Tag Archives: criminal procedure

A Media Advisor-Client Privilege Would Be Inimical to Anticorruption in Israel

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The ongoing corruption trial of Israel’s Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu (who stepped down as Israel’s Prime Minister in mid-June 2021 after 12 consecutive years of service, replaced by Naftali Bennett), as well as the investigations that took place before it, have triggered a wide variety of legislative reform proposals. Members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) who oppose Netanyahu have proposed bills that would prevent individuals with sufficiently serious prior criminal convictions from serving as the Prime Minister (which Netanyahu is planning on trying to do again), or bar certain criminal defendants from running for Israel’s Presidency (which some had formerly speculated Netanyahu may do). Knesset members from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on the other hand, have pushed to bolster protections for criminal suspects and defendants, especially elected officials. For example, Likud members have proposed bills that would prohibit some forms of recording of public servants, or make it more difficult for the prosecution to appeal acquittals.

The fact that the criminal proceeding against Netanyahu has relied in substantial part on the incriminating key testimony of Netanyahu’s former media advisor (who became a “state’s witness” in 2018) is the likely (though not explicit) motivation for another recently proposed bill that would establish a “media advisor-client privilege,” according to which “matters and documents exchanged between a media advisor or a spokesperson and his [or her] client [] and which have a material relation to the services provided” could not be submitted as evidence unless the client waived this privilege. In other words, media advisors or spokespersons would generally be barred from testifying against their clients. The bill’s drafters argue that a media advisor-client privilege is justified for reasons similar to that of an attorney-client privilege—the need for “complete openness” between clients and their media advisors or spokespersons.

The impulse to resist the proposed media advisor-client privilege is understandable, given its seemingly blatant relationship to Netanyahu’s trial and the fact that its protection would be afforded to a very narrow class of powerful and wealthy criminal defendants. However, even though we should sometimes resist the impulse to oppose criminal justice reforms whose proponents have questionable motives, in this case even when considered independently from its problematic context, the proposal for media advisor-client privilege raises at least three strong anticorruption concerns that warrant its rejection:

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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 →

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.

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The Brazilian Courts’ Indefensible Double Standard: The Disparate Treatment of Harmless Procedural Errors in Corruption and Non-Corruption Cases

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Before Brazil’s so-called Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) Operation, almost every attempt to prosecute high-level corruption in Brazil failed. Many cases were never investigated or prosecuted, but even in those cases where prosecutors started investigations, identified crimes, and brought charges, appeals courts ended up nullifying the proceedings, often before trial, on technical grounds for failure to comply with procedural rules (see, for example, here, here, here, and here). The result was a culture of impunity, in which grand corruption thrived. The Lava Jato Operation has been hailed as a historic breakthrough not only because of the breadth of the corruption it uncovered, but also because the convictions secured by prosecutors had, by and large, been affirmed on appeal. Unfortunately, there are troubling signs that the Brazilian judiciary is reverting to its old ways. Last October, for example, the Brazilian Supreme Court issued a procedural ruling  concerning the sequence of closing arguments that the Court held required the nullification of two Lava Jato convictions (so far), and may end up doing more widespread damage. The larger issue here, though, is the double-standard that Brazilian appellate courts seem to have embraced: adopting an (excessively) stringent and unforgiving view of even minor technical procedural noncompliance in corruption cases involving elite defendants, while at the same time relying (properly) on “harmless error” doctrines to excuse similar sorts of procedural noncompliance in cases involving other sorts of crimes, such as drug trafficking. Continue reading →

The Alleged Police Misconduct in the Netanyahu Corruption Investigations Illustrates Why Police Should Err on the Side of Caution

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In corruption investigations, witness testimony is often crucial. After all, corrupt acts usually take place in secret, and the parties involved rarely leave behind records documenting their illegal deeds. It should therefore come as no surprise that an essential part of the corruption investigations into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the law enforcement authorities’ attempt to obtain incriminating testimony from those with (allegedly) first-hand knowledge of the corrupt actions, and to turn some of them into “state’s witnesses” (defined by Israeli law as “an accomplice who testifies on behalf of the prosecution after a benefit has been given or promised [to] him [or her],” usually in the form of immunity from prosecution or other alleviations). These efforts have met with some success (see here, here, and here).

