Author Archives: Melanie Botho Emmen

A Corruption Close-Up: Video Cameras and the Tijuana Police Force

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The Tijuana Police Force is rolling out a new program equipping all officers with body cameras with the express purpose of cutting down on corruption. Public perceptions of corruption within the police force run high, a sentiment shared both within and without the force. Tijuana Police Chief Alejandro Lares Valladares hopes that the body cameras, in addition to helping with the force’s tarnished reputation, will also highlight what he feels is a key but far less-discussed aspect of the city’s rampant corruption: the willingness of the public to instigate corrupt exchanges. (In what was a near-perfect opening act for Lares Valladares’ program, just a few days after Tijuana police officers began wearing the cameras, a driver pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, who also did not have her driver’s license, offered to bribe the officer. Footage of the exchange helped Lares Valladares convince those within his department that the cameras are not being used only as means of policing the police, but as a means of protecting all parties.)

Body cameras do have the potential to cut down on corruption, but only if the program is administered correctly. Recent studies on how body cameras influence the use of force both by and against US police officers provide a few key lessons, Police Chief Lares Valladares and his colleagues in Tijuana should take into account. Continue reading →

When Transparency Isn’t the Answer: Beneficial Ownership in High-End Real Estate

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Earlier this month Transparency International UK published a report entitled “Corruption on Your Doorstep: How Corrupt Capital Is Used to Buy Property in the UK.” The Britain-specific recommendations are part of TI’s broader “Unmask the Corrupt” campaign, a call by TI, and echoed by others, to establish public registries of beneficial ownership. A similar call to unveil the individuals behind the shell corporations used to buy luxury condos in Manhattan garnered a lot of attention stateside during last month’s New York Times “Towers of Secrecy” series on the city’s high-end property market (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). The anticorruption rationale for mandating disclosure of real property beneficial ownership seems straightforward: As both the TI-UK report and the NYT series argue, buying real property in New York and London is an appealing way to launder stolen funds, because high-end real estate purchases allow a corrupt actor to inject millions of dollars into the legitimate market without having to deal with pesky anti-money laundering regulations, completing the purchases through shell companies that disguise the true beneficial owner. Requiring public disclosure of the beneficial owners of real property would in theory have two related benefits: First, requiring purchasers to reveal beneficial ownership information up front would dissuade some from using real property as a means of laundering money, and second, if law enforcement authorities have ready access to this information, it will make it easier to instigate and conduct investigations, as well as to seize assets later on.

Indeed, transparency in real property beneficial ownership seems like the kind of thing all anticorruption advocates should support, which is why it may seem a little counterintuitive when I say TI and others are taking the wrong tack. Pushing for central public registries of beneficial ownership of real property will not likely achieve the two objectives, and may have serious drawbacks. Here’s why: Continue reading →

Bribery in the Boardroom: Implications for Internal Reporting Programs

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Early last month, the OECD released its first Foreign Bribery Report. According to Angel Gurria, the organization’s Secretary-General, the report “endeavors to measure, and to describe, transnational corruption based on data from the 427 foreign bribery cases that have been concluded since the entry into force of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in 1999.” The report as a whole is quite interesting, but I would like to hone in on the OECD’s findings regarding who engages in bribery, and how this should change how we approach arguments on whistleblower internal reporting requirements.

The report found that, contrary to popular belief, in the majority of cases senior management were aware of or endorsed the payment of whatever bribe occurred (in 41% of the cases senior management was implicated, in 12% even the highest level executives were aware of the bribe being paid). As the report notes, this “debunk[s] the “rogue employee” myth,” and this, I would argue, calls into question internal reporting requirements as a means of combating foreign bribery. Continue reading →

Crowdsourcing the Fight Against Fake Drugs

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Producing and selling falsified medicines—fake drugs deliberately labeled as real and sold to consumers—has been described by the Institute of Medicine as “the perfect crime.” The industry tops $200 billion annually and in Africa alone is responsible for 100,000 deaths each year. The WHO identifies corruption as one of the biggest challenges to keeping these drugs off the market, but the number of access points all along the supply chain—at the point of manufacturer, in customs offices, at distribution centers or individual pharmacies—make reining in corruption a gargantuan task. Governments may squeeze one area—say stricter regulation of customs offices—only to find distribution centers being turned into drug swap shops.

