Albanian Political Leaders Are Using Covert Tactics to Silence Anticorruption Watchdog Groups

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Civil society and investigative journalism have long played key roles in exposing corruption, and many CSOs and media watchdogs—especially newer, younger organizations—now make extensive use of social media platforms to engage with the public. In Albania, for example, relatively new organizations like Nisma Thurje and Faktoje frequently expose instances of corruption via Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms in Albania. However, corrupt politicians are taking notice of these innovative tactics and finding equally innovative ways to silence their critics. In addition to ongoing efforts to censor the media and harass activists (see, for example, here and here), the Albanian elite has undertaken more clandestine efforts to attack civil society and journalists.

One savvy scheme involves Acromax Media GmBH (Acromax), a German digital rights company owned by two Albanians, which has close ties to Albania’s ruling Socialist Party. Acromax has contracts with over 95% of Albanian television stations, with far-reaching rights to take action on its own initiative against alleged copyright violations. For example, when a civil society group like Nisma Thurje posts a story on Facebook about a politician’s corruption, and includes a link to interviews or clips of the politician’s speeches that were originally broadcast on one of those TV stations, Acromax files a complaint with the social media platform alleging a copyright violation—even though re-sharing public content that clearly displays the original source is common practice around the world and does not meet the definition of copyright infringement. Moreover, Acromax only files such complaints with respect to stories that are critical of the government; pro-government posts, including clips from these same channels, are not flagged as intellectual property infringement by Acromax.

Distressingly, even though the claims of intellectual property infringement seem bogus, Facebook has largely complied with Acromax’s demands to take down content. This may be due in part to the European Union’s recent 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, Article 17 of which makes content-sharing platforms, not just individual content uploaders, liable for intellectual property violations, which in turn has caused Facebook to employ even more automation to deal with its new legal responsibilities. Unfortunately, the automated algorithms currently in use cannot reliably distinguish genuine copyright infringement from legal re-sharing, and the algorithms are sufficiently complex and opaque that it is very difficult for CSOs to challenge the take-down decisions and get their content reinstated. Acromax has exploited these weaknesses in the system to make legitimate civil society watchdogs look like serial copyright infringers. Indeed, Acromax’s harassment campaign has been so successful that two of Nisma Thurje’s founders had personal social media pages shut down because of complaints from Acromax, and Facebook further labeled Nisma Thurje “a dangerous group” and limited the range of Nisma Thurje’s social media capabilities. The technology giant further warned Nisma Thurje that its page would be shut down entirely if Facebook received even one more copyright infringement claim.

Acromax is a well-tuned operation for squelching civil society watchdogs that threaten to expose government wrongdoing, and may serve as a model for similar censorship efforts. Tackling this problem seems daunting, but these are some concrete steps that various actors—including governments, technology companies, and the civil society groups themselves—can take to address this new kind of assault. Continue reading →

Should International Organizations Like the IMF Require More Anticorruption Conditions on Their Pandemic Emergency Funding?

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In response to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world are taking emergency measures to secure and distribute necessary medical equipment to hospitals, front-line medical workers, and at-risk groups. Moreover, to respond to the dangerous economic crisis that has resulted from stay-at-home orders and other essential public health measures, national governments have rapidly adopted new fiscal programs and other measures that have pushed trillions of dollars out the door. Multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have also stepped in to assist countries that have seen their foreign exchange inflows drying up due to a variety of factors associated with the pandemic (including lower international oil prices, lack of tourism receipts, and declining remittance flows). These countries urgently need for foreign exchange to purchase critical medical supplies and equipment from abroad. The IMF has existing facilities for providing emergency funding to address balance of payments shortfalls in times of emergency (the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI)), and has  already begun providing funding under these programs, with more funds likely on the way. In contrast to other IMF programs, there are relatively few conditions that recipients need to satisfy up front in order to have access to RCF/RFI financing.

