Tag Archives: Canada

What Chinese Cuisine and Deferred Prosecution Agreements Have in Common

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As Kees noted Monday, the use of American-style deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) to resolve corporate corruption cases short of trial is on the rise.  The United Kingdom, France, Argentina, and most recently Singapore now permit prosecutors to suspend or even drop altogether the prosecution of a firm for a corruption offense in return for the accused firm paying a fine, adopting measures to prevent future offenses, and cooperating with ongoing investigations.  Australia and Canada are on the verge of approving DPAs, and influential voices in India and Indonesia are urging their adoption too.

Apostles say DPAs allow governments to realize the benefits of a criminal conviction without the need for a lengthy, expensive, arduous trial against a well-funded corporate defendant where defeat is always a risk.  Former U.K. Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith told a New Delhi audience last October that once India begins using DPAS, companies would start coming forward and admit wrongdoing.  During the recent debate in Singapore one commentator observed that DPAs “provide an incentive to corporate entities to confront criminal conduct within their ranks,” and a group of Indonesian professors claim DPAs will be particularly valuable in their country.   In Indonesia, conviction of a corporation provides no assurance the defendant will not commit the same offense again while, they write, a DPA does.

DPA evangelists are about to learn what DPAs have in common with Chinese cuisine.  The first-time visitor to China soon discovers that Chinese food in China is unlike Chinese food at home.  Beef broccoli tastes much different outside China than in. Connoisseurs of DPAs will shortly find that what American prosecutors are able to cook up looks much different when prepared abroad.     Continue reading →

The Role of Judicial Oversight in DPA Regimes: Rejecting a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

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In late March 2018, the Canadian government released a backgrounder entitled Remediation Agreements and Orders to Address Corporate Crime that outlines the contours of a proposed Canadian deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) regime. DPAs—also appearing in slightly different forms such as non-prosecution agreements (NPAs) or leniency agreements—are pre-indictment diversionary settlements in which offenders (almost exclusively corporations) agree to make certain factual admissions, pay fines or other penalties, and in some cases assume other obligations (such as reforming internal compliance systems or retaining an external corporate monitor), and in return the government assures the corporation that it will drop the case after a period of time (ordinarily a few years) if the conditions specified in the agreement are met. Such agreements inhabit a middle ground between declinations (where the government declines to file any charges, but where companies still might forfeit money) and plea agreements (which require guilty pleas to criminal charges filed in court).

While Canada has been flirting with the idea of introducing DPAs for over ten years, several other countries have recently adopted, or are actively considering, deferred prosecution programs. France formally added DPAs (known in France as “public interest judicial agreements”) in December 2016, and entered into its first agreement, with HSBC Private Bank Suisse SA, in November 2017. In March 2018, Singapore’s Parliament installed a DPA framework by amending its Criminal Procedure Code. And debate is underway in the Australian parliament on a bill that would introduce a DPA regime for offenses committed by corporations.

The effect of DPAs in the fight against corruption, pro and con, has been previously debated on this blog. One critical design component of any DPA regime is the degree of judicial involvement. On one end of the spectrum is the United States, where courts merely serve as repositories for agreements at the end of negotiations and have no role in weighing the terms of any deal. On the other end of the spectrum is the United Kingdom, where a judge must agree that negotiations are “in the interests of justice” while they are underway, and a judge must declare that the final terms of any DPA are “fair, reasonable, and proportionate.” British courts also play an ongoing supervisory role post-approval, with the ability to approve amendments to settlement terms, terminate agreements upon a determined breach, and close the prosecution once the term of the DPA expires.

Under Canada’s proposed system of Remediation Agreements, each agreement would require final approval from a judge, who would certify that 1) the agreement is “in the public interest” and 2) the “terms of the agreement are fair, reasonable and proportionate.” While the test used by Canadian judges appears to parallel the U.K. model—including using some identical language—the up-or-down judicial approval would occur only once negotiations have been concluded. This stands in contrast to the U.K. model mandating direct judicial involvement over the course of the negotiation process.

The decision by the Canadian government to chart a middle course on judicial oversight is all the more notable given that an initial report released by the Canadian government following a several-month public consultation regarding the introduction of DPAs appeared to endorse the U.K. approach, noting that the majority of commenters who submitted views “favoured the U.K. model, which provides for strong judicial oversight throughout the DPA process.” Moreover, commentators have generally praised the U.K. model’s greater role for judicial oversight of settlements, especially judicial scrutiny of the parties charged (or not) in any given case, the evidence (or lack thereof), and the “fairness” (or not) of any proposed deal.

