Tag Archives: bribery

Why Hasn’t the Indian Parliament Plugged the Gaping Hole in the Nation’s Anticorruption Law?

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India’s leaders have taken numerous steps in recent years to curb the pervasive corruption that grips the country.  Right to information, whistleblower protection, and other preventive measures have been enacted; an anticorruption agency was created in 2013, and this past April the Cabinet recommended the legislature amend the anticorruption laws to stiffen the penalties for bribery.  But despite the enormous attention the drive to combat corruption has garnered, a September 2015 Supreme Court opinion again pointed to a gaping a hole in the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, the nation’s basic anticorruption law, a hole that is easily repairable but that, until it is, makes convicting bribe-taking public servants far harder than it should be.

Why lawmakers have yet to seal the hole is a mystery. They have known about it since 2011, when the Supreme Court first exposed it.  It is an easy one to close, and until it is closed who knows how many civil servants will demand bribes with near impunity? Continue reading →

Don’t Be Fooled: Bob McDonnell’s Supporters Want To Legalize Bribery of Senior Government Officials

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Last week, as many readers (at least those who follow corruption issues in the U.S.) are probably aware, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order allowing former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to remain free on bail while his appeal is pending, a signal that the Supreme Court is likely to hear his case. As readers of the blog are also likely aware, I think that the appeals court that affirmed McDonnell’s bribery conviction decided correctly, meaning that the Supreme Court should either decline to hear the case, or should take it and affirm it. I really don’t think I have much more to say about the substance of the legal issues, and I wouldn’t bother posting about it again, except that an op-ed in last week’s Washington Post (by C. Boyden Gray, former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush) got me so bloody angry that I just have to weigh in on this again, if only to point out the absurd consequences of the position advocated by Mr. Gray and others who argue that the conviction should be overturned.

The linchpin of Mr. Gray’s argument is that the alleged “official acts” that Governor McDonnell provided to private businessman Jonnie Williams (in exchange for lavish gifts, loans, and other tangible benefits) were “nothing more than speaking with aides and arranging a single meeting between an aide and [Mr. Williams],” and that criminalizing such routine conversations and meetings would be absurd. Described that way, McDonnell’s acts do indeed sound innocuous. But Mr. Gray’s characterization is so flagrantly misleading that there’s only one word to describe it, and it’s not a word I can use on a family blog. Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Blagojevich Case and the Line Between Corruption and Horse-Trading

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Jennifer Rodgers and Jacob Watkins, respectively Executive Director and Program Coordinator for the Columbia University Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (CAPI), contribute the following guest post:

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was recently back in the news, but this time for something he didn’t do wrong, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated 5 of the 18 counts on which Blagojevich was convicted in 2011. The appellate court’s decision hinged upon the distinction between illegal corruption and legal (if distasteful) political horse-trading, an issue recently touched upon in the decision by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to uphold former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s public corruption convictions (which Matthew discussed here). The outcome of the Blagojevich appeal shows that under current U.S. law, whether or not a public official’s deal-making is illegal depends upon what exactly the official is bargaining for. Political horse-trading–exchanging one official act for another official act–is not a crime under U.S. federal law, but exchanging an official act for a private benefit is. The decision in the Blagojevich provides a useful opportunity for thinking more generally about how the law ought to draw that difficult line. Continue reading →

Borrowing Integrity in the United States: Federal Prosecution of State and Local Corruption

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In recent posts I described how developing nations bedeviled by endemic corruption have “borrowed” integrity by contracting out the inspection of imports, the management of public finances, and even the investigation of grand corruption cases to private firms or international agencies.  But it is not just poorer countries where corruption is so ingrained that government must turn to outsiders for help.  The leaders of Mississippi, New York, Louisiana, the City of Chicago, and other state, county, and municipal governments have done so as well.  History and politics have created conditions in these jurisdictions where local officials have been unable to effectively control bribery, nepotism, bid rigging, and other corruption crimes.  Either the police won’t investigate or the prosecutors won’t charge or the courts won’t convict.

Beginning in the nineteen seventies, governors, mayors, and other local officials have either sought, or acquiesced in, help from the federal government.  Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation examine allegations of corruption by state and local public servants; the United States Attorney for the region, a Presidential appointee, prosecutes the cases developed by the FBI, and the cases are tried in a federal district court presided over by a judge named by a President.  Although the U.S. Attorney and the judge may have ties to the area where the case has arisen, neither they nor the FBI agents, nor the assistant prosecutors that actually handle the cases, are beholden to local interests.  Not only are they free to pursue cases whatever the local political implications, they often win kudos from their superiors in Washington for nailing a corrupt local official.

