Judges Arrested In Nationwide Corruption Sting Operation By DSS To Be Arraign In Court Next Week

Details coming to town have it

The DSS will next week arraign seven judges it arrested across the country on Friday and Saturday last week.

A top DSS source, who confided in The PUNCH, explained that the service was almost through with the investigations into the allegations against the judges, adding that it was waiting for the National Judicial Council to take actions against them.
He stated, “The ongoing investigation is not supposed to go beyond this week. We have written to the NJC about what has happened and we expect the NJC to take some decisions about the affected judges this week.

“Once that is done, hopefully by next week or thereabouts, we should arraign them in court. For now, more facts in the form of petitions are trickling in about the judges.”

He further stated that it was its statutory responsibility to investigate painstakingly every complaint against the judges, adding that some victims had even indicated their readiness to testify in court.

The source also said that as part of the investigations, it had gone through the asset declaration forms the judges submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau.

“We discovered a judge filling three different forms with different information either in terms of assets declared or even personal information like age. Imagine one judge filling three different forms with different information just to deceive. Just as I said, we will do a thorough job.’’

The PUNCH also learnt on Wednesday that the DSS seized the telephones of the seven judges under investigation for corruption.

A security source, who spoke with one of our correspondents on condition of anonymity, said the call logs of the affected judges were being analysed.

A top security source said the telephones of the judges were being analysed to know whether they had what was described as “illicit communication” with politicians.

The source said, “We have seized their telephones and we have started analysing everything.

“Apart from that, we are checking their call logs and also checking the calls that had been coming in since Saturday.”

It was also gathered that the DSS had asked all the affected judges to be reporting at its headquarters, otherwise known as ‘Yellow House’ every day.

Punch