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Justice Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 225
money from criminal operations or legal businesses) were not mentioned
at all and probably do not exist in Ethiopia.
Prosecutorial and judicial corruption appears less frequently, which
again seems to be largely a function of individual susceptibility either to
monetary inducements or ties of kinship and friendship. (However, some
observers noted that kinship, friendship, and ethnic ties might have a
stronger impact in regions not visited for this research). There were no
indications of internal corruption networks (except in the unverifiable
example of the Addis land “judges”), and at most some informants suggested
that certain lawyers may have special relationships with a few
judges. Nor was there any suggestion that monetarily induced corruption
was a top-down controlled phenomenon.
The practice in some other countries of sector (or “entrusted”) officials
buying their jobs and then engaging in corruption to recoup their “investments”
was reported as entirely absent in Ethiopia. Judges and prosecutors
do seem attuned to government requirements, real or imagined, in
the occasional high-profile case, but such cases have become less frequent
over time. Such sensitivity is linked to a perceived emphasis in personnel
policies on party loyalty—an emphasis that agency officials insist is
largely imaginary. To the extent they are correct, one contributing factor
is the current larger number of qualified applicants and the persistent
lack of transparent selection criteria. Whereas once, anyone with a law
degree (and such degrees were nearly exclusively from the University of
Addis Ababa) could get a job, there is now more competition and there
are more law faculties in operation. Under these circumstances, for their
own good and for the reassurance of the candidates, it clearly behooves
those responsible for the selection process to become more explicit about
the criteria they will apply. Now that they have the luxury of rejecting
some candidates, they must offer the explanations that were unnecessary
before.
Two additional areas of corruption—that of courtroom (or prosecutorial)
staff and lawyers and other officers of the court—have developed
differently. The courts’ CMS has made staff malfeasance more difficult to
proceed undetected. Because the prosecutors still lack a CMS, they also
lack control over this situation although no one suggested that their staffs
had much opportunity to affect the progress of cases.
For lawyers, it appears that little has changed. At the federal level, the
Ministry of Justice seems most concerned with ensuring they are up to
date on their fees, and in any case, receives complaints about little else.
Passing some responsibility on to the bar association to police its own