However, according to Israeli news outlets whose reporters have gotten access to leaked police transcripts, the Netanyahu investigators may have gone too far. These transcripts suggest that police investigators tried to convince two key witnesses, who themselves were suspected of involvement in the corrupt schemes, to replace their defense attorneys – apparently because these defense attorneys had been advising their clients not to sign a state’s witness agreement (see here and here). (In Israel, defense attorneys are not present in the interrogation room, as suspects do not have a right to have their lawyers present during an interrogation.) One of the witnesses did indeed hire a new attorney and signed a state’s witness agreement, though we can’t be sure if the police investigators’ “suggestion” that he do so was the reason. If the police did pressure these suspects to fire their lawyers, it would be illegal, as Israel’s Supreme Court has held that police may not attempt to interfere with a suspect’s relationship with, or trust in, her attorney. In addition, the transcripts suggest that the police may have illegitimately pressured one of the witnesses during his arrest, threatening that lack of cooperation might result in negative consequences to him and others, and employing highly controversial interrogation tactics (see here, here, and here). At this stage, we do not yet know for sure what actually transpired, and Israel’s Attorney General has ordered that the claims of police misconduct be investigated.

The leaked transcripts and the allegations of severe police misconduct have generally been greeted with wide public criticism that transcended political boundaries. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s supporters and party members, including the Minister of Justice, have (unsurprisingly) been most critical, arguing that the police’s actions offer more proof of Netanyahu’s “persecution” by law enforcement authorities, a claim that has been promoted by Netanyahu almost since the beginning of his investigations (see here and here). Putting that harsh (and unproven) last claim to one side, it’s definitely the case that police investigators have been zealous in their pursuit of Netanyahu and his alleged co-conspirators, and the police may have been, at the very least, pushing the boundaries of what the law allows. This, in my view, is a mistake. To be clear, I do not mean to argue simply that the police should not break the law. That is true, but not many people would claim that the police should disregard the law when fighting corruption. But there’s another view out there, espoused by a considerable number of “tough on corruption” proponents, that law enforcement authorities should “push the envelope” as much as possible, doing everything they can even if their actions are sometimes to be deemed illegal by courts. According to this view, there is no place for softness in the interrogation room, and the police sometimes need to be willing to operate right at the edge of what the law will permit. It is this attitude that I want to argue against.

And this is not only because we should care about the rights of suspects and the fairness of criminal investigations. Indeed, “tough on corruption” proponents ought to worry the most about forms of police aggressiveness that come close to, and may cross, the line into police misconduct. In the Netanyahu case, to stick with that example, the police investigators’ alleged overreach may also prove to be counterproductive to anticorruption efforts, not only putting the investigation in jeopardy but producing long-term adverse consequences for effective anticorruption law enforcement. From the perspective of anticorruption policy, there are a few practical reasons why the police, while investigating allegations of corruption, should fully respect the rights of witnesses, and err on the side of caution: Continue reading →

Israel Needs to Fight Official Corruption. That Doesn’t Mean It Should Deprive Elected Officials of Their Right to Silence.

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On April 9, 2019, millions of Israeli citizens will vote in the national legislative elections for the party they wish to represent them in the parliament (the Knesset). Numerous ongoing investigations into corruption allegations against senior officials and various public figures (including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) ensure that anticorruption will feature prominently on the agendas of most major political parties. One can only hope that the next elected Knesset will manage to pass effective anticorruption legislation. However, one piece of anticorruption legislation that has been repeatedly proposed should not be adopted: a de facto limitation on senior elected officials’ right to silence in criminal interrogations in which the officials are suspects. (The proposed legislation would also de facto limit elected officials’ narrower right of refraining from answering specific questions when doing so may put them at risk of criminal prosecution; for the sake of brevity I will discuss only the broader and more comprehensive right to silence.) Currently, elected officials enjoy the right to silence just like any other suspect in a criminal case in Israel, yet proposals have been repeatedly floated that would require certain high-level elected officials (such as the prime minister, ministers, Knesset members, or mayors) who exercise this right to be removed from office. Most of the bills, which differ from each other in certain respects, would apply to criminal interrogations related to the officials’ duty, but some go even further, with a broader application to any kind of criminal interrogation in which the officials are suspects.

The explicit goals of these bills are strengthening the war on corruption and promoting public trust in the rule of law. So far, none of these bills have been enacted, but Knesset members from across the political spectrum have been flirting with this idea for the last few decades, almost always in response to occasions in which Israeli officials (whose political views typically diverge from those of the proposing Knesset members) chose not to cooperate with the interrogators in corruption investigations. It is very likely that something like this will be proposed again in the next elected Knesset, as some parties have already declared in their official platform that they intend to promote such legislation.

