The Geneva legal proceedings that were supposed to decide whether some videos circulated in Kuwait apparently demonstrating His Highness Sheilh Nasser Al-Mohammed Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the most powerful man in Kuwait and for whom the current Emir serves as mere proxy, to be organising a coup d'etat against the late and much respected Emir, Sabah Al-Sabah, have come to a grinding halt.
Stephane Grodecki, the Prosecutor in charge of the investigation and prosecution of a range of foreigners for forging videos and related documents, is no longer in office (to put matters politely). Instead he has stepped down from office to pursue a career in a mid-market reputation Geneva law firm. https://merkt.ch/stephane-grodecki/
His own law firm reports that the Prosecutor's office on which he held the number two position is being investigated for corruption. https://merkt.ch/actualites/
It will be remembered that it was reported in Swiss national public radio / television media that the 'Kuwaiti Sheikhs' litigation, in which the veracity of the disputed videos was litigated, was the subject of a CHF 1,000,000 facilitation payment to initiate the investigation. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.rts.ch/info/regions/geneve/10325275-un-don-koweitien-a-luni-de-geneve-suscite-des-questions-politiques.html
After this payment was made, the Geneva Prosecutor Stephane Grodecki, who is/was a Professor at the University of Geneva to whom the apparent facilitation payment was provided, started the longest and most expensive prosecutorial investigation in Geneva's legal history: all about the veracity of some videos allegedly showing a foreign politician engaged in wrongdoing .
That politician, Sheikh Nasser, is known to control tens of billions of US Dollars in Geneva bank accounts in part via his controlling interest in the National Bank of Kuwait, that has an unusual branch in Geneva.
We understand from a reliable source (and we have seen the document) that one of Sheikh Nasser's lawyers has defected to the team of one of the defendant's lawyers in the middle of the proceedings. This is extraordinary and unprecedented. We can only speculate as to why that might be - perhaps he was disgusted with the way his client's lawyers were running the case; perhaps he was bribed (I.e. paid more money). We do not know and very probably we never will do.
Very arguably this extraordinary transfer of attorney from plaintiff to defence renders the entire procedure unsafe, as confidential information is likely to have been passed (no matter what anyone may say to deny it) from one side to the other, disrupting the prospect of a fair trial. Confidential information might be used, as just one example, to emphasise unreliably the relative culpabilities of the various defendants in a way that should not happen if the trial is fair.
For example, if a plaintiff A has information about a defendant X that arguably places X in a bad light, then the illicit and unlawful passage of that information from a lawyer to plaintiff A in the course of his detection to the legal team of defendant Y (and a new lawyer on Y's team would be obliged to reveal this information to Y, as upon joining Y's legal team he falls under an unconditional obligation to act in the best interests of Y), is something that as a matter of professional conduct should never have been revealed.
Once illicit confidential information is revealed as passing between the parties' lawyers without the consent of the various clients involved, there can be no going back. Even if Y then parts company with his lawyers in favour of some new ones, the passage of information that should not have been passed cannot be undone as it must be placed on the lawyer's file to which Y has an unconditional right of access whether instructing lawyers or firing them.
The net result is that these proceedings have been hopelessly compromised, and they must be abandoned. Geneva is not a fit forum to decide a dispute over succession candidates to the Kuwaiti Emiracy, something all right-thinking people always knew.
Mr Grodecki, the Geneva Prosecutor implicated, oversaw all this wastage of the Geneva government public budget in pursuit of a legal claim that was never properly pursued in Geneva, half way round the world from Kuwait. Arguably this procedure was undertaken only because Sheikh Nasser has so much money in Geneva banks. This looks not just corrupt but ridiculous. Now defenestrated and the target of a corruption enquiry that his own law firm advertises, Mr Grodecki will have plenty of time to reflect upon the dreadful damage he did to so many people's lives by pursuing an investigation that from the outset was precipitated by a deeply concerning payment.
Had Mr Grodecki any integrity, he would have recused himself at the very beginning of the proceedings, when the concerning payment was made. As things stand, he pursued an extended, expensive and destructive investigation in the pursuit of his own career interests.
May the period Mr Grodecki suffers in the purgatory of a law firm that publicises corruption investigations into their own new lawyer be proportionate to his sins.
The worst prosecutor is a combination of cruel, vindictive, unjust, corrupt and hard working. Prosecutors of that kind can ruin people's lives; they care not who they tread upon or trash in the pursuit of their amoral goals.
Rather than work out the succession problem for themselves, the Kuwaiti Royal Family chose a British legal Kingmaker, and then they didn't like what he decided. Whose fault is that? In the meantime we are one corrupt Prosecutor down, and likely with several more heads to roll before this affair is completed.
'
Pour un avocat intègre - et nous sommes nombreux - il ne peut y avoir de plus grande satisfaction professionnelle que de destituer un membre corrompu de la magistrature.
Ces gens sont des cancers sur tout le système. Ils font ressembler un système juridique à celui de la Russie. Les éliminer doit être contribuer au bien commun.
'
-- French legal motto
Commenti