The global anticorruption community has been understandably worried about the risks that emergency response funds could be misappropriated or mismanaged, which would impede the collective public health efforts. (See, for example, the pieces collected here and here). For example, Transparency International has pushed for open data publishing on public procurement, and Sarah Steingrüber, the Global Health Lead for CurbingCorruption, recently made the case on GAB for the establishment of oversight task forces and for directing some donor funds to enhancing anticorruption safeguards (i.e. public financial management improvements and CSO funding). With respect to the IMF in particular, a group of 99 civil society organizations (CSOs) sent an open letter to the IMF, pushing back against what they characterized as the Fund’s “retroactive approach” to anticorruption efforts, and instead called for loan conditions that would require recipient governments to (1) receive all IMF funds in a single Treasury account, (2) hire independent auditors within six months of disbursement, (3) publish a procurement plan with names and beneficial ownership information, and (4) repeal or amend laws that prevent groups from safely monitoring government spending.

While nobody seriously questions the importance of reducing corruption and other forms of “leakage” of funds spent to fight the coronavirus and its associated economic dislocation, much of the emerging commentary from the anticorruption community seems to lack a sufficient appreciation of, and engagement with, the trade-offs between controlling leakage and ensuring a sufficiently rapid response. The CSOs’ open letter to the IMF is an illustrative example of the apparent neglect of these trade-offs. Continue reading →

Guest Post: How France Is Modernizing Its Criminal Procedure and Streamlining Its Resolution of Corporate Crime Cases

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Frederick Davis, a lawyer in the Paris and New York offices of Debevoise & Plimpton and a Lecturer at Columbia Law School, who contributes the following guest post:

For approximately two decades, at least since 2000, France—a signatory to the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention — has had laws on the books that emulate the U.S. Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) by criminalizing bribes to foreign public officials. For most of that time, these laws were not effectively enforced: During the first 15 years after France prohibited foreign bribery, not a single corporation was convicted in France. The reasons for this—previously discussed on this blog by me and others—included the low maximum penalties applicable to corporations, imprecision in French laws relating to corporate criminal responsibility, lengthy investigations (often lasting over a decade) run by investigating magistrates, and the virtual absence of any possibility of a negotiated outcome. In the absence of French enforcement of its laws against foreign bribery, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) took it upon itself to investigate and prosecute a number of French corporations for FCPA and other violations. These enforcement actions, which were typically resolved by guilty pleas or deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs), netted aggregate fines and other penalties of over $2 billion, not a penny of which was paid to France.

This situation provoked widespread discussion and debate in France, and eventually led to a number of changes in its criminal procedures. Among the most important were the creation, in 2013, of a National Financial Prosecutor’s office (PNF) with nationwide authority to prosecute a variety of financial crimes, and the adoption, in December 2016, of the so-called Loi Sapin II, which overhauled many of the criminal laws relating to corporate and financial crime, increasing corporate penalties, adopting a new settlement procedure called the Convention Judiciaire d’Intérêt Public (CJIP) closely modeled on the US DPA, and creating a French Anticorruption Agency (AFA) to supervise newly-mandatory corporate compliance programs and issue guidelines for corporate behavior. These reforms have already produced some impressive results, including major settlements (sometimes in cooperation with other countries like the US and UK) with large French and multinational companies (see, for example, here, here, and here).

An interview published this past April with Jean-François Bohnert, who has served since October 2019 as the National Financial Prosecutor, sheds some light on how France’s recent legal and institutional reforms are transforming its enforcement of its laws against foreign bribery and other complex corporate crime. In that interview, M. Bohnert understandably focused on his office’s successes; he was particularly proud of the number of cases his office had handled with a relatively small staff. But to my mind, by far the most interesting and important thing that came out of this interview was the fact that, of the 592 cases handled by the PNF in 2019, 81% were so-called “preliminary investigations” managed exclusively by the PNF, while only 19% were led by investigating magistrates. To someone unfamiliar with the French legal system, the significance of this statistic may not be readily apparent, but in fact it suggests an important change in the French approach to corporate misbehavior. Continue reading →