We may, however, be witnessing a shift in how governments approach these issues, moving from confronting corruption head on—which has met with mixed results—to simply circumventing it. The Nigerian experience is noteworthy. Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) has teamed up with Sproxil, a product verification company, to allow consumers to individually verify the authenticity of their drugs. NAFDAC is effectively crowdsourcing its falsified medicines anti-corruption efforts, and with some very positive results. Continue reading →

FIFA’s Faustian Bargain: Corruption for the Cup?

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In a Road to Damascus twist, on Tuesday FIFA President Sepp Blatter asked the Swiss government to launch a criminal investigation into corruption related to Qatar being chosen to host the 2022 World Cup. This unprecedented move comes on the heels of a week of backlash to the FIFA Ethics Committee’s final conclusion on the Qatar question: “The potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the report concerning the Qatar 2022 bid were, all in all, not suited to compromise the integrity of the 2018/2022 bidding process as a whole.”  These “potentially problematic facts” include a swath of bribes (“improper payments”) paid by Mohamed bin Hamman, a chief supporter of the Qatari bid and former Asian Football Confederation president, which the report concludes were not directly related to securing the Cup, as well as payments by Qatari officials themselves, which made a “negative impression” but did not technically fall afoul of FIFA rules. The Committee’s decision was quickly and repeatedly slammed as a farce, and was followed by strong calls for the investigative report upon which it was based to be made public. Blatter adamantly refused to release the report, which made it all the more surprising when he seemed to go a step further by calling for the Swiss Office of the Attorney General to investigate. Should a criminal investigation proceed, not only would the government’s findings be made public, but corrupt FIFA officials would find themselves facing something entirely new: the pinch of handcuffs rather than a pinch to their finances.

While FIFA lodging the criminal complaint should be applauded, singing halleluiahs over Blatter’s conversion to the church of anticorruption would be a bit premature. In fact, this may be his most strategic move yet.

Continue reading →

The End of a FIFA Fiefdom?

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Allegations of corruption have dogged FIFA for years–particularly under the leadership of Sepp Blatter, who has been FIFA President since 1998–but with little impact. The buildup of controversy surrounding the bidding contest for the 2022 World Cup, however, may prove the tipping point in Blatter’s reign. Early last month, Michael Garcia, FIFA’s independent investigator and a former U.S. Attorney, submitted to FIFA’s Ethics Committee a 350-page report on corruption in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding contests. The report purportedly details millions of dollars in bribes paid to FIFA executives in order for Qatar to host the 2022 tournament. A few weeks later, the chairmen of the Ethics Committee released a statement affirming that, in accordance with FIFA’s Code of Ethics, if Garcia initiates proceedings against specific individuals based on his report, only the final decisions (not the report itself or any other preliminary materials) will be made public.

The next day Garcia went rogue. He called publicly for the report’s widespread release (with appropriate redactions as necessary to protect sources). His call was quickly echoed by several members of FIFA’s Executive Committee, including Sunil Gulati, the head of US Soccer, Jordan’s Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, and CONCACAF President Jeffrey Webb. In addition to the revolt that may be brewing within, external pressures are mounting on FIFA as well, with calls for the release of Garcia’s report coming from Michel Platini, head of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), as well as U.S. Senator Bob Casey and the international NGO Transparency International. And in Switzerland, where FIFA is based, last April the Federal Council–apparently in direct response to concerns about Swiss-based international sports federations that have been “discredited repeatedly by corruption scandals”–reversed its longstanding position and declared that “private corruption will be prosecuted automatically, even where it does not lead to competitive distortions.”

All this activity is honing in on one specific question, which will likely be definitively answered at the June 2015 FIFA Congress: Will Qatar keep the 2022 World Cup? Continue reading →