EDITORIAL - It's gone badly wrong at DPP's office

Something is badly amiss in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Several months ago, the DPP told the Jamaican public that her office had dispatched to the relevant agencies in Great Britain a request for evidence to advance a claim of corruption against a governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) parliamentarian and former junior minister, Mr Joseph Hibbert.

Before formally entering politics, Mr Hibbert was a senior technical official in the ministry that oversaw government construction projects. He often signed off on deals with foreign supply companies, including the British engineering and bridge-building firm Mabey & Johnson. In 2009, Mabey & Johnson pleaded guilty in the United Kingdom to bribing foreign government officials, including Mr Hibbert, during his time at the Ministry of Transport and Works.

The Mabey & Johnson case was three years ago. In that time, the Jamaican authorities have, ostensibly, been investigating Mr Hibbert, including, as Ms Paula Llewellyn, the DPP, advised in July, utilising the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) between the two countries to ask the British for information.

Recall: Mabey & Johnson pleaded guilty to corruption, conceded that it bribed Mr Hibbert, and undertook to reimburse payments to Jamaica. To be fair, Mr Hibbert denies the allegations against him.

So now, Ms Llewellyn has revealed that the request to the British authorities for the information on Mr Hibbert is yet to leave her office. The excuse of the DPP: "certain information" required by her office, to "lay the basis in law" for the request under MLAT, has not been provided by the police.

Apparently, neither the DPP nor any of her deputies or other senior officials in that agency was aware of this lapse and that the request was still lodged, perhaps in a weathered file jacket, on foolscap paper with a one-third margin, somewhere in their offices. Meanwhile, Ms Llewellyn points an accusatory finger at the police who, despite recent improvements, would make no great claim to efficiency. Yet, the handling of the Hibbert affair is no poster for competence on the part of the Office of the DPP.

Corruption crisis

Indeed, Ms Llewellyn would hardly complain, we expect, if the Hibbert matter was represented as a metaphor for the operation of her office. It appears to lack the energy to robustly prosecute corruption, which, according to Mr Greg Christie, the contractor general, has reached "disproportionate, if not crisis, levels in Jamaica".

In a recent speech in New York, Mr Christie noted that his office, based on its investigations, had in three years made 40 referrals to the DPP, but that "not one has been brought before the courts to test its judicial efficiency".

Mr Christie is not the only one concerned about the seeming lethargy of the Office of DPP in tackling corruption cases, notwithstanding its heavy load of matters relating to offences against the person, including homicide.

Ms Llewellyn would not have bolstered public confidence about the accountability of her office when she recently rolled the rampart of the DPP's constitutional independence to refuse to appear before a parliamentary committee to supply, in any form, information on the operations of her office.

That confidence would only have dipped further with the Hibbert affair, in which event it is time for Ms Llewellyn to take serious stock.