An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.
Today’s guest post is from Roxie Larin, a lawyer who previously served as Senior Legal Counsel for HSBC Holdings and is now an independent researcher and consultant on corruption, compliance, and white collar crime issues.
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is a powerful tool that the U.S. government has wielded to combat overseas bribery—not just bribery committed by U.S. citizens or firms, but also bribery committed by foreign nationals outside of U.S. territory. (The FCPA also applies to any individual, including a non-U.S. person or firm, who participates in an FCPA violation while in the United States, but this territorial jurisdiction is standard and noncontroversial.) The FCPA, unlike many other U.S. statutes, does not require a nexus of the alleged crime to the United States so long as certain other criteria are satisfied. For one thing, the statute applies to companies, including foreign companies, that issue securities in the U.S. In addition, the FCPA covers non-U.S. individuals or companies that act as an employee, officer, director, or agent of an entity that is itself covered by the FCPA (either a U.S. domestic concern or a foreign issuer of U.S. securities), even if all of the relevant conduct takes place outside U.S. territory.
In pursuing FCPA cases against non-U.S. entities for FCPA violations committed wholly outside U.S. territory, the agencies that enforce the FCPA—the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—have pushed the boundaries of this latter jurisdictional provision. They have done so in part by stretching to its limits (and perhaps beyond) what it means to act as an “agent” of a U.S. firm or issuer. (The FCPA provisions covering foreign “officers” and “employees” of issuers and domestic concerns are more straightforward, but also more rarely invoked. It’s rare for the government to have evidence implicating a corporate officer, and the employee designation doesn’t help unless the government is either able to dispense with notions of corporate separateness, given that foreign nationals are typically employed by a company organized under the laws of their local jurisdiction.) Until recently, the government’s expansive agency-based theories of extraterritorial jurisdiction had neither been tested nor fully articulated beyond a few generic paragraphs in the government’s FCPA Resource Guide. In many cases, foreign companies affiliated with an issuer or domestic concern have settled with the U.S. government before trial, presumably conceding jurisdiction on the theory that the foreign company acted as an agent of the issuer or domestic concern. (This concession may be in part because a guilty plea by a foreign affiliate is often a condition for leniency towards the U.S. company.) Hence, the government has not had to prove its jurisdiction over these foreign defendants.
But there was bound to be a reckoning over the U.S. government’s untested theories of extraterritorial FCPA jurisdiction, and the SEC and DOJ’s expansive theories are increasingly being tested in court cases brought against individuals who, sensibly, are more prone to litigating their freedom than companies are their capital. And it turns out that the U.S. government’s expansive conception of “agency” may be difficult to sustain in cases where the foreign national defendant—the supposed “agent” of the U.S. firm or issuer—is a low- or mid-level employee of a foreign affiliate, and even more difficult to sustain so where the domestic concern is only an affiliate and not the parent company. Continue reading
A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke interview Franz von Weizsäcker (from the German Agency for International Development (GIZ)) and Niklas Kossow (form the Hertie School of Governance) about how new technologies, particular distributed ledger technology like Blockchain, can be used to curb corruption. Franz and Niklas first describe how they became interested in this topic and then, after providing a basic introduction to how distributed ledger technology works, they discuss both the opportunities and the challenges associated with deploying these new technologies to curb corruption.
You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.
Today’s guest post is from Larry Kirsch, an economist who is currently the Managing Partner of IMR Health Economics.
The South African government, like many governments around the world, faces daunting challenges due to the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic collapse, and civil unrest. Addressing these problems requires not only decisive action by leaders, but also a sufficient reservoir of public trust. Without such trust, a leader’s call for civic sacrifice and solidarity may not receive the desired response. Unfortunately, South African citizens do not currently have much trust in their government. The leading international survey of trustworthiness, the Edelman Trust Barometer, reported this past January that trust in government among South Africans ranked lowest among the 28 countries surveyed—lower than Russia and Argentina and well below India and China.
Part of this lack of trust is due to chronically stressed economic conditions, as well as extreme structural inequalities. But citizens’ trust has been further undermined by South Africa’s endemic corruption. The corruption of former President Jacob Zuma and his closest cronies (especially the rapacious Gupta family) was well-documented in a a November 2016 report issued by the Office of the Public Protector, then headed by the highly-regarded Thuli Madonsela. That report, entitled The State of Capture, also emphasized the burden of corruption on everyday citizens, documenting, for example, how corruption had contributed to the dysfunctions in vital public services and state owned enterprises.
