TALLINN - An Estonian judge has been arrested on suspicion of taking bribes and knowingly making flawed rulings in court cases, the Baltic state’s chief prosecutor’s office said yesterday.
Judge Vambola Oll, head of the courthouse in the southern town of Voru, was detained on Thursday, the office said. If found guilty, Oll faces up to 10 years in prison. Oll is the third judge snared in recent months by Estonian anti-graft investigators around the country
In March, a judge in western Estonia was jailed for two years and eight months for taking a bribe and leaking details to criminals of a surveillance operation he had himself authorised.
In January, a counterpart from the northeast was jailed for two years for accepting a bribe to release a murder suspect.
Speaking to parliament on Thursday, Mart Rask, chief justice of the Estonian Supreme Court, said the country was suffering a shortfall of judges. Estonia has 227 judges currently working in courts but 15 posts remain vacant, the highest level in five years, Rask said.
“The lack of judges is stretching the court system’s handling of cases,” he warned. Battling corruption was among the criteria used by Brussels to judge the readiness of ex-communist countries to join the European Union, which Estonia did in 2004. Estonia last year ranked equal 27th on the annual global corruption index.
AFP
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