ICTR dismisses lawyer for "financial dishonesty"

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR) on Wednesday dismissed a Scottish defence lawyer, citing "financial dishonesty" as the reason.

The registrar of the ICTR dismissed Andrew McCartan, lead counsel for genocide suspect Joseph Nzirorera, having found evidence of inflation of legal bills and other financial irregularities, the ICTR said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the ICTR, Kingsley Moghalu, told IRIN on Thursday that McCartan had claimed payment for hours he had not worked, that he had inflated his legal bills, specifically in October and November 2000.

Moghalu also said McCartan had been involved in a fee-splitting arrangement with his client, which he had admitted to and which was the subject of a report that had not been released to the public. "Egregious wrongdoings have been established," Moghalu said.

However, when contacted by the Internews agency, McCartan reportedly described the allegations as outrageous. "It is not true, it is appalling," Internews quoted him as saying, adding that he would appeal against the registrar's decision.

Hirondelle news agency reported that McCartan had agreed to split fees with Nzirorera in November 2000, under pressure from his client. Six months later he had written a letter to the head of ICTR Registry's section in charge of lawyers and detainees, stating the following: "I agreed to the accused's demand for payment, because I wanted to give myself time to investigate his statement that this was the 'normal procedure' for lead counsel. I also wanted to confirm that the rules prohibited such fee-splitting conduct."

McCartan said he was being sanctioned for having blown the whistle on fee-splitting, Hirondelle reported.

Fee-splitting is a practice whereby a lawyer gives part of his legal fees to a client in return for being kept on as counsel. Lead counsels at the ICTR earn between US $80 and $110 per hour, up to a maximum of 175 hours per month, Moghalu confirmed.

The ICTR, which sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, was established to investigate the Rwandan genocide of 1994 when up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

A report by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, released in February 2001, found evidence of possible fee-splitting arrangements between defence lawyers and their clients at both the ICTR and its sister court in the Hague, Holland, which investigates crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

This is the first time a lawyer from the ICTR had been dismissed for financial impropriety, Moghalu confirmed.