Tag Archives: mutual legal assistance

Taking on the Demand Side of Foreign Bribery: How U.S. FCPA Settlements Can Facilitate Foreign Prosecutions

Posted on by
2

Laws like the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) target what is sometimes referred to as the “supply side” of transnational bribery transactions—the firms and individuals of offer or pay bribes to foreign officials in order to secure a business advantage. But what about the demand side? All too often, the government officials who demand or receive these bribes escape accountability—even when the bribe-paying firms are forced to pay substantial penalties for FCPA violations. Years ago, some U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors floated the theory that bribe-taking officials could be charged as abettors to, or co-conspirators in, FCPA violations, but that theory, though legally plausible, failed to gain traction in the courts. On occasion, the DOJ has prosecuted bribe-taking foreign officials for money laundering. And more recently, Members of the U.S. Congress have introduced a new bill, the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA), which would make it a crime under U.S. law for a foreign public official to seek, demand, or accept a bribe. FEPA’s chances of enactment are uncertain (the vast majority of bills fail, after all); moreover, even if enacted, FEPA’s impact may be circumscribed by the practical and political difficulties of arresting and trying foreign public officials, particularly those that do not have any contact with U.S. territory.

What about the bribe-taking public official’s own government? Shouldn’t that government take the lead in prosecuting its own public officials when they behave corruptly? There would be a nice symmetry—and a great deal of practical advantage—to a system in which the supply-side government (say, the United States) goes after the bribe-paying company, while the demand-side government goes after the bribe-taking public official. But often this doesn’t happen: In the majority of cases where the U.S. government imposes FCPA sanctions on a company for paying bribes in a given country, there is no parallel or subsequent prosecution by that country’s government of the corrupt officials involved.

Sometimes the explanation is political: the public officials involved are sufficiently powerful and well-connected to escape domestic accountability in their home countries, even when their misconduct is known. That’s a big problem, and one that statutes like FEPA are designed to address. But there’s another reason that demand-side governments often fail to hold their own officials accountable: a lack of capacity and an associated lack of evidence. In a great many cases, even when a bribe-paying firm settles an FCPA case with the US government, and in doing so admits to certain facts and provides evidence about the misconduct to the DOJ, the demand-side country government does not receive sufficient evidence to identify, let along prosecute, the corrupt officials involved—either because the company did not supply that information to the DOJ, or the DOJ did not turn that information over to the demand-side official’s government. True, FCPA settlement agreements are usually public, but the official statements of facts in these agreements are often not sufficiently precise and detailed to give a foreign enforcement agency what it needs to make out a case.

The U.S. government can and should fix this problem. Doing so would not require new legislation. Rather, it could be accomplished through a straightforward and easily implementable change in DOJ policy. Continue reading →

Commentary on the FACTI Panel’s Report and Recommendations (Part 2)

Posted on by
4

This post is the second in a two-part series on the report and recommendations of the UN’s High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (the FACTI Panel). In its report, published this past February, the Panel issued 35 recommendations (grouped into 14 categories) for addressing the problem of illicit financial flows. Of those 35 recommendations, 8 principally concerned tax matters, but the other 27 are directly relevant to corruption—especially though not exclusively grand corruption, which often involves cross-border flows of illicit money. I decided that it might helpfully contribute to the conversation about these topics to respond directly with a bit of commentary on each of those 27 recommendations. My last post covered the first 13, and this post will cover the remaining 14. With that prologue out of the way, let’s dive in. Continue reading →

International Anticorruption Academy Spring Course on Obtaining Mutual Legal Assistance

Posted on by
Reply

It is the rare corruption investigation today that does not cross one or more national boundaries.  The bribe payer is located in one country, the bribe taker in a second, and the bribe stashed in a third.  Successful prosecution of the payer and the taker and recovery of assets requires collecting information in multiple jurisdictions, and though obtaining evidence abroad has progressed far beyond sending a letter rogatory and hoping for the best, the process is still involved. A misstep can delay receipt of needed material by months if not years and in some cases can permanently bar its receipt.

