Fighting corruption
Virginia Laparra awarded Sir Henry Brooke award
A prosecutor who was herself prosecuted and imprisoned for fighting corruption and organised crime in Guatemala was awarded the Sir Henry Brooke Award 2025 in London last night by the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk charity.
The award honours a legal practitioner or human rights defender who, through personal endeavour in the course of his or her practice in a challenging environment, has made an outstanding contribution to the promotion, protection and advancement of human rights and the rule of law.
Virginia Laparra Rivas was appointed head of the Special Prosecutors Office Against Impunity in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city, in 2016.
She was responsible for investigating a corruption case against the Municipality of Quetzaltenango, involving the equivalent of $100m. Under Guatemalan legal process, she filed a complaint against a leading judge accused of leaking confidential information to the defendants.
Retaliation followed, with judges and prosecutors facing harassment and criminal proceedings. Dozens of former judges, prosecutors and magistrates were arbitrarily suspended, sacked or forced to flee the country.
Laparra was convicted on charges of abuse of authority and sentenced to four years in prison. The case against her was marked by irregularities and serious violations of due process. After being imprisoned for 22 months, she was released to house arrest a year ago. Facing further criminal proceedings and with her own lawyers in jeopardy, she sought asylum in Mexico, where she now lives in exile.
Click the ► symbol below to hear Laparra talking briefly, through an interpreter, about her time in prison:
Congratulating Laparra on her award, the former UK Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger said:
It is all too easy for lawyers and judges to stand up for and speak up for the rule of law in a country such as the UK, where the worst we normally have to fear is transient criticism from politicians and the press which has no significant effect on us or anyone else.
It is quite another thing to stand up for the rule of law and act to support the rule of law in a country where it can lead to your life and family being threatened and where even the government may not merely not protect you but will actually go for you.
I wonder how many of us who speak about and act in support of the rule of law in the UK so confidently would have the bravery and the principles to do so in a country such as Guatemala.
Neuberger took the opportunity to pay tribute to Sir Henry Brooke, who retired from the Court of Appeal in 2006, founded the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk in 2011 and died in 2018:
His old-fashioned character was ultimately no more than being a person with very good manners who had time and respect for everyone. He was one of the foremost modernisers in the UK judiciary, being the first English judge in charge of IT and modernisation at a time when most judges thought that if someone had a mouse in court they should summon the rodent officer.
And for nine years Henry was the president of the Society for Computers and Law. It was through his insistence that all judges had compulsory IT training and were supplied with laptops, and that a judicial intranet was established in England and Wales. And he cast his net wider, launching in 2000 and then chairing and financially supporting the outstandingly valuable BAILII law reporting website, which I, like many lawyers in this country use literally almost every working day.
Neuberger also had some important remarks to make about the rule of law:
It is alarming to note that attacks on lawyers are not merely unimpeded by some governments but that in some cases such attacks are either encouraged or actually instigated, even orchestrated, by governments. Guatemala’s treatment of Virginia Laparra is an obvious and disgraceful example.
And, last week, the Bar Council of England and Wales (joined by the international and the America bar associations) marked the international day of the endangered lawyer by focussing “on the persecution of lawyers in Belarus”, saying that “our colleagues in the country are facing pervasive, systematic harassment and interference with their professional activities” and “lawyers face arrest and detention, as well as disciplinary measures, simply for doing their job”.
Unfortunately, there are many other countries where this has been going on. Just as the past decade has seen a decline in democracy and an increase in government-inspired attacks on journalists, so has there been a regrettable and disturbing increase in attacks on lawyers generally and, I fear, government-inspired attacks in particular.
There is a limited amount that we in the United Kingdom can realistically be expected to do about this disconcerting and regrettable development. But we must do what we can both to support lawyers who find themselves being victims of this alarming trend, and also to keep an eye on what is happening in this country.
The price of liberty is said to be eternal vigilance, and that is also the price of the rule of law. The United Kingdom is a fortunate place, but we should never ever take that fortune for granted.
Neuberger has very kindly allowed me to publish the full text of his speech.
Lord Neuberger ‘s unambiguous and challenging remarks come at an especially challenging time. I never cease to marvel at and be humbled by our lawyer colleagues abroad where the separation of the powers and the rule of law are no more than gleams in the eye of those anguished daily about the oppression and brutality meted out to so many of their fellow compatriots. I force myself to learn about the feral inroads Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen are every day wreaking upon all that we here in the U.K. should hold as dear as life itself AND YET we accept those extensive rights we still possess and the - certainly creaking- mechanisms for accountability as though they were in our tiny island some unassailable birthright impossible for anyone to snatch away from us. Yes, we are right to grumble about shortcomings and about the seeming Everest to climb whenever holding out against moves to deprive the citizen of her/his equal rights by those in authority or in the “alternative state” of mega corporations in their power grab in the pursuit of maximal profit. BUT THEN : the sooner we start - each of us in our different ways- the better to care sufficiently to ACT, through lobbying, TRYING to keep up with the news and no longer sitting on our hands when others express unsustainable and intemperate views fed to them through insidious and all invasive media outlets.