Federalizing the investigation and prosecution of state and local corruption has not been without its critics, however, though the criticism has died away for a quintessential American reason. Continue reading →

Facebook Fever is Not Enough: The Role of Social Media in the Philippines

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The Philippines, long mired in corruption, appears to have made progress on this front in recent years. While the current administration’s anticorruption efforts may have contributed to this progress, some commentators have suggested that social media might actually be playing a bigger role in the decline of graft in the country. Indeed, there are some dramatic examples of social media playing a role in the fight against corruption. For instance, as details of a major scheme involving misappropriation of public money began to surface in 2013, social media platforms exploded with photos and videos pulled from the Instagram and Facebook account of Jeane Napoles, whose mother, Janet, had orchestrated the scheme. Filipinos were shocked and appalled by all that ill-gotten wealth could buy—private planes, expensive handbags, multi-million dollar apartments, and even a new car detailed with an Hermes leather exterior (yes, exterior). Even after these accounts were taken down, photos of the Napoles’ lavish lifestyle continued to circulate. These images made people far more aggressive in condemning the actions of those involved, and even inspired the Million People March, when protestors called for complete elimination of the fund used in the scheme. More recently, Facebook posts about sightings of the younger Napoles helped the media to discover that Jeane, who fled the country in 2013, had in fact returned. She has since been charged with tax evasion.

This is encouraging, and no doubt social media platforms can be useful in the fight against corruption. Nonetheless, I’m cautious about overstating the long-term impact that social media might have on corruption in the Philippines. After all, the Philippines has had an active free press for decades, and past administrations have frequently been challenged by civilian participation and condemnation of corrupt practices. Can we really rely on social media to effect lasting change? Continue reading →

Why Bob McDonnell’s Bribery Conviction Should Be Affirmed

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One of the most high-profile public corruption cases in the United States in the last couple of years (and alas, there’s some competition for that honor) is that of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell—a case that both Rick and Jordan have written insightfully about before. Governor McDonnell was convicted of violating federal anticorruption laws by accepting cash, loans, and lavish gifts from a local businessman, Jonnie Williams, in exchange for helping Mr. Williams secure research studies of his dietary supplement product at state institutions. Governor McDonnell assisted Mr. Williams’ efforts by arranging meetings, recommending that other state officials meet with Mr. Williams about his product (using language indicating that Governor McDonnell supported and encouraged use of the product), and encouraging state officials to arrange for the research studies sought by Mr. Williams.

Governor McDonnell appealed his conviction, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments in his appeal last week. (I can’t find a written transcript online yet, but you can listen to an audio recording of the argument here.) The governor’s primary argument on appeal is that he did not violate the relevant federal statutes because he did not perform any “official acts” on behalf of Mr. Williams. Interestingly, Governor McDonnell’s appeal has attracted support from a broad range of criminal law experts, including my Harvard Law School colleagues Professor (and retired Judge) Nancy Gertner and Professor Charles Ogletree. Judge Gertner and Professor Ogletree, along with Virginia Law School Professor John Jeffries, filed an amicus brief contending, in essence: (1) the things that Mr. Williams got from Governor McDonnell were not specific government decisions, but rather “access and ingratiation,” which do not count as “official acts,” and which the Supreme Court has said are not corrupt; (2) the broader definition of “official acts” accepted by the trial court (and reflected in its jury instructions) would render the anti-bribery statutes at issue so broad and vague as to violate constitutional Due Process rights.

Judge Gertner, Professor Ogletree, and Professor Jeffries are among the most distinguished criminal law experts in the United States. They have decades of experience practicing and writing about these issues at the highest levels, whereas I’m a comparative novice in this area, with zero practice experience. If they think one thing, and I think another, it would probably be a smart bet that they’re right and I’m wrong. All that said, I disagree quite strongly with the analysis in their brief.

A blog post is not the place to get into a detailed discussion of the nuances of the law, and this issue may seem rather parochial, especially to our non-American readers. But I actually think that the main problems with the Gertner-Ogletree-Jeffries (GOJ) brief stem from an important conceptual confusion that has implications well beyond this case, and perhaps outside of the U.S. as well. So with full recognition that I’m risking personal embarassment in advancing what might turn out to be a misguided critique, let me explain why I found the GOJ brief (and Governor McDonnell’s lawyer’s arguments along the same lines) unconvincing: Continue reading →

Death by Corruption: The Nepal Earthquake

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Although press reports attribute the growing death toll in Nepal to the April 25 earthquake, earthquakes were in fact the proximate cause of very few fatalities.  Nepalese did not die from shaking ground but, as news footage shows, because they were crushed by falling buildings.  The link between earthquakes, collapsing buildings and fatalities has been known for centuries if not millennia as has the solution: codes setting standards that ensure all structures can withstand the shock of a quake.  Since 1994, Nepal’s building code has contained several provisions requiring buildings to be earthquake proof, but as the New Zealand consultant who helped develop the ’94 code told Bloomberg News, drafting a quakeproof code is easy, “the hard thing is to get implementation.”

That is where corruption makes its appearance.  Builders can find many ways to bribe around building codes, and judging from New York Times correspondent Chris Buckley’s May 1 story, Nepalese builders found them all.  The collapsed buildings in Katmandu “exposed not only flaky concrete and brittle pillars, but also a system of government enforcement rotted by corruption and indifference. . . . Residents and building experts say the corruption is an open secret . . . .  The developers and landlords who slap up the buildings . . . know they will rarely be punished by officials, who are often happy to look the other way for a price.”