Will the relatively new government of President Cyril Ramaphosa be able to galvanize trust and obtain the degree of public support needed to deal with the grave threats facing South Africa? On the one hand, President Ramaphosa’s public statements, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus in South Africa in early March, have been decisive, inclusive, and progressive, particularly in relation to the call for solidarity and the government’s commitment to the apportionment of healthcare, work, food, and other public support on the basis of need. But if President Ramaphosa truly wishes to begin a ”radical” restructuring process based on principles of fairness, social cohesion, and inclusive growth, he will have to deal squarely with the persistence of the culture of corruption, as well as with broader concerns about government openness and public accountability. And his stirring speeches have so far not included much information on how his administration intends to tackle these crucial issues.
One important element of a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the South African government’s integrity—and with it citizen trust in that government—would be for President Ramaphosa to personally back robust implementation of South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). Continue reading
Today’s guest post is by Shruti Shah, the President and CEO of the Coalition for Integrity, a civil society advocacy organization focused on corruption in the United States.
The U.S. Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act), enacted in late March to address the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, provides over $2 trillion in various forms of relief, including over $600 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provides loans to small businesses, and approximately $500 billion in additional discretionary Treasury Department loans. To ensure appropriate allocation of these funds, and to reduce the risks of corruption, fraud, and other forms of misappropriation, transparency and oversight are essential. Indeed, we have already seen the perils of a lack of transparency in awarding the PPP loans. Instead of prioritizing businesses who were in danger of failing without an injection of cash, many large chains and other well-funded companies received loans. Further, there are reports that businesses owned by members of Congress received money under the program, which raises conflict of interest concerns.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has resisted even relatively modest measures to assure transparency and accountability in the allocation of CARES Act funds. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin previously announced that the names of PPP recipients would not be made public, making the misguided claim that the identity of PPP loan recipients is the companies’ confidential and proprietary information. But taxpayer have a right to know where their money is going (a principle the U.S. vigorously applies when sending foreign aid dollars overseas). Eventually Secretary Mnuchin relented to pressure to change course, and agreed to provide information regarding PPP loans in excess of $150,000. Yet the administration’s resistance to transparency and oversight has continued, as demonstrated by alarming reports that the Treasury Department’s Office of General Counsel has issued a legal opinion claiming that the Department has no obligation to provide key information to oversight officials, including the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), about the CARES Act’s PPP and discretionary business loan programs.
These reports underscore the importance of keeping up the pressure on Congress and the Administration to take appropriate steps to ensure genuine transparency and accountability in the allocation of pandemic response funds. Congress in particular may need to add new legal provisions to address the flaws in the oversight system. The Coalition for Integrity recently released a new report, entitled Oversight is Better than Hindsight: Anti-Corruption Recommendations for the CARES Act, which documents the current oversight gaps in the CARES Act and presents a set of recommendations on how best to close those gaps. These recommendations include, among others: increasing appropriations for oversight bodies, enacting for-cause removal protections for Inspectors General, enhancing whistleblower protections, requiring the Federal Reserve to comply with Sunshine’s Act meeting transcript or recording requirements, and appointing a chairperson to the Congressional Oversight Commission. The report also highlights a number of measures that the Administration can and should take, including better and more effective cooperation with the oversight bodies, creating a public-facing website with detailed information on contracts awarded under the stimulus program (as was done by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversaw the stimulus funding enacted in response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis), and ensuring more generally that agencies are responsive rather than resistant to requests and recommendations from oversight bodies.
Effective oversight is not a partisan political issue. Misuse of stimulus money will compound the country’s collective misery at a time when millions are already suffering from the grave health and economic effects of the pandemic. In this context, insufficient public transparency and a lack of full cooperation with oversight bodies should worry us all.
Over three years ago, in May 2017, this blog started the project of tracking and cataloguing credible allegations that President Trump, and his family members and close associates, have been corruptly, and possibly illegally, leveraging the power of the presidency to enrich themselves. The newest update is now available here. As was true last month, there are relatively few new items this month, in part because other issues (especially but not exclusively the coronavirus pandemic) have dominated the news. And indeed most of the notable new issues related to concerns about corruption and conflicts-of-interest in the Trump Administration relate to the coronavirus response. For example concerns that the administration has been steering relief funds to companies connected to Trump and his allies have been exacerbated by the administration’s efforts to block oversight of how these funds are spent. For example, the Treasury Department refused to share information about beneficiaries of certain business relief programs, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) has also provided federal officials and their families with a blanket exemption from the conflict-of-interest review that would otherwise apply when business owned by these individuals apply for coronavirus relief funds administered by the SBA.
A previously noted, while we try to include only those allegations that appear credible, many of the allegations that we discuss are speculative and/or contested. We also do not attempt a full analysis of the laws and regulations that may or may not have been broken if the allegations are true. (For an overview of some of the relevant federal laws and regulations that might apply to some of the alleged problematic conduct, see here.)
