Solomons anti-corruption drive nets police chiefs

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN

Long before six police cars swooped in to raid his Honiara ridge-top house early on Saturday morning, Wilfred Akao knew he was in trouble.

Deputy police commissioner of Solomon Islands for the past six years, Akao has sat atop a police force shot through with corruption and malfeasance.

It is a force that in June 2000 carried out a coup on its own Government before proceeding over the next four years to systematically drain the nation of the funds to educate its children, tend to its sick or even properly run itself.

Akao said yesterday that he had "just been waiting" since the Australian-led regional intervention force arrived last July.

Last Tuesday his fellow deputy commissioner, John Homelo, was charged with abuse of office and making false claims. On Saturday, after being taken in for questioning, Akao was charged with abduction, intimidation and six counts of making false claims.

Investigations which led to these charges reveal just how audacious the rorting has been within the upper echelons of the Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP).

In one case, more than S$55 million ($11.08 million) has been found to have passed through a single police imprest account meant to have a ceiling of S$100,000 ($20,157).

Most funds appear to have gone out in the form of illegally claimed allowances.

On one celebrated occasion, virtually the entire force, including the civilian secretarial staff, received allowances for bomb disposal duties, while danger money claims were repeatedly used as the barest of cover-ups for massive payoffs to a wide number of policemen and militants, the latter sworn in as special constables and therefore on the police payroll.

These "Specials", as they are contemptuously referred to by most Solomon Islanders, would routinely take their guns to Treasury to threaten public servants, department heads and, if necessary, the ministers involved to process the bogus claims.

Cleaning up the country's police force so the institutional culture which led to these practices is stamped out for good is a complex, lengthy and costly process, says Ben McDevitt, head of the intervention's Participating Police Force, which has already seen off 400 police and arrested 57 of them for offences ranging from murder to intimidation.

"We have had a very vigorous and very public cleansing of the police service ... which has led to the removal of 25 per cent of the force," he told the Herald yesterday.

"But it's not just about sacking corrupt cops. We need durable change in the culture and philosophy of the RSIP.

"Recruitment, training, conditions of service and the discipline framework are all being revamped."

The Australian taxpayer is footing the multi-million-dollar bill, but McDevitt, a former paratrooper, claims the remaking of the police force is at the heart of rebuilding the Solomon Islands as a nation.

"You can't do anything without law and order and Solomon Islanders ... know that better than most."