{"id":161517,"date":"2015-10-22T11:19:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T11:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=161517"},"modified":"2015-10-22T11:19:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T11:19:44","slug":"vanuatu-court-sentences-14-mps-to-jail-for-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=161517","title":{"rendered":"Vanuatu court sentences 14 MPs to jail for corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Fourteen politicians in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu have been handed jail sentences for corruption.<\/p>\n<p>The members of parliament were convicted of bribery on 9 October, when President Baldwin Lonsdale was abroad.<\/p>\n<p>In his absence, Parliamentary Speaker Marcellino Pipite used his powers as acting president to pardon himself and the others.<\/p>\n<p>On his return the president overturned the pardons, and the Supreme Court has now ruled them unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>The verdict puts half the governing party&#8217;s MPs behind bars and makes it likely another election will be called, despite the current administration only taking power in June, according to New Zealand&#8217;s TVNZ.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/80EE\/production\/_86260033_a2b5d5d6-a5d4-4d59-8139-d86859704aa4.jpg\" alt=\"Prime Minister Meltek Sato Kilman Livtuvanu of Vanuatu addresses a plenary meeting of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015\" width=\"628\" height=\"353\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>The original corruption allegations were that Deputy Prime Minister Moana Carcasses paid 13 opposition politicians 35 million vatu ($312,000; \u00a3202,000) last year.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Mr Carcasses was sentenced to four years in prison, and the others for three years each.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Mary Sey, in the capital, Port Vila, said the payments were made to influence the MPs.<\/p>\n<p>Those who &#8220;occupy a position of trust or authority can expect to be treated severely by the criminal law,&#8221; she said, according to Australia&#8217;s ABC News.<\/p>\n<p>As well as the deputy prime minister, many of the other convicted MPs were also cabinet ministers, including the Foreign Minister Serge Vohor and Finance Minister Willy Jimmy.<\/p>\n<p>Willy Jimmy was given a 20-month suspended sentence, as the only one to plead guilty at his original bribery trial.<\/p>\n<p>Sentencing for the original corruption offences was due to happen on 22 October, so it is not clear whether the ruling that the pardons were unconstitutional affected their jail terms.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fourteen politicians in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu have been handed jail sentences for corruption. The members of parliament were convicted of bribery on 9 October, when President Baldwin Lonsdale was abroad. In his absence, Parliamentary Speaker Marcellino Pipite used his powers as acting president to pardon himself and the others. On his return [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":161520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-161517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/161520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}