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Vanuatu's speaker, deputy PM, MPs get years for bribery

Xinhua, October 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Vanuatu's Deputy Prime Minister Moana Carcasses and Parliament Speaker Marcellino Pipite were sentenced to four years and three years in jail respectively on Thursday following their earlier convictions on bribery charges, the Pacific Islands News Association confirmed.

Carcasses and Pipite were among the 15 members of parliament sentenced in Vaunautu's Supreme Court in the capital of Port Vila.

The court had convicted the 15 MPs for giving or accepting bribes from the opposition to support a vote of no confidence that toppled then Prime Minister Joe Natuman. Carcasses was the then opposition leader.

Carcasses got his jail term on multiple counts to be served concurrently, and former Prime Minister Serge Vohor got three years. The jail terms for other convicted MPs range from 20 months suspended for two years to three and half years.

Finance Minister Willy Jimmy got a 20 months jail term suspended for two years as he pleaded guilty to the charges. The other 14 MPs pleaded not guilty.

Carcasses had admitted to offering loans to the MPs from his own funds, but denied those were bribes for the passage of the no confidence motion against the Natuman-led government.

On Oct. 9, the Supreme Court found the MPs guilty of the criminal offense of bribery. However, Pipite, as Vanuatu's acting president because President Baldwin Lonsdale was out of the country, used his interim executive powers to pardon the 14 MPs, including himself. After returning to Vanuatu, Lonsdale revoked the pardons, which were also ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

After the sentencings were announced to a packed court room on Thursday, Carcasses' lawyer said his client will appeal. Enditem