By Alejandra Del Puerto*
The Observatory of Judicial Cases and, specifically, the section of Emblematic Cases of Corruption (Observatory, hereinafter), is an initiative promoted by civil society and installed by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) to strengthen the mechanisms of transparency and citizen control. In this article we will analyze what this platform consists of, how it was created, what content can be found and in what format it is presented.
The Observatory is a digital platform hosted on the webpage of the Supreme Court of Justice, where there is a list of emblematic cases linked to acts of corruption (see Figure 1). It was created in August 2019 by the Coordinadora de Abogados del Paraguay (COAPY hereinafter), a civil society organization that brings together lawyers who fight to improve the administration of and access to justice. It was instituted as a watchdog of cases of punishable acts of corruption to combat impunity.
Figure 1: Image of the Observatory of the Judiciary’s website
The request to set up this Observatory arose from the urgent need to make corruption cases transparent. This tool was necessary to identify the actors involved in these processes – defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges – and to know the status of the cases and how they were being handled. Before the Observatory, the issue of transparency in these processes was greatly problematic.
It happens that punishable cases of corruption affect the “public” and, as such, individuals, and society as a whole. Therefore, the Public Prosecutor’s Office must ensure that the cases move forward quickly, something we hardly notice in the Paraguayan justice system. Without other parties driving these processes, corruption cases ended up in the courts and tribunals without being identified as such, without advancing in the corresponding procedural stages, remaining dormant. This situation clearly benefited those involved in the process, who could act or not act, without any kind of control or public scrutiny, according to Esther Roa, president of COAPY. Hence the need for the Observatory. Roa has been one of the main reasons why the Observatory was created and is up to date.
The Observatory’s evolution has been remarkable. At its inception, the Observatory first had 50 emblematic cases. As of July 2023, after almost 4 years of operations, there are over 120 updated files. The files loaded are linked to important political figures or people from the inner circles of power groups. Carlos Portillo, Darío Messer, Patricia Samudio, Froilán Peralta, Erico Galeano and Hugo Javier González are some of the most well-known defendants. The files refer to indications of crimes such as fraud, influence peddling, smuggling, breach of trust, among others. In other words, they are acts of corruption, related to the abuse of power or personal benefit at the expense of public interests.
Having the status of these and other relevant cases is a great achievement in terms of access to information and transparency. However, despite the progress, there are still some difficulties and issues to improve the platform.
The information gathered at the Observatory is still limited. This is due to several factors. For example, no provision or regulation establishes the criteria used to determine what makes a case emblematic, which gives way to subjective interpretations and, therefore, to possible discrepancies in the criteria for uploading some cases and not others. Pursuant to CSJ Resolution 1666, cases are incorporated at the request of lawyers’ associations, the media or the public, provided that the CSJ Superintendence Council determines that they are emblematic, without further details to define the criteria for this determination.
To date, the vast majority of cases have been filed at the request of one or two organizations -COAPY and Somos Anticorrupción PY-, whenever they became aware of the existence of cases linked to acts of corruption. A consequence of this is that not all cases of corruption committed by authorities or public officials are on the page. It is enough to see that cases such as “Dany Xavier Durand Espínola y otros s/estafa y otros” -former congressman and former minister of urbanism-, “Oscar Boidanich Ferreira, Raquel Cuevas y Melisa Parodi s/ lavado de dinero y otros” -former minister of SEPRELAD- and “Mario Alfredo Vega Mereles y otros s/ cohecho pasivo agravado y otros” -former head of INDERT- are not in the Observatory and are waiting to be uploaded.
Another limitation has to do with the Observatory’s operating mechanism. According to the ruling 1666, the information must be manually updated every two weeks. This implies that the official in charge of monitoring a case must communicate with the court in question, inquiring about developments in the case file to upload the information obtained to the platform. This does not happen. Esther Roa commented (to the author of this article) that they must constantly submit notes to the CSJ requesting the update of the files in the Observatory and, not only that, but also indicate errors in the data uploaded in the cases. Not to mention that in addition to monitoring the information of the Observatory, almost daily they submit urgent notes to the courts and tribunals to promote the progress of the files, urging the judges to issue and sanction. Therefore, there is no certainty of having the most updated information at the time of reviewing the files.
Another difficulty is the way in which the information is presented. Although it is possible to find the details of the proceedings, the format in which the information is displayed makes it difficult to analyze and process. The cases are presented in an unnumbered list, classified in alphabetical order, according to the name on the cover page of the file, without a search engine to facilitate finding the information according to criteria of interest that can be established by the users. Therefore, to find a specific file, one must look through the list one by one.
Another problem is that the information for each case is uploaded in a PDF document. In the absence of a user-friendly system or software for searching information, it is not possible to perform advanced searches to quickly see, for example, case trends over time, the evolution of frequency, localities, courts involved and key words that allow the identification of cases, among other useful criteria.
The request to set up this Observatory arose from the urgent need to make corruption cases transparent. This tool was necessary to identify the actors involved in these processes – defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges – and to know the status of the cases and how they were being handled. Before the Observatory, the issue of transparency in these processes was greatly problematic
Finally, the Observatory is not very user-friendly for a public not specialized in law. Those who are not familiar with legal processes or terminology will probably have difficulty understanding the information available. This creates barriers for academics from disciplines such as social sciences, journalists from research areas, undergraduate and graduate students. And we know that an Observatory that is not observed is of little use.
In conclusion, it remains to highlight the fact that having an Observatory of this type represents a valuable effort to strengthen transparency and access to information in Paraguay. This platform makes it possible to bring to light and monitor cases linked to people whose actions have caused harm to society; it makes it possible to control judges and prosecutors who carry out the processes; and it facilitates the promotion of greater awareness of acts of corruption among citizens, officials, and authorities, showing which acts of corruption are prosecuted, convicted and those that are not. At least that should be its purpose. However, in this first review we noticed that the operation of the Observatory is not yet properly institutionalized. Without the work and follow-up of civil society we would not have the information we are able to obtain today.
* Alejandra Del Puerto holds a Master’s Degree in Advanced Public Management from the University of Barcelona.
This article is published in the framework of the initiative “Young control for better public management”, promoted by the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Research (CIIS) with support from the CIRD, within the framework of the More Citizenship, Less Corruption project.
Cover image: Judiciary of Paraguay