While I agree that an elected official’s refusal to answer interrogators’ questions inspires a great deal of unease, adoption of the aforementioned bills would be unjustified and even dangerous. Although the proposed bills do not technically eliminate elected officials’ right to silence, requiring a public official to give up his or her position as a condition for exercising this right is a sufficiently severe sanction that the bills unquestionably impose a severe practical limitation on this right. If Israel were to adopt such a rule, it would be a significant outlier among peer nations: Research conducted by the Knesset’s Research and Information Center in 2007 found no equivalent limitation on elected officials’ right to silence in numerous legal systems around the world. Taking such a step would therefore be unprecedented, but more importantly, it would be unwise, for several reasons: Continue reading →

The UK Parliament Should Broaden and Sharpen the Legal Advice Privilege in Order to Encourage More Internal Investigations into Corruption

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On September 5, 2018, the compliance departments and outside counsel of large corporations operating in the UK breathed a collective sigh of relief. In a much anticipated ruling, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales overturned a trial judge’s order that would have compelled a London-based international mining company, Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation Limited (ENRC), to hand over documents to UK prosecutors investigating the enterprise for bribery in Kazakhstan and Africa. Those documents were the product of an investigation that ENRC’s outside legal counsel had conducted following an internal whistleblower report that surfaced in late 2010. In conducting that internal investigation, lawyers from the law firm interviewed witnesses, reviewed financial records, and advised ENRC’s management on the company’s possible criminal exposure. Though the company tried to keep everything quiet, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) came knocking in mid-2011. The SFO agreed to let ENRC and its lawyers continue to investigate on their own, periodically updating the SFO on their progress. In 2013, ENRC’s legal counsel submitted its findings to the SFO in a report arguing that, on the basis of the facts presented, the company should not be charged. The SFO disagreed and launched a formal criminal investigation. But the SFO then also demanded that ENRC turn over all of the files and documents underpinning its report—including presentations given by the lawyers to ENRC’s management and the lawyers’ notes from their interviews with 184 potential witnesses.

ENRC refused to comply, claiming that these documents were covered by two legal privileges under UK law: the “litigation privilege,” which guarantees the confidentiality of documents created by lawyers for the “dominant purpose” of adversarial litigation (including prosecution) that is “in reasonable contemplation,” and the “legal advice privilege,” which protects communications between lawyers and clients exchanged for legal advice. The trial court rejected ENRC’s privilege claims, a decision that sent shockwaves through the English defense bar and spurred much criticism on legal and policy grounds. But the Court of Appeal reversed, holding that ENRC’s lawyers didn’t have to share the documents. The Court’s ruling relied on the litigation privilege, holding, first, that documents created to help avoid criminal prosecution counted as those created for the “dominant purpose” of litigation, and, second, that criminal legal proceedings were in “reasonable contemplation” for ENRC once the SFO contacted the company in 2011.

Many commentators have hailed the Appeal Court’s decision (which the SFO declined to appeal) as a “landmark ruling” and a “decisive victory” for defense lawyers. The reality is a bit more nuanced. The Court of Appeal’s fact-specific ruling was very conservative in its legal conclusions, and it’s unlikely that its holding regarding the litigation privilege is sufficient to create the right incentives for companies and their lawyers. It’s also unlikely that further judicial tinkering with the scope of the litigation privilege will resolve the problem promptly or satisfactorily. The better solution would involve a different institutional actor and a different privilege: Parliament should step in and expand the scope of the legal advice privilege to cover all communications between a company’s lawyers and the company’s current and former employees. Continue reading →

Sometimes Motives Don’t Matter: The Establishment’s Impulse to Protect (Allegedly) Corrupt Politicians Can Create Opportunities for Criminal Justice Reform

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Since 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been investigated for a number of corruption allegations (see here and here). In apparent response, David Amsalem, a member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has proposed several bills which, if enacted, would help to protect the Prime Minister from these investigations (see here and here). Most recently, in June 2018 Amsalem presented a bill that would change Israel’s system of criminal appeals. Currently, the prosecution can appeal criminal verdicts, including acquittals; according to Amsalem’s so-called Appeal Bill, such appeals would require an appellate court’s permission, and this permission could only be given under special circumstances, and only for crimes punishable by ten or more years in prison. Amsalem, who denied that the Appeal Bill has anything to do with the investigations of Netanyahu, claimed that he proposed this bill because “[a] moral state doesn’t have to persecute a citizen who has received a sentence too light for its taste.” However, opposition Knesset members and commentators – many of whom usually support defendant-protective reforms to criminal procedure – have harshly attacked the Appeal Bill. The critics’ main (sometimes only) argument against the Appeal Bill has been that its purpose is to prevent the prosecution from appealing a possible acquittal of Netanyahu. As Tamar Zandberg, Chair of the opposition Meretz Party put it, “[t]his [government] coalition’s obsessive preoccupation with the legal authorities to protect a prime minister immersed in investigations is a mark of Cain for Israeli democracy.”

