Social Damages for Corruption: Examples Please

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Faithful readers know that for a StAR/UNODC project I am searching for cases where corruption victims were compensated for their losses.  One area where I desperately need assistance is in locating awards for social damages. 

Recovery for social damage was pioneered by Costa Rican jurists.  Article 38 of the Costa Rican penal code gives the Procuraduría General de la República the power to recover damages for acts that affect diffuse or collective interests. Termed “social damages,” the PGR web site lists five corruption cases where over $41 million in social damages have been collected.  The cases have generated learned commentary both in Costa Rica (examples here and here) and in other Latin American states (here and here). Likely because I read Spanish poorly and slowly, beyond the Costa Rican ones, I can find no case where social damages for corruption have been awarded.  Help from readers with examples or leads on where I might find examples is solicited.

For the uninitiated, social damages are compensation paid to redress harm to the welfare of a community. A community’s welfare is the combination of economic and non-economic conditions that together produce a sense of satisfaction, happiness, health, and so forth. To me, it seems to parallel Amartya Sen’s argument that GDP alone is not a sufficient measure of a nation’s well-being though I have yet to see the link made.

Thanks again to readers who responded to my earlier queries.  As with those, submissions in any language Google Translate reads welcome.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Michael Mohallem

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Michael Mohallem, a Brazilian law professor, lawyer, and consultant based in Rio de Janeiro, about recent developments in Brazil’s struggle against corruption. Our conversation focuses on the so-called Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) operation, particularly recent developments including the Bolsonaro Administration’s decision to terminate the Car Wash task force, and recent decisions by the Supreme Court invalidating the corruption conviction of former President Lula. We also discuss the Bolsonaro administration’s overall anticorruption record, and the prospects for future progress against corruption in Brazil in light of what appears to be a very challenging and inhospitable political environment for the foreseeable future. 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.

South Korea’s New Corruption Investigation Office Needs Independent Prosecutorial Power

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When South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office, it was clear that fighting corruption was going to be high on his agenda. After all, his predecessor Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years for pressuring conglomerates such as Samsung and Lotte to give millions of dollars to her friend’s foundation. And the president before her was sentenced to 15 years for collecting bribes of up to $5.4 million from Samsung in exchange for favors. President Moon capitalized on the nation’s anger and sense of betrayal, pledging to crack down on corruption. Part of his reform agenda included addressing how Korea’s investigative and prosecutorial bodies—including the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office (SPO)—have handled, or mishandled, corruption cases.

This concern led to the enactment, in 2019, of legislation authorizing the creation of a new agency called the Corruption Investigation Office for High Ranking Officials (CIO). The CIO can investigate certain crimes, such as bribery and embezzlement, related to the duties of current and retired high-ranking public officials—including, but not limited to, the President, SPO prosecutors, judges, and members of the National Assembly. The CIO has the authority to investigate current and former officials, their family members, and other individuals who are implicated in the crimes under investigation. This means if a company employee bribes the grandson of a public official, then the CIO can investigate the company. Furthermore, other law enforcement agencies must immediately notify the CIO when they learn of crimes that fall under the CIO’s investigative jurisdiction, and the CIO can compel those cases to be transferred to it.

There is, however, a significant problem with this new system, one that will likely impede the CIO’s ability to hold high-level politicians and their cronies accountable: The CIO lacks the power to prosecute most of the cases it investigates. The CIO does have the limited authority to prosecute SPO prosecutors (including the Prosecutor General, who heads the SPO), as well as judges and high-ranking police officers. But for all of its other investigations, the CIO must turn the results of its inquiries over to the SPO, which retains the discretion to decide whether or whom to prosecute. Without independent prosecutorial authority, the CIO is unlikely to live up to its potential to make significant progress against high-level corruption.

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Why Are the Architects of China’s Anticorruption Campaign (Mis-)Reading Tocqueville?

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Back in 2013, senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Wang Qishan, who was then head of the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), and is widely considered the architect of President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, instructed party officials to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution). This is notable in part because the Xi regime has a reputation for rejecting Western thinking, particularly with respect to governance. The timing is also intriguing, in that Wang’s advice that CCP officials should read Tocqueville’s text occurred right as the anticorruption drive was getting underway.

It’s tempting to dismiss Wang’s apparent interest in and enthusiasm for Tocqueville is a minor idiosyncratic biographical detail, with little connection to his or the CCP’s approach to governance generally, or anticorruption more specifically. But I think his interest in Tocqueville’s work is more significant, and more revealing, about the thinking shaping China’s anticorruption strategy today.

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Will Mongolia’s Presidential Election Put Batbold and Foreign Ownership of the Oyu Tolgoi Mine at Risk?

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U. Khürelsükh is the odds-on favorite to win Mongolia’s June 9 Presidential election after an irregular ruling by the Supreme Court denied incumbent President K. Battulga his constitutional right to run for re-election.  Initial predictions were that the election of Khürelsükh, the former Prime Minister and current chair of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), would end the investigation into whether corruption infected the deal Mongolia struck with foreign investors on the Oyu Tolgoi mining project, Mongolia’s ticket to economic prosperity. 

