The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Roger Gaspard, SC, has lost a final bid to retry a former police officer for corruption, after the Privy Council dismissed the appeal and upheld a stay of proceedings imposed by the local courts.

The ruling brings to a close a nearly 20-year legal saga surrounding Nawaz Ali’s alleged solicitation and acceptance of bribes. Ali was first tried in 2010 on three counts of corruption related to bribes allegedly solicited in exchange for halting a stolen vehicle investigation. He was acquitted on the first two counts but convicted on the third and sentenced to five years in prison. That conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal in 2010, which ordered a retrial. The retrial collapsed in 2018 when the presiding judge, then-Justice Gillian Lucky, stayed the case, citing unfairness stemming from the exclusion of evidence related to the first two counts.

The DPP challenged that stay, but the Court of Appeal upheld it in 2021. In its final judgment, the Privy Council dismissed the DPP’s appeal, ruling that although the indictment was legally permissible, the proceedings had become oppressive due to excessive delays and flawed judicial decisions.