The hostility to bills that appear to be devised specifically to protect politicians from corruption prosecutions is definitely understandable, and the wide opposition in Israel to the Appeal Bill is therefore a natural reaction. Nevertheless, this impulse should be overcome when considering bills proposing criminal justice reforms with general application, and in particular bills strengthening individual rights in the criminal process. I do not claim that the Appeal Bill should be enacted into law, and I acknowledge that there may be some legitimate reasons to oppose limitations on prosecutorial appeals. However, generally speaking, we should not refrain from supporting criminal justice reforms just because their initiators may have had bad motives. Instead, every proposal of systemic reform should be considered on its merits, and, if found justified, be enthusiastically supported, despite its tainted origin. Continue reading →

Some Realistic Steps to Address Corruption in Cambodia’s Prisons

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Prisons are perfect environments for corrupt activity (see here and here), even in countries that are generally not corrupt. A captive, marginalized, and powerless population is at the mercy of an armed, empowered group for everything from safety to basic food and water supplies. In Cambodia, a deeply corrupt country to begin with, prison corruption impacts every aspect of incarcerated life. Prison conditions are abysmal; water and food are scarce and are often unsafe to consume; prisons are severely overcrowded; and prisoners are subject to beatings and sexual abuse by other prisoners and guards. The Cambodian NGO Licadho found that “[t]here is a price tag attached to every amenity imaginable [in prison], from sleeping space to recreation time. Those who can’t afford to pay are forced to endure the most squalid conditions.” Even release from prison at the end of a sentence can be contingent on paying bribes.

These conditions constitute clear, and awful, violations of the human rights of prisoners. Cambodian prison corruption also threatens to undermine Cambodia’s already shaky justice system: As long as prisons are seen as institutions of corruption, torture, and injustice, as opposed to centers of rehabilitation, they will never escape the image left behind by the Khmer Rouge.

There aren’t a lot of feasible solutions, however. Both financial resources and political will to address prison corruption are very limited. Major reforms that would address fundamental problems, such as the lack of an independent judiciary, are hard and expensive, and the current government is not open to them. Nevertheless, there are a range of more modest reforms, which are both less expensive and more politically feasible, that could reduce corruption in prisons and improve the situation of many prisoners. Consider three such low-hanging fruit:

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Guest Post: The Obiang Trial Suggests Innovative Approaches To Fighting International Corruption

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Frederick Davis, a lawyer in the Paris office of Debevoise & Plimpton, who contributes the following guest post:

Over the past two months, the French Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris (the principal trial court) heard evidence in the case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (known as Teodorin), on charges of corruption and money laundering, among other allegations. Teodorin is the son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the long-time – and notoriously corrupt – President of Equatorial Guinea, a resource-rich country that also has some of the most widespread poverty in the world. Yet Teodorin, who is currently Vice President , owns vast real estate in Paris, a private jet, a yacht, and a fleet of vintage and modern automobiles, among his other known assets. This case has been discussed extensively on this blog (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), but it’s useful to recap how the case came to trial in the first place:

The case against Teodorin was primarily the result of diligent efforts by NGOs, including the French anticorruption group Sherpa and the French chapter of Transparency International (TI). In 2007, Sherpa and others filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor in Paris alleging that the ruling families of Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Burkina Faso and the Republic of the Congo held assets in France that were not the fruits of their official salaries. After a brief investigation, the Public Prosecutor dismissed the claims. Several of the NGOs, joined in some instances by citizens of the countries in question, then used a French procedure known as constitution de partie civile to cause a criminal investigation by an investigating magistrate (juge d’instruction). This effort was opposed by the Public Prosecutor. A Court of Appeals initially upheld the prosecutor’s position and dismissed TI’s intervention, but in an important 2010 ruling, the French Cour de Cassation (Supreme Court) ruled that TI was a proper partie civile authorized to instigate the criminal investigation. Ultimately Teodorin was bound over for trial, now with the support of the Public Prosecutor (as well as the continued active participation of TI and other NGOs). A decision is expected in October.

The procedures that brought Obiang to trial are interesting because they highlight four important differences between French and US criminal procedures, and more generally illustrate several legal deficiencies, in countries like the United States, that often hinder the worldwide fight against transnational corruption: Continue reading →