A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Asoka Obeysekere, the Executive Director for Transparency International’s Sri Lanka chapter (TI-SL). Our conversation covers TI-SL’s various approaches to combating corruption in Sri Lanka, including both “retail” legal aid efforts to assist individual citizens in dealing with corrupt bureaucrats, as well as efforts to secure broader legal and institutional reforms, as well as broader cultural change. On that latter subject, the interview also covers the system of corruption in Sri Lanka, how corruption has become normalized, and whether an dhow attitudes about corruption can be changed. We also discuss how TI-SL, drawing inspiration from a civil society initiative in Ukraie, has compiled its own registry of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) using publicly available, and how the creation of such a database can be helpful in detecting suspicious activity and exposing potential wrongdoing. The interview concludes with the advice Mr. Obeysekere would offer to other civil society leaders operating in similarly challenging environments on how they can be most effective in advancing an anticorruption agenda.
You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:
KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.
Today’s guest post is from Halyna Chyzhyk, a judicial reform expert at the Anticorruption Action Centre (ANTAC) in Kyiv, Ukraine:
Since Ukraine’s so-called Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, the country has substantially reformed its laws—both statutory and constitutional—on the judiciary and the status of judges. A new Supreme Court was created from scratch, the composition of Ukraine’s two judicial governance bodies—the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) and the High Council of Justice (HCJ)—were completely changed, and several new anticorruption measures were enacted. For instance, judges are now required to submit electronic asset declarations, and failure to prove that the assets all derive from legal sources is grounds for dismissing a judge. Moreover, all judges are now obliged to pass an evaluation of their professional competence and integrity.
Despite these reforms, the judiciary remains one of the most corrupt and least trusted institutions in the country. One of the main problems is that the bodies most responsible for judicial appointment, removal, and self-governance—the HQCJ and the HCJ—do not take corruption seriously. In fact, these institutions are actively helping to protect and cover for corrupt judges, in some cases even using their authority to persecuting independent judges who try to expose judicial corruption. Consider, for example, the case of Larysa Holnyk, a judge from Poltava. In 2014, Judge Oleksandr Strukov, the head of the Poltava court, assigned Judge Holnyk a case concerning a potential conflict of interest of the Mayor of Poltava. The Mayor’s representative contacted Judge Holnyk to make an offer to settle the matter “amicably”—the clear implication was that the Mayor was offering some sort of improper inducement in exchange for making the case go away. Judge Holnyk not only refused the offer, but she reported the Mayor and his representative for attempted bribery. Since that time she has been suffering harassment from Judge Strukov, numerous court suits, and even physical attacks. However, the HCJ has refused to investigate Judge Strukov`s possible involvement in the corruption scheme, and has not punished him for persecuting Holnyk. Instead, the HCJ punished Judge Holnyk. Continue reading
These past several weeks, protests in the United States and around the world have brought much-needed scrutiny to the problem of police misconduct. While the main focus of attention has rightly been on issues related to systemic racism and police violence, rather than police corruption (narrowly defined), concerns about police misconduct relate to important themes that the anticorruption community has long emphasized. Indeed, as I discussed in my post a couple weeks back, there are intriguing and troubling similarities in the organizational-cultural characteristics associated with corrupt firms and abusive police departments. And perhaps some of the lessons learned from institutional reform strategies designed to combat corruption can help inform approaches to reforming law enforcement agencies more generally.
I’m not the right person to lead that conversation, since I lack the relevant expertise, but I’m happy to announce a new addition to the blogosphere that will focus on these issues. The CurbingCorruption project (which I’ve mentioned earlier), which already featured a section on fighting corruption in the law enforcement sector, has launched a new blog called Trusted Policing. According to the official description:
Achieving Trusted Policing requires changes to laws and to police institutional practices to stop corruption, brutality, racism and harassment. It requires leadership of change not only from protesters but also from those in positions of responsibility – the police themselves, elected officials, public officials, whether in government, law enforcement agencies – and those who analyse and live the problems – academics, not-for-profit organisations, grass-roots reformers, police committees. The purpose of this blog is to contribute to one small part of this massive improvement challenge: to serve as a source and a repository for good experience and constructive proposals for police improvement from around the world.
The blog is brand new and only has a handful of posts so far, but those posts are quite interesting, and I think this may be a useful forum for those interesting in engaging in dialogue at the intersection of anticorruption reform and policing reform more generally.
An updated version of my anticorruption bibliography is available from my faculty webpage. A direct link to the pdf of the full bibliography is here, and a list of the new sources added in this update is here. As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.
GAB | The Global Anticorruption Blog 