The earthquake – corruption – death nexus is a predictable part of post-quake reporting.  Stories similar to Buckley’s appeared following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2008 one in China’s Sichuan province, the 2001 quake in the Indian state of Gujarat, and the 1999 one in the Marmara region of Turkey.  But as with the Nepal story, they were based on anecdotes and impressions.  Is corruption really why so many buildings become coffins once a quake strikes?  And if it is, what can be done to curb it? Continue reading →

Cells for Suites: Why Corruption in Prison Matters, and What To Do About It

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In the latest chapter of Philippine corruption drama, a police raid of a large prison complex revealed the lavish accommodations enjoyed by several drug lords. The luxury cells included jacuzzis, strip bars, and marble-tiled bathrooms. Police also uncovered methamphetamines, inflatable sex dolls, and a small concert stage, complete with strobe lights and a disco ball. The prisoners involved were found with over $40,000 each in their pockets, which they had kept on hand in order to pay off prison officials. It is incredible that such a blatant abuse of the system took place under the watch of government officials. As one anticorruption advocate noted, the scandal highlighted the frustrating truth that, due to widespread corruption in the prison system, even a conviction does not guarantee that justice has been done.

The Philippine example may be extreme, but the issue of prison corruption is an important one, and it receives far less attention from the anticorruption community than it should. To be sure, there have been a few studies about this topic, including the U4 Issue Report on Detention and Corrections, released in January 2015. But the U4 Report, while helpful in some ways, contains only broad, general assessments about the possible causes of corruption among prison officials. Moreover, the report considered the issue of prison corruption in isolation—it focused only on the effects of such corruption on the prison itself, without addressing the effects on the broader fight against corruption in society at large. While prosecutorial efforts and institutional reforms are crucial to anticorruption efforts, it is also extremely important that prison officials act in accordance with the law, and ensure that justice is, in fact, done. Continue reading →

Disclosure Rules and Political Corruption: The Lessons of the Menendez Case

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On April 1, 2015, the United States Department of Justice issued a 68 page indictment charging U.S. Senator Robert Menendez and Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist, with 22 separate violations of American federal criminal law arising from their long running relationship.  The Department alleges that Dr. Melgen provided Senator Menendez “domestic and international flights on private jets, first-class domestic airfare, use of a Caribbean villa, access to an exclusive Dominican resort, a stay at a luxury hotel in Paris, expensive meals, golf outings, and tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to a legal defense fund.” In return the Department claims that Senator Menendez used his position as a member of the U.S. Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests.

If both Dr. Melgen and Senator Menendez stand by their initial responses to the indictment, prosecutors will find it very hard to prove that Melgen bribed Menendez.  The doctor and the Senator are not disputing the facts; what they say is that they are friends and what each did for the other was motivated by friendship.  To overcome this “gifts from a friend” defense, prosecutors must prove that what was in the minds of the two men when the gifts passed was not friendship but corruption.  Showing what was in a defendant’s mind is always difficult and is even more difficult when the defendant offers a plausible, benign alternative. So unless the Department intends to call a mind reader as a witness, proving the 21 charges of bribery or acts relating to bribery in the indictment will be a challenge.

That’s what makes the 22nd charge so important.

Continue reading →

Fighting Corruption:  Lessons from Eastern Europe and Central Asia

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Over the last few years a number of studies have appeared analyzing the lessons learned from the first decade of anticorruption policies.  The most recent is  Why Corruption Matters: Understanding Causes, Effects and How to Address Them reviewed March 18 on this blog.  Others are: the U4 Anticorruption Resource Center’s Mapping Evidence Gaps in Anticorruption; Kennedy School Professor Rema Hanna and colleagues’ The Effectiveness of Anticorruption Policy: What has Worked, What Hasn’t, and What We Know; The Norwegian Aid Agency’s Joint Evaluation of Support to Anticorruption Efforts, 2002 – 2009; Contextual Choices in Fighting Corruption: Lessons Learned by Hertie School Professor Alina Mungiu-Pipidi and associates; the report by GRECO, or the Group of States against Corruption, Lessons Learnt from the Three Evaluation Rounds (2000 – 2010): Thematic Articles; and the analysis by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, A Review of World Bank Support for Accountability Institutions in the Context of Governance and Anticorruption. While each merits study, I thought it useful to highlight some of the important findings of each in a series of posts over the coming weeks.

Today’s entry summarizes a valuable contribution to this “lessons learned” literature by the Anticorruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a regional outreach program of the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery whose members include the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and OECD member states.  As part of the network’s activities eight countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan – volunteered to have their anticorruption policies judged by their peers against the standards in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, other international conventions, and international best practice.  Anticorruption Reforms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Progress and Challenges, 2009 -2013 sums up the lessons from the latest round of review of these eight countries efforts to combat corruption. Continue reading →