Despite these positions, one should not reflexively view the judicial oversight regime outlined in Canada’s latest report as a half-measure. Perhaps the U.K. model would be better for Canada, or for many of the other countries considering the adoption or reform of the DPA mechanism. But the superiority of the U.K. approach can’t be assumed, as more judicial involvement is not categorically better. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach favoring heightened judicial oversight, there are several factors that countries might consider when deciding on the appropriate form and degree of judicial involvement in DPA regimes: Continue reading →

How Corrupt Are Your Courts? Too Corrupt To Be Fair?

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In complex transnational litigation, ensuring the rights of all parties is especially challenging. Consider the following situation: A plaintiff brings a lawsuit against a US multinational in US court, alleging wrongful conduct in some foreign country; the defendant corporation moves to dismiss the case on the ground that the courts of the country where the alleged conduct took place are a more appropriate forum for adjudicating the suit, and the plaintiff should therefore be required to pursue the suit there; but the plaintiff opposes the motion to dismiss on the grounds that the foreign country’s courts are so corrupt that it would be impossible to get a fair trial. What should the US court do when confronted with that sort of situation?

The technical legal term for a motion to dismiss a case because the plaintiff ought to file the suit in a different (and more convenient) judicial forum is the forum non conveniens motion. To successfully win on such a motion in a US federal court, the defendant must convince the court that an alternative forum would provide “basic fairness.” When the alternative forum is the judiciary of a foreign country, plaintiffs sometimes try to oppose these motions by pointing to judicial corruption in the foreign forum. But as one court highlighted, “the argument that the alternative forum is too corrupt to be adequate does not enjoy a particularly good track record.” Indeed, as I noted in my previous post on the Chevron-Ecuador litigation, the district judge in that case rejected the plaintiff’s claim that Ecuadorian judicial corruption made it impossible to get a fair trial in Ecuador, remarking that “the courts of the United States are properly reluctant to assume that the courts of a sister democracy are unable to dispense justice.” Even when confronted with clear and undisputed evidence of corruption in a foreign court, US courts have generally been unwilling to accept this as a sufficient reason to keep the case in US court. (In one case a US court reaffirmed a forum non conveniens decision even after the plaintiff successfully bribed a Mexican judge to have the case sent back to the US court.) Consistent with this deferential approach, there are very few cases where a US court has found a foreign forum inadequate due to credible allegations of widespread judicial corruption. (There are admittedly a handful of such cases, including Bhatnagar v. Surrendra Overseas, Ltd., in which the court found that the extensive delay, unreliability, and general corruption of the Indian judiciary made it an inadequate forum for the plaintiff.)

By contrast, other jurisdictions take allegations of foreign judicial corruption more seriously as a reason not to dismiss a lawsuit and insist that it remain in the forum of the plaintiff’s choice. Notably, although the forum non conveniens analysis is very similar in US and Canadian courts, Canadian courts have been more willing to find foreign forums inadequate because of pervasive corruption. For example, in Norex Petroleum Limited v. Chubb Insurance Company of Canada, a US court dismissed the case on forum non conveniens grounds, while the Canadian court took jurisdiction, denying the defendant’s forum non conveniens motion in light of the Canadian court’s finding that—even though every other factor weighed heavily in favor of Russia as the better forum—extensive judicial corruption in Russia would prevent the plaintiff from accessing a fair and impartial court. It’s certainly not the case that Canadian courts have been consistently receptive to these sorts of arguments—for example, a recent Canadian ruling found Guatemala an appropriate forum despite significant corruption concerns—but the contrast between Canada and the US demonstrates that the US courts’ “see no evil” approach is far from inevitable.

Although it may be helpful for the purposes of international comity for courts to presume that foreign judiciaries are fair, and there are legitimate reasons to dismiss a case in favor a foreign forum (such as easier access to evidence and witnesses), the reluctance of US courts to accept credible allegations of judicial corruption as a reason to deny a forum non conveniens motion likely goes too far. Respect for foreign courts is a good thing in principle, but in practice it can undermine the ability of plaintiffs to get a fair hearing. US courts should hesitate before dismissing cases to foreign forums when there are plausible claims of corruption for two reasons:  Continue reading →

London Anticorruption Summit–Country Commitment Scorecard, Part 1

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Well, between the ICIJ release of the searchable Panama Papers/Offshore Leaks database, the impeachment of President Rousseff in Brazil, and the London Anticorruption Summit, last week was quite a busy week in the world of anticorruption. There’s far too much to write about, and I’ve barely had time to process it all, but let me try to start off by focusing a bit more on the London Summit. I know a lot of our readers have been following it closely (and many participated), but quickly: The Summit was an initiative by David Cameron’s government, which brought together leaders and senior government representatives from over 40 countries to discuss how to move forward in the fight against global corruption. Some had very high hopes for the Summit, others dismissed it as a feel-good political symbolism, and others were somewhere in between.

