Tag Archives: independent prosecutor

Seychelles Constitutional Court Ruling: A Victory in the Global Fight Against Corruption

Posted on by
Reply

In a landmark decision the Constitutional Court of Seychelles refused to dismiss a corruption case against one of the island nation’s most powerful individuals. The Court’s May 14 opinion rejected prominent businessman Mukesh Valabhji’s effort to dismantle the legal foundations of his prosecution.

The decision puts the lie to fears courts don’t have the spine to back prosecutors seeking to hold the wealthy and politically influential to account.

The case arose from what the Seychelles media dubbed the “missing $50 million” scandal. In 2002, the United Arab Emirates gave the Seychelles government $50 million to fund food imports and help overcome a balance-of-payment deficit. But the funds never reached the public purse. Instead, they were apparently siphoned into a UK bank account and later laundered back into Seychelles where they facilitated the corrupt privatization of state-owned hotels under the Compagnie Seychelloise de Promotion Hôtelière (COSPROH).

Defendant Valabhji was at the time the managing director of the Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB) and executive chairman of COSPROH. The prosecution alleges that Valabhji used the siphoned UAE funds to purchase the very hotels he was tasked with privatizing, effectively acquiring massive private assets using misappropriated public money. The Chief Justice of Seychelles aptly noted that these funds “should have ended in the coffers of the Government… and assist in our national development,” but instead “ended up back up in smoke”.

The Anticorruption Commission of Seychelles (ACCS) arrested Mukesh and his wife, Laura Valabhji, and the investigation quickly expanded, leading to the arrest of several high-profile figures, including Sarah Zarqani Rene, the widow of the late President France Albert Rene, and former senior government ministers. The discovery of a massive cache of weapons—including 72 guns and over 43,000 bullets— prompted additional charges of terrorism and illegal arms possession.

Continue reading →

Fixing Everything But What’s Broken: Malaysia after the 1MDB Scandal

Posted on by
4

The Malaysian 1MDB scandal sparked the largest investigation in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative and has revealed serious problems with Malaysia’s anticorruption infrastructure. The DOJ has filed civil forfeiture claims for $1.7 billion in assets obtained with funds diverted from 1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund ostensibly intended to promote economic development in Malaysia. The money ended up in a stunning variety of locations around the globe. Nearly $700 million found its way into the Malaysian Prime Minister’s personal bank accounts. His stepson’s production company suddenly had the funds needed to back the Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street. A financier with close ties to the government bought an Australian model jewels worth $8.1 million.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian government insists there is nothing to see here. The newly-installed Malaysian Attorney General cleared Prime Minister Najib Razak of all wrongdoing and put a stop to the investigation by the independent Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). As an earlier post explained, the previous Attorney General, who headed an inter-agency task force investigating the 1MDB scandal, resigned under suspicious circumstances, and Najib appointed his replacement. Najib also replaced several cabinet members who had called for investigations into 1MDB. The breakdown of justice in the 1MDB scandal may seem all the more surprising to outside observers, since Malaysia had appeared to be making strides in addressing its corruption problem, and the MACC—which was founded in 2009 and modeled on Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption—had received fairly good reviews (see here, here, and here).

In the wake of the 1MDB scandal, there have been a variety of proposals for improving Malaysia’s anticorruption efforts. Most of these proposals, especially those emanating from the government, involve a flurry of activity and the creation of new anticorruption institutions. For example, the government has recently proposed creating a new National Integrity and Good Governance Department. The Malaysian Bar has called for the establishment of an Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (IACC) to provide oversight for MACC. The MACC itself, despite its inaction on 1MDB, is ramping up other anticorruption campaigns. This all fits an unfortunate pattern in Malaysia: creating lots of new agencies or new structures, or undertaking other actions that make the government “look busy,” but that don’t actually get to the heart of the main problem: the lack of a politically independent anticorruption prosecutor.  Continue reading →

Shoddy Craftsmanship: How Not to Design an Independent Prosecutor

Posted on by
Reply

There is a reason that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has graced the pages of the Global Anticorruption Blog so many times in recent months (see here, here, here, and here): life just isn’t easy for a candidate who campaigns on promises to clean up politics only to drown in allegations once in office. Today I offer another installment in our (entirely unofficial) series on the trials and tribulations of New York’s Governor: “Designed to Fail: Andrew Cuomo’s Interactive Guide to Building an Independent Anticorruption Prosecutor. (Parts Sold Separately).”

Continue reading →