Police commissioner rubbishes conspiracy article

BY JENNIFER KUSAPA

POLICE Commissioner Matthew Varley has dismissed articles by Alfred Sasako in the Island Sun newspaper over allegations of corruption and conspiracy inside the Royal Solomon Island Police Force (RSIPF).

“I can’t be anymore plain than to say that much of the content of the article that has being put forward to me today around conspiracies of what is going on in the RSIPF and the corruption team is just misinformation and false,” Mr Varley said.

Varley said the matters affecting the charges currently before the court are on the operation police announced in relation to the arrest of the MP last week and is something that police cannot comment on, that case now before the court and the argument is the due process if there are people who wish to raise allegation or conspiracy around that particular case they are entitled to do that through the normal defence mechanism through court and of course that matter will be heard in due course.

“I don’t want to comment on that I think that’s the matter that needs to be tested by defence in court and I don’t want to say anything that will prejudicial to the court process however it is important to state that the said officer was not involved in the arrest of the MP last week and has not been in involved in that case for well-over a year,” Varley said.

“However a year ago police identified that the said officer was one of the officers attached to that case and that he had attachment to that same constituency as a result of that, he was transferred on to other cases, he was not the officer who arrested Dickson Mua last week,” Varley said.

Varley said but there are allegation that somehow there’s attempt to dismantle the corruption team inside the Police Force.

“I think it is important that there are few facts put straight, when I took over as commissioner I discovered that there were a lot of cases that we had on our books in the corruption team that are been un-actioned and had not been able to resolved for many years and there was no system for us to be able to prioritise and triage those cases, so for the past year we have developed and implementing a new review and triage system on corruption cases in the RSIPF.

“And I can tell you that almost 100 of those cases have been fully reviewed, categorised and prioritised and from there we finalised 18 cases that we were able to assess that did not have satisfactory evidence or did not meet the standard for a reasonable prosecution in court in effect there is no evidence for those cases to continue and we closed them off,” Varley said.

However there are 75 cases currently on hand in the Corruption team.

“I have said this before I’m not going to comment on individual cases but I’m doing so, making some information available today so that people can have the facts about what the police force is doing, we have 75 cases on hand,” Varley said

Those cases are in various stages of progress and they have all been reviewed under our new triage system and been categorised not only by the corruption team but also by senior management in the RSIPF.

There are 10 active investigations that are occurring at the moment there are other cases before the court or in front of the DPP for assessment.

He also refuted claims that mass arrest will be made on MPs.

“There is no mass arrest of MPs planned, that is a fabrication and complete untruth, we will deal with cases individually as they come up for finalization and the DPP sanctioned them for charges and I have said all along we will do that in our time when the evidence is ready.

“There is also an allegation that the Corruption team has been pulled apart or dismantled through some sort of secret conspiracy which is complete rubbish in fact the corruption team has been strengthened when I took over as Police Commissioner,” Varley adds.

Therefore Mr Varley said his officers have his full confidence in investigating and dealing with the corruption cases before them.

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