Anticorruption Bibliography–May 2020 Update

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

The Bribery Trial of Sitting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Poses Unprecedented Challenges

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The criminal trial of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, on multiple corruption charges, opened yesterday, only ten days after the formation of a new government, and after years of police investigations, indictment procedures, and three rounds of early general elections. The trial is an unprecedented event in Israel, and one of the few examples anywhere in the world where a sitting head of government has stood trial on criminal charges in his own country. This situation poses unique challenges. On the one hand, the court must ensure that Netanyahu’s rights, as a criminal defendant, are respected. That said, though, some adjustments will have to be made to secure both the fairness of the trial and the integrity of Israeli executive and judicial branches, given that as the trial unfolds, Netanyahu will continue to serve as Prime Minister.

Continue reading →

Adapting Anticorruption Enforcement to an Age of Populism and Polarization

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Shortly after the U.S. Senate acquitted President Clinton in 1999, he apologized for triggering the impeachment process. President Trump, in contrast, declared that his acquittal called for “a day of celebration,” and immediately started firing White House employees who had testified before the House of Representatives. In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Olmert resigned shortly after the police recommended that he should be indicted on corruption charges. In contrast, after Prime Minister Netanyahu was indicted on multiple bribery charges, he infamously said that Israeli citizens should “investigate the investigators,” and even with the trial approaching, Netanyahu shows no signs of considering resignation. Instead, he is currently fiercely promoting legislation to amend several of the Israeli Constitutional Basic Laws in ways that will allow him to remain in office for years to come. These troubling examples illustrate how the resurgence of populism, coupled with increasing polarization, are making it easier for corrupt politicians to evade accountability, even in countries with functional legal and judicial systems. Deep political divisions and strong partisan loyalty are not new, but in the past, it seems there was a degree of overlapping consensus on minimum standards of integrity and propriety, and enough citizens were willing to enforce these standards on a non-partisan basis that leaders would be restrained by political checks—enforced through things like elections and internal party discipline—that could complement judicial processes.

Moreover, leaders like Trump and Netanyahu have acted aggressively to undermine the institutions of justice in order to protect themselves. Both leaders have cavalierly attacked the professionalism and integrity of their country’s law enforcement agencies by suggesting that investigations targeting the leader or his associates are politically motivated “witch hunts.” And both have taken more concrete action to undermine the ordinary operation of the machinery of justice. In the U.S., after his Senate trial acquittal, President Trump intervened to help allies who had been found guilty in cases related to investigations of impropriety by Trump’s 2016 campaign. For example, Trump’s Attorney General ordered the Department of Justice to seek a more lenient sentence for Trump’s former consultant Roger Stone, and Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of several others in a short and unorthodox process. Netanyahu has been even more aggressive in trying to weaken legal institutions in order to protect himself. After being indicted, Netanyahu fired the Minister of Justice and appointed in her place a low-ranking member of his party with no prior ministerial experience. The new Minister’s first action was to appoint a new Solicitor General—the immediate superior of the prosecution team in Netanyahu’s case–through an irregular process and against the recommendation of the non-partisan Attorney General. (Due to the political deadlock, the Minister is part of a caretaker government and could therefore appoint an interim Solicitor General without the approval of the public committee that the law would otherwise require.) On the eve of Israel’s third round of elections, the new Solicitor General decided—against the opinion of the Attorney General and many others—to launch a police investigation into a firm in which Netanyahu’s chief rival Benny Gantz served as a director (obscuring the fact that Gantz himself is not a suspect). More recently, the Minister of Justice gave the unprecedented order to freeze all non-urgent judicial procedures due to the Covid-19 outbreak—a move that indefinitely postpones Netanyahu’s trial. While the Covid-19 outbreak has disrupted or delayed judicial proceedings in many countries, there was no expert opinion supporting such drastic measures in Israel, especially given that Israel has more per capita testing and ventilators capacity than nearly any country on earth. Even now, when newly detected cases are close to zero, a new date for the trial has yet to be set. Moreover, to avoid a fourth round of elections, given the continued deadlock, Netanyahu is now fiercely and unprecedently promoting legislative amendments to Israel’s Constitutional Basic Laws that would allow him to hold onto office for years to come.

