successful prosecution of numerous senior politicians on corruption charges and the seizure of millions of dollars’ worth of illicitly obtained assets – not only unable to continue doing his job, but also exposed to an open-ended process of intimidation.
Olanrewaju Suraju, one of Nigeria’s most prominent anti-corruption activists, is currently facing a similar pattern of lawfare attacks. Earlier this year, a former Nigerian attorney-general, Mohammed Adoke, accused Suraju of forging evidence in a corruption trial in Milan, Italy, involving the oil multinationals Shell and Eni. The charges against the companies – which were ultimately acquitted – related to their acquisition of an offshore Nigerian oil block known as OPL 245.
Following Adoke’s accusations, Suraju was detained for questioning by a police unit mandated to investigate police misconduct – and super