Tag Archives: International Criminal Court

Guest Post: An International Anticorruption Court Is Not a Utopian Dream or a Distraction

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Today’s guest post is from Richard Goldstone, a former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa who also served as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and Robert Rotberg, the President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation and former professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

In a 2018 Daedalus article, Senior United States District Judge Mark L. Wolf explained that “The World Needs an International Anticorruption Court (IACC)” and charted a course for its creation. In a recent post on this blog, Professor Alex Whiting characterized the IACC as a “utopian” dream and possibly “a distraction from more effective responses to the worldwide scourge of grand corruption.” Notably absent from the post is a description of what the other effective responses to combating grand corruption might be.

In contrast to Professor Whiting, we found Judge Wolf’s original proposal for an IACC compelling. Therefore, we joined him in establishing Integrity Initiatives International (III). Continue reading →

Guest Post: Is an International Anti-Corruption Court a Dream or a Distraction?

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My Harvard Law School colleague Professor Alex Whiting, who previously served in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, as a Senior Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and as a US federal prosecutor, contributes today’s guest post:

Since 2014, US Judge Mark Wolf has been vigorously advocating the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC), modeled on the International Criminal Court (ICC), to combat grand corruption around the world. Some, including writers on this blog, have expressed skepticism, and have criticized Judge Wolf and other IACC supporters for not offering sufficient detail on how an IACC would work or how, as a political matter, it could be created. This past summer, in an article published in Daedalus, Judge Wolf laid out a more detailed case for the IACC. He again invoked the ICC as the model—both for how such a court could be created and how it would operate.

It is an enticing vision, to be sure: international prosecutors swooping in to collar high-level corrupt actors, further spurring on national leaders to clean up their own houses. It’s all the more enticing given that, as Judge Wolf persuasively argues, national governments have failed to adequately address grand corruption in their own jurisdictions, with significant adverse consequences for international security and prosperity. But the ICC experience suggests the limits rather than the promise of an IACC. Indeed, the ICC’s history demonstrates why it is so hard to see a feasible political path forward to creating an IACC. More fundamentally, an IACC would require a radical re-conceptualization of the ICC model, one that states have never shown a willingness to embrace. Continue reading →

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 →

Coming Along for the Ride: Regional Human Rights Courts Should Demand Government Measures to Affirmatively Address Corruption

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In an earlier post, I discussed an order by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanding that Brazil investigate and report on prison guards’ corruption. Mandating that a country review its own corruption seems to be a new step for an international judicial body. The approach suggests a way to more closely integrate corruption-related concerns into international human rights work: including corruption-specific mandates within broader holdings. Other international adjudicative bodies, particularly regional human rights courts, should follow this model.

The idea of directly adjudicating corruption through an international court has been floated but also strongly opposed. Some corruption commentators advocate making grand corruption a crime against humanity that could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). As discussed on this blog, Judge Mark Wolf has proposed an independent international anticorruption court, an idea that met with some tempered support and a good deal of opposition (see here, here, and Matthew’s concerns here). I agree that grand corruption does not belong in the ICC or an independent court. To reject grand corruption as a stand-alone offense to be prosecuted in international criminal tribunals is not, however, to reject that corruption should be addressed by international criminal tribunals where it is relevant. Existing bodies like regional human rights courts—the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the much newer African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well as other, even younger human rights bodies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East—should explicitly address corruption-related issues within the context of the large volume of human rights adjudication already taking place. As other commentators have already discussed, these regional human rights courts can fold corruption into their respective mandates and generate meaningful corruption-related law (see here, here, and here). Indeed, regional human rights bodies are already well-placed to highlight corruption where it emerges and to respond appropriately to both the existing situation and future concerns:

Continue reading →

Dear International Anticorruption Court Advocates: It’s Time to Answer Your Critics

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Over the last year or so, proposals for an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC), modeled on (but distinct from) the International Criminal Court (ICC), have attracted an increasing amount of attention in the anticorruption community and beyond. This attention is due in part to the understandable frustration with the continued impunity of many kleptocrats, and in part to the instinctive attraction (in some quarters) to international judicial solutions to political problems. It’s also the result of the dogged and determined advocacy of IACC proponents. As some readers of this blog probably know, I’m skeptical. But I nonetheless admire the IACC advocates for their willingness to think creatively and to spark an important debate.

That admiration, however, is waning, and the reason is simple: For all their talk about wanting to start a conversation, IACC advocates have shown surprisingly little interest in engaging, in any serious way, with substantive objections to the proposal. It’s now over 18 months since the campaign for an IACC began. Very early on, sympathetic but skeptical critics—including me, as well as several others (see here and here)—raised a number of serious questions and concerns. These concerns are not minor details about implementation—they go to the heart of the proposal, and if the criticisms are on the mark, then the whole enterprise is misguided. Now, maybe the criticisms are not well-founded; maybe there are good answers to all of them. Yet so far IACC advocates have not really provided those answers. (To be fair, the main pro-IACC webpage includes an FAQ section that purports to offer some preliminary responses, but to call those responses “thin” would be generous.) When pressed, IACC advocates have a tendency to respond with one or both of the following rejoinders: (1) “Corruption is really bad—don’t you want to stop it?”; (2) “The critics have raised a number of concerns that will need to be addressed when we work out the details of the proposal.” But nobody in this debate seriously disputes the harms of corruption, and the criticisms that have been raised are not about minor details. At this point, if IACC advocates are serious, they need to offer more than that, and what’s to be found on the brief FAQ page.

Just to recap the main objections: Continue reading →

The Case Against an International Anti-Corruption Court

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Judge Mark Wolf recently published a Brookings Paper, and an accompanying Op-Ed in the Washington Post last week, calling for the creation of an “International Anti-Corruption Court” (IACC), modeled on the International Criminal Court (ICC). The proposal is motivated by the twin observations (1) that corruption is incredibly damaging (not only in its economic costs, but also in its link to human rights abuses), and (2) that although corruption is illegal everywhere, in many countries “grand” corruption at the highest levels of government creates a culture of impunity in which the corrupt need not fear punishment.

Judge Wolf is not only a distinguished jurist, but also an experienced prosecutor of corruption cases within the United States, and for these reasons alone his proposal is worth taking seriously. And I am very much in agreement with him about the insufficiency of current anticorruption measures, particularly in those countries beset by the culture of impunity that he and others have so vividly described. Yet I find myself deeply skeptical of his proposal for an independent IACC. Indeed, I think the proposal is at best unhelpful, and at worst counterproductive. Let me explain why.

Continue reading →