When professional, and traditionally non-partisan, law enforcement agencies find themselves under attack by corrupt populists, these agencies often do not respond, presumably due to the belief that the only way to maintain integrity, legitimacy, and professionalism in the face of such attacks is to refrain from commenting on unfounded claims meant to disparage state attorneys and police investigators. There is much to be said for that approach, but at the same time, the institutions of justice can and should do more to counter the attempts of corrupt populists to undermine those institutions in order to remain in power.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Anonymous Companies Are Undermining Mexico’s Public Health

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Today’s guest post is by Miguel Ángel Gómez Jácome, the Communications Coordinator at the Mexican civil society organization Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity).

The COVID-19 pandemic has already affected millions of people. (As of the time this piece was initially drafted, around 2 million people had been infected; the exponential spread of the virus means that by the time this piece is published, that number is likely to be much higher.) And while Mexico has not yet been as severely impacted as other countries, official statistics (which likely understate the true prevalence) already report thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. To confront this problem, Mexico, like other countries, will need to marshal its resources effectively. Unfortunately, though, Mexico’s ability to manage the COVID-19 epidemic is threatened by Mexico’s epidemic of embezzlement in the health sector, much of it facilitated by anonymous shell companies. This widespread corruption drains away vital public resources needed to combat public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, two civil society organizations (Justicia Justa (Just Justice) and Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity)), documented the extent of the problem in a research report entitled Fake Invoices: The Health Sector Epidemic. The research found that between 2014 and 2019, 837 shell companies issued 22,933 fake invoices to 90 health institutions across the country (in 30 of Mexico’s 32 states, as well as the federal government), ultimately embezzling a total of over 4 billion pesos (roughly $176 million US dollars) from the health sector—an amount that could have paid for around 80,000 hospital beds or between 3,400 and 6,900 ventilators. (To put this in context, Mexico currently has 5,000 ventilators in the whole country, and the government is looking to acquire 5,000 more.) And the problem is only getting bigger: According to Mexico’s Tax Administration authority (the SAT), the number of anonymous shell companies in the country has increased from 111 in 2014 to over 9,000 in 2020.

To crack down on the abuse of shell companies to embezzle public funds from the health sector (as well as other sectors), the authors of the Fake Invoices report propose three responses: Continue reading →

Where the Real Blame for Letting Bridgegate Defendants Off Lies: Part I

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The Supreme Court continues to bear the blame for two political operatives getting off scot free for an admitted blatant abuse of power: creating nightmarish traffic jams for residents of a small New Jersey town because its mayor had not endorsed their boss’ reelection as governor.  Though the record showed the stunt endangered the lives of some and inconvenienced thousands and their lawyer admitted it was an abuse their power as state officials to cause the jams, the Court acquitted them on all charges.  Its decision in the Bridgegate case, so named because the traffic jams were created by blocking two lanes of the bridge the residents used to commute to New York City, is indeed the immediate reason defendants escaped sanction.

But that ruling was the inevitable consequence of earlier decisions by the other branches of government.  For decades Congress has ignored the Court’s warning that the hodgepodge of federal laws used to prosecute state and local officials for corruption is Constitutionally infirm.  And for decades, and despite some spectacular earlier reversals by the Court, the Executive branch has continued to rely on these statutes to prosecute state and local corruption.

