Overview:
Special Prosecutor Tamara Hutzler told Palau senators that delayed case referrals, restricted access to government records and poor coordination among law enforcement agencies are hampering criminal investigations. She is urging the Office of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice to work more closely with her office.
By: Eoghan Olkeriil Ngirudelsang
KOROR, Palau — Special Prosecutor Tamara Hutzler told senators on October 21, 2026, that Palau’s fight against financial crime and other government misconduct is being weakened by delayed referrals, restricted access to records, and poor coordination between her office, the Office of the Attorney General, and the Ministry of Justice.
Hutzler said the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) is meant to operate independently and have access to government information, but that authority is increasingly being limited in practice.
“Some of the complaints that should come to my office are not coming to my office,” she said during the Senate hearing.
“A lot of our complaints also involve financial crimes,” Hutzler said. “When amendments to the PGST law were enacted, it did not allow my office to get any tax records.”
She argued that the restriction undermines the purpose of the OSP.
“The point of the SP’s office is to be an independent office that has access to any and all government records. So that we can look at anything we need to look at,” Hutzler said. “The problem is that it is being slowly whittled away, and it sounds like there is not an appetite to fix it.”
Access to records
Hutzler told lawmakers that several government entities have resisted providing information her investigators requested.
“Social Security Administration says they don’t have to comply. AG’s Office doesn’t have to comply,” she said. “Now people are also telling me that they don’t have to give information because of the Privacy Act.”
“It feels like people don’t want to give us access, and it’s really handcuffing our ability to do our job and prosecute cases,” she said.
The Special Prosecutor also described an incident regarding obtaining street-camera footage during an investigation that began in July.
“We did a surveillance on somebody for a long time, both of my investigators were involved and we had pictures and videos, and we went to try and get footage of one of the cameras -one of the cameras on the streets,” she said.
“It took a couple of weeks, and we got some footage, but when it was reviewed by my investigators, it became very clear that there was something wrong with the time and date on the camera because the vehicle and person that we know were at this place at this time because we have pictures and videos that were not on the footage of the camera,” Hutzler said.
She said the OSP reported the issue to the Bureau of Public Safety (BPS), but that her staff continued to encounter resistance when seeking a corrected recording.
Hutzler said that when her investigators offered to review the footage directly, they were again met with resistance. She said the episode illustrates how record-access problems can delay or complicate criminal investigations.
Case workload
Despite those obstacles, Hutzler told senators that the OSP’s work is successful.
She said the office inherited 45 open cases from prior years, of which only three had been closed. When she took office, there were five litigation cases, all but one of which have since been closed.
“We opened 52 cases in 2025, and we have closed 41 of those,” Hutzler said. “There were 11 cases carried over into 2026, and we have closed 7 of those 11 and opened 19 cases this year.”
She also said the OSP has recovered more than $300,000 in fines and restitution payments to the national treasury over the past two years.
Hutzler emphasized that cases are not discarded simply because they cannot be prosecuted at first.
“We have a lot of cases that we close because we do not have sufficient evidence of a crime, but they stay on our radar,” she said. “Every complaint gets investigated.”
Referrals and coordination
A central concern Hutzler raised was that major cases involving government employees or public agencies are not consistently referred to the OSP.
She said the Attorney General’s Office issued a legal opinion to the tax office stating that it could not provide information to the OSP under current statutes. Hutzler said her office could not obtain a copy of the opinion because of attorney-client confidentiality.
Hutzler cited the Palau Housing Authority case and a theft case at the Bureau of Agriculture as matters she believed should have been referred to her office.
“In my opinion that should have come to my office,” she said of the Palau Housing Authority matter.
“Big crimes involving government employees should be coming to my office like the Palau Housing case and the Bureau of Agriculture,” Hutzler said.
“I don’t know what the resistance is to sending things to my office. I don’t know,” she added.
Hutzler said the problem extends to basic investigative materials, including police reports.
“I believe that the AG’s office and my office both work for the ROP and I feel like we should be a team. I can’t get police reports,” she said.
“I ask for police reports, and I can’t get them,” Hutzler said. “I will give you an example. The AG is a dear friend of mine, but being friends does not mean we can’t say the truth of what is going on business-wise.”
She referenced a November oversight hearing on the Ministry of Justice, during which allegations emerged that a police officer had entered the jail and beaten an inmate.
“You had an oversight hearing last November of the MOJ where it came out that there was a police officer going into the jail and beating up an inmate,” Hutzler said. “That’s how my office heard about it; that’s how everybody heard about it because it was kept on the down low.”
Hutzler said she wrote directly to the BPS director requesting the police report. According to Hutzler, the director told her: “I was told no, the AG has told me not to give them to you, and if you want them you need to talk to her.”
She said she then raised the matter with Whipps, “The SP will have to sue the AG’s and it’s a terrible look for the ROP,” Hutzler said she told the president.
“Within a few hours she was able to get the report,” she said.
Call for teamwork
Hutzler said the OSP, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Ministry of Justice must function as partners in serving the Republic, rather than as agencies operating in isolation.
“There has been this direction for us to work together so we’ll see how that goes,” she said.