Prime Minister Cameron stirred things up a bit right before the Summit started by referring to two of the countries in attendance – Afghanistan and Nigeria – as “fantastically corrupt,” but the kerfuffle surrounding that alleged gaffe has already received more than its fair share of media attention, so I won’t say more about it here, except that it calls to mind the American political commentator Michael Kinsley’s old chestnut about how the definition of a “gaffe” is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.) I’m going to instead focus on the main documents coming out of the Summit: The joint Communique issued by the Summit participants, and the individual country statements. There’s already been a lot of early reaction to the Communique—some fairly upbeat, some quite critical (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). A lot of the Communique employs fairly general language, and a lot of it focuses on things like strengthening enforcement of existing laws, improving international cooperation and information exchange, supporting existing institutions and conventions, and exploring the creation of new mechanisms. All that is fine, and some of it might actually turn out to be consequential, but to my mind the most interesting parts of the Communique are those that explicitly announce that intention of the participating governments to take pro-transparency measures in four specific areas:

  1. Gathering more information on the true beneficial owners of companies (and possibly other legal entities, like trusts), perhaps through a central public registry—which might be available only to law enforcement, or which might be made available to the general public (see Communique paragraph 4).
  2. Increasing transparency in public contracting, including making public procurement open by default, and providing usable and timely open data on public contracting activities (see Communique paragraph 9). (There’s actually a bit of an ambiguity here. When the Communique calls for public procurement to be “open by default,” it could be referring to greater transparency, or it could be calling for the use of open bidding processes to increase competition. Given the surrounding context, it appears that the former meaning was intended. The thrust of the recommendation seems to be increasing procurement transparency rather than increasing procurement competition.)
  3. Increasing budget transparency through the strengthening of genuinely independent supreme audit institutions, and the publication of these institutions’ findings (see Communique paragraph 10).
  4. Strengthening protections for whistleblowers and doing more to ensure that credible whistleblower reports prompt follow-up action from law enforcement (see Communique paragraph 13).

Again, that’s far from all that’s included in the Communique. But these four action areas struck me as (a) consequential, and (b) among the parts of the Communique that called for relatively concrete new substantive action at the domestic level. So, I thought it might be a useful (if somewhat tedious) exercise to go through each of the 41 country statements to see what each of the Summit participants had to say in each of these four areas. This is certainly not a complete “report card,” despite the title of this post, but perhaps it might be a helpful start for others out there who are interested in doing an assessment of the extent of actual country commitments on some of the main action items laid out in the Communique. So, here goes: a country-by-country, topic-by-topic, quick-and-dirty summary of what the Summit participants declared or promised with respect to each of these issues. (Because this is so long, I’m going to break the post into two parts. Today I’ll give the info for Afghanistan–Malta, and Thursday’s post will give the info for Mexico–United States). Continue reading →

Canada’s Supreme Court Hands Corruption Fighters a Victory Worth Savoring

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In its April 29 opinion in World Bank Group v. Wallace the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the use of a growing practice in the fight against transnational corruption, ruling that World Bank investigators can provide information to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about corruption in Bank projects and that it can do so without becoming subject to Canadian law.  The investigators had provided material suggesting executives of a Canadian company had paid bribes to win a Bank-financed contract in Bangladesh.  After being charged, the executives sought to depose the investigators and inspect Bank files in Washington.  Had the Court ruled for defendants, the World Bank and other development banks would almost certainly have halted further information sharing with national law enforcement agencies.  In ruling for the Bank, the Court not only endorsed information sharing arrangements but explained why it was essential that national authorities have unimpeded access to information from the Bank and other development finance institutions: “multilateral banks . . . are particularly well placed to investigate corruption and to serve at the frontlines of international anticorruption efforts” (¶94).