Those genuinely interested in fighting corruption need to stop denouncing the Court and focus their energies instead on these two branches of government.  Below is what they should demand of the Executive.  Part II of this post will explain what they should demand of Congress. Continue reading →

New Podcast, Featuring Sarah Steingrüber

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Sarah Steingrüber, an independent consultant on corruption and public health issues. Among her other activities in this area, she currently serves as the global health lead for the CurbingCorruption web platform, and was the co-author of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre’s report on Corruption in the Time of COVID-19: A Double-Threat for Low Income Countries. Much of our conversation naturally focuses on how corruption and related issues may intersect with the coronavirus pandemic and its response, in particular (1) misappropriation of relief spending, and (2) how some corrupt leaders may use the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to eliminate checks and oversight. A central tension we discuss is how the urgency of emergency situations affects the sorts of measures that are appropriate, and draws on lessons from prior health crises such as the Ebola outbreak in West African in 2013-2016. We then discuss other more general issues related to corruption and health, such as how the monetization and privatization of health may contribute to undue private influence on decision-making processes in the health sector.

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.

Corruption 2020: How The U.S. Supreme Court Might Leave Presidential Elections Vulnerable to Corruption

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The United States uses an indirect voting process called the Electoral College to elect the president. In this system, which is mandated by the Constitution, each state is assigned a number of “electors” based on the number of representatives the state has in both Houses of Congress; the voters in each state do not actually vote directly for a presidential candidate, but rather for a slate of electors, appointed by the state, who have pledged to vote for that candidate when the Electoral College convenes to select the president. (This odd system is why there have been instances, including in the most recent U.S. presidential election in 2016, when the winner of the popular vote does not become the president.) But suppose an elector who has pledged to support one candidate decides to switch her vote? This is not purely hypothetical: Throughout American history, 157 electors have defected from their pledge. Some states seek to prevent this through laws under which such “faithless electors” can be subject to civil penalties, including replacement. Electors from the 2016 Presidential Election have brought a case in the Supreme Court challenging these “faithless elector” laws as unconstitutional.

This challenge is obviously important for U.S. presidential elections—but (many readers might be wondering) what does it have to do with corruption? It turns out that, as U.S. anticorruption advocates have emphasized, if the Supreme Court rules that states cannot compel electors to vote as they have pledged, this could leave U.S presidential elections vulnerable to corruption. If electors cannot be legally required to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state, then electors can be bribed—or, if not outright bribed, then subject to other forms of improper influence.

Part of the problem is that U.S. campaign finance laws and government ethics rules, as currently written, do not cover electors. Likewise, U.S. anti-bribery laws prohibit bribes to public officials and candidates for public office, but electors don’t clearly fall into either of those categories. The most relevant federal criminal statute is likely the prohibition on vote-buying and vote-selling in elections, codified at 18 U.S.C. §597. That section prohibits “mak[ing] or offer[ing] to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate.” But this statute has been construed narrowly to only apply to instances of a quid pro quo, which leaves the door open for private interests to corruptly influence electors so long as they avoid any explicit bargain. Moreover—and even more troubling—the U.S. President has virtually unlimited pardon powers, so if a candidate’s surrogates bribed enough electors to win the presidency, in blatant violation of §597, the President could simply pardon both the agents who paid the bribes and the electors who took them. These two problems—the difficulty of proving a quid pro quo and the President’s pardon power—also explain why the problem couldn’t be fixed by expanding the scope of other federal campaign finance, government ethics, and anti-bribery rules to cover electors as well as public officials and political candidates.

So, should the Supreme Court decide that electors cannot be penalized by the states for defecting from their pledged votes, the U.S. presidential election might be up for sale. And, for the reasons sketched above, this problem couldn’t be easily fixed simply by expanding existing federal anticorruption laws to apply to electors.

Should the Supreme Court side with the “faithless electors,” what could be done to protect the integrity of U.S. presidential elections (short of abolishing or significantly reforming the electoral college—steps that would require a constitutional amendment and so are not likely any time soon)? There are three possibilities: Continue reading →