The reasoning was that any investigation would implicate former MPP Prime Minister S. Batbold and other senior MPP members.  As this blog has reported (here, here, and here), the evidence of Batbold’s corrupt dealings with the foreign investors in the project, Australian mining giant Rio Tinto and controversial U.S.-Canadian entrepreneur Robert Friedland, seems strong and Batbold’s denials unconvincing.  But the expectation was that the MPP, the lineal descendant of the Marxist-Leninist party that ran the country when it was an appendage of the Soviet Union, still observed the principle of “democratic centralism.” Or as Benjamin Franklin put the principle more colorfully when signing one the foundational documents of true democracy, “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”  

The assumption that MPP members would hang together is now at risk thanks to what Khürelsükh said last week on Mongolian TV9’s interview program.

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Anticorruption Bibliography–May 2021 Update, Plus the Introduction of Global Integrity’s (Anti-)Corruption Corpus

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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.

In addition to this month’s update, I am delighted to announce that Global Integrity has created an online searchable version of the bibliography, complete with user-friendly search functions, links to open-source versions of the pieces (when available), and other helpful features. This resource (which GI is calling “The (Anti-)Corruption Corpus”) is a huge improvement over my extremely low-tech long PDF document, and I hope that this will make the database more useful. My collaborators at Global Integrity and I will be ironing out the kinks over the next little while, and I will continue to post PDFs of the full bibliography and each month’s new additions on my webpage, but I am optimistic that in the very near future the Global Integrity database will supplant my original version, and serve as the go-to resource for researchers and others looking to get a sense of what’s available in the English-language corruption literature.

As always, I welcome suggestions for other sources that are not yet included, including any papers GAB readers have written.

The U.S. State Department’s New International Anticorruption Champions Awards Are a Winning Strategy in the Fight Against Corruption

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This past February, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken launched one of the first foreign policy initiatives of the new Biden administration: the inaugural International Anticorruption Champions Awards. After receiving nominations from U.S. embassies around the world, the State Department honored a dozen individuals who made significant contributions to combatting corruption in their home countries. The recipients of the International Anticorruption Champions Awards were diverse in every sense of the word. They spanned six continents, represented national and local governments, state-owned companies, and non-governmental organizations. The awardees came from countries big and small, were young and old, and a third were women.

These awards added to a growing movement to provide formal international recognition to those who are leading the fight against corruption in their home countries. Transparency International has recognized such individuals and organizations through their Anti-Corruption Awards semi-annually since 2013, and the United Nations’ Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center established the annual International Anti-Corruption Excellence Award in 2016. But, importantly, the International Anticorruption Champions Awards mark the first time that one sovereign country—and a major global power at that—officially recognized and honored anticorruption advocacy in other countries.

While it might be tempting to dismiss these awards as empty symbolism (or worse), this would be a mistake. That the U.S. government has created these awards, and apparently intends to continue to issue them annually, is a significant positive contribution to the global fight against corruption, for several reasons.

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Corruption at the Heart of India’s Coronavirus Crisis? Prime Minister Modi Must Answer for the PM Cares Fund

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India’s unfathomable Covid tragedy has left the country gasping for breath, and no oxygen can be found. Hospitals are overrun, and are often unable to help even those lucky enough to be admitted. Desperate relatives are turning to social media and the black market for help, as beleaguered crematoriums shift from unprecedented 24/7 hours to the horrors of mass cremation to keep up with demand. In the midst of this appalling tragedy looms the question: Why was the government so unprepared? And, more specifically, whatever happened to the billions of dollars raised last year through the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (known as the “PM Cares Fund”)? 

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Guest Post: Why Sweden Needs To Clean Up Its Act

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Today’s guest post is from Aiysha Varraich, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Gothenburg’s Quality of Government Institute.

This past January, Transparency International released the latest version of its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). And once again, Sweden’s score was among the best in the world (tied for third place with Finland, Switzerland, and Singapore). Sweden’s position near the top of this and other international integrity and good governance indexes may create the impression that Sweden is a corruption-free country. But this is misleading. To be sure, Sweden is free from the daily petty corruption that burdens so many citizens throughout the developing world. But high-level corruption and associated financial crimes are alive and well in Sweden — and often the perpetrators escape meaningful accountability. Consider just a few recent high-profile examples:

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New Podcast Episode, Featuring Nicola Bonucci

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Nicola Bonucci, currently a partner with the Paul Hastings law firm, who served for many years as the Director of Legal Affairs for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Our interview focuses primarily on the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions (sometimes referred to simply as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention), which Mr. Bonucci was involved in creating and implementing. We discuss the history behind the convention, the reasons for its (relative) success, and also some of its current shortcomings. We also explore some of the current questions and challenges for this convention, including whether large emerging economies (such as China) ought to be brought into the convention, and how to enforce the convention’s requirement that enforcement of foreign anti-bribery laws shouldn’t be influenced by political or national economic considerations. Near the end of our talk, Mr. Bonucci reflects on his new perspective working with private clients addressing foreign bribery issues. 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.