In Wallace the Court had to decide two questions:  1) Did the Bank’s immunity from Canadian law apply when it cooperated with the RCMP?  2) Would defendants be denied a right to a fair trial if they were not allowed to depose the investigators and search Bank records?  The Court’s reasoning in answering both questions in the Bank’s favor  offers valuable guidance that development banks will want to consider when entering into sharing arrangements with national law enforcement agencies in the future.    Continue reading →

The Charbonneau Commission’s Underappreciated Contributions to Fighting Corruption in Quebec

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This past November, the four-year saga of the Charbonneau Commission finally drew to a close. Established in 2011, the commission had three main goals: to examine collusion and corruption in Quebec’s construction industry, to identify the ways in which the industry has been infiltrated by organized crime, and to find possible strategies to reduce and prevent corruption and collusion in public contracts. The two thousand page final report (available only in French) was the product of 263 days of testimony from over 300 witnesses, ranging from union bosses to prominent politicians, low-level public servants, and even members of organized criminal syndicates. While the commission had the makings of a potential political bombshell, the final report was met with little acclaim, and commentators have been quick to dismiss the inquiry as an expensive disappointment and a failed mission.

Since the release of the final report, the validity of its findings has even been called into question, with the media seizing on apparent disagreements and infighting between the commissioners. One of the two remaining commissioners (the third had died of lung cancer in 2014), actually dissented from the part of the findings that claimed a link between political party financing and public contracts. Emails subsequently unearthed indicate that the disagreement between the two commissioners on this issue goes beyond simple factual disagreement, with suggestions that the dissenting commissioner had objected to unfavorable portrayals of prominent members of the governing Liberal party. Some sources report that the two commissioners were not even on speaking terms by the conclusion of the inquiry. In light of their fundamental disagreements on such a prominent issue, some critics have called the commission at best dysfunctional, or at worst tainted by political interference.

Given the generally negative coverage of the commission, it would be easy to write off the Charbonneau Commission as yet another failed attempt to stymie corruption. In my view, however, to dismiss the commission entirely would be unreasonable. Certainly, the commission was not perfect, but it did offer meaningful contributions to the promotion of good governance, and there is much that can be learned from it.

Continue reading →

Canada, Camembert, and Controversy: How to Save the Canadian Senate

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On Monday, October 19th, Canadians voted in the first new Prime Minister in over a decade. The Liberal party walloped the reigning Conservative party, capturing 55% of the seats in the House of Commons, while the Conservatives retained only 29% of the seats. But the Canadian public’s desire for change is not limited to the House of Commons. The Canadian Senate, the unelected chamber of “sober second thought,” has been rocked by an expenses scandal reminiscent of the 2009 MP expense scandal in the United Kingdom (see here), and the ongoing series of minor expense scandals in the United States (see here).

In late 2012 it was revealed that four Canadian Senators – Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy, and Mac Harb – used their Senate expense accounts for personal and private business. As a product of these revelations, all four resigned or were removed from office, and all four have been indicted on criminal charges. In the response to the unfolding scandal, Auditor General Michael Ferguson launched an investigation into the finances of all Canadian Senators and found about 840,000 dollars in suspect claims. His investigation pointed to a systematic failure on the part of Senators to provide appropriate documentation for their expenses and to “prioritize consideration of the cost [of their expenses] to taxpayers.” (As with most proper scandals, there have been moments of levity in addition to frustration. Ferguson’s audit report suggested Canadian Senators should not claim per diem meals when other food had been made available, but Senator Nancy Ruth took umbrage at the suggestion that she was obligated to eat a free airplane breakfast consisting of, in her words, “ice-cold Camembert with broken crackers.”)

Partly as a result of this scandal, faith in the Canadian Senate is at an all-time low. Before his defeat, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had stopped nominating new Senators. In 2014, the Liberal party kicked all of its Senators out of the party’s ranks, thereby converting them to “independent” Senators. The NDP, Canada’s third largest party, has long called for abolishing the chamber entirely. What, then, should be done to reform Canada’s beleaguered Senate? Ferguson’s audit report offers several promising proposals for addressing the concerns about Senator integrity  But the problems with the Senate as an institution run deeper, and will likely call for more thorough reform (even if abolition of the Senate is politically and legally infeasible). Continue reading →

Will the Canadian Courts Wreck International Law Enforcement Cooperation on Corruption Cases?

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The answer to the question posed in the title depends upon how the Canadian Supreme Court rules in World Bank Group v. Kevin Wallace.  If the court rules that, despite laws providing it is not subject to the orders of domestic courts, the World Bank must obey a directive of the Ontario Superior Court, cooperation between the Bank and national law enforcement agencies is likely to end – or be severely weakened at the least.  The pleadings filed in the case, and just made available on the Supreme Court’s web site, describe how the court is poised to weaken transnational efforts to curb corruption. In summary . . . Continue reading →