How to speed the process of obtaining evidence from another country while avoiding common missteps is the focus of a four-week, online course offered by the International Anticorruption Academy April 12 through May 8, 2021. As the course description explains, it will cover not only the formal request and receipt of information for use at trial, but informal avenues for obtaining leads, “tips,” and intelligence to advance an ongoing investigation. The two methods, collectively termed Mutual Legal Assistance or MLA, require investigators, prosecutors, and increasingly defense counsel to combine knowledge of domestic and international law with a practical savvy about how to get things done. The instructor, yours truly, will cover both with the help of guest lecturers who will discuss use of the UNODC’s MLA writer tool and obtaining evidence from the United States and Switzerland.

An outline of the topics to be covered (with welcome input from a certain GWU adjunct law professor — thank Tom) is here and a bibliography here.  Comments on either welcome.  Registration information is here.

Will Hosting the UNCAC Meeting Prompt the UAE to Comply with the Convention?

Posted on by
6

The largest, most important anticorruption conference of the year is underway this week in the United Arab Emirates. Formally known as the eighth session of the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the 186 nations that have ratified UNCAC are convening to examine how they can strengthen the fight against corruption.  They have not said why they chose to meet in the UAE, a collection of seven tiny, wealthy monarchies.  Perhaps it is because the Emirates’ location on the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula makes it an easy place to reach from anywhere on the globe. Or perhaps it is because of its top-notch conference facilities and first-rate restaurants and hotels.

Or perhaps something more subtle is at work.

It’s no secret that the UAE and the governments of its seven federated emirates, especially Abu Dhabi and Dubai, have repeatedly flouted their UNCAC obligations.  In researching The Despot’s Guide to Wealth Management, author Jason Sharman was told by staff from the World Bank/UNODC Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, the IMF, and the governments of Switzerland and the United States that “the UAE and particularly Dubai . . . were the leading haven for international corruption funds,” a conclusion Susan Hawley confirmed on this blog, writing that an “increasing numbers of corrupt money trails lead” to the UAE. Mozambique’s Prosecutor General reports that the UAE has stonewalled her request for help in prosecuting the accused in the “hidden debt” scandal, and evidence presented in the recently concluded U.S. trial of one of the accused revealed numerous violations of its anticorruption laws that the UAE has ignored.

Perhaps the other 185 parties to UNCAC hope that holding the meeting in the UAE will persuade its government to finally meet the nation’s obligations as an UNCAC party. Five indicators of whether their stratagem is succeeding: Continue reading →

Improving Mutual Legal Assistance: Lessons from Asia

Posted on by
Reply

Back in 2014, Rick called for further analysis of mutual legal assistance (MLA) processes and potential reforms that would promote responsiveness to MLA requests in anticorruption cases (and others). As a follow-up, I wanted to highlight the findings of a recent report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB)/Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific. The report, entitled “Mutual Legal Assistance in Asia and the Pacific: Experiences in 31 Jurisdictions,” provides examples of various obstacles to effective MLA, which I have sorted into two general categories: legal and practical. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Why Disclosures in Foreign Settlements Don’t Spur Domestic Prosecutions in Argentina

Posted on by
2

Natalia Volosin, a doctoral candidate at Yale Law School and clerk in the Asset Recovery Unit at Argentina’s Attorney General’s Office, contributes the following guest post (adapted and from an op-ed previously published in Spanish in the Argentine newspaper Infobae):

The so-called “Lavo Jato” investigation into bribery and money laundering at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras led to the biggest transnational bribery settlement in history: In December 2016, the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht reached a settlement with law enforcement authorities in the United States, Brazil, and Switzerland; in exchange for its guilty plea, Odebrecht and its affiliate Braskem agreed to pay the three countries a total of $3.5 billion, of which the first firm alone will pay $2.6 billion. (Odebrecht agreed that the total criminal penalty amounts to $4.5 billion, but the final number will be determined according to its ability to pay, though it will be no less than $2.6 billion.) According to the agreement, Brazil will get 80 per cent of the penalty, while the United States and Switzerland will get 10 per cent each.

Some hope that the Odebrecht settlement will provide a boost to anticorruption investigations in other countries. After all, in the settlement documents, the firm acknowledged to having made illegal payments worth $788 million between 2001 and 2016, not only in Brazil, but in a dozen countries including Angola, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. In Argentina specifically, Odebrecht admitted that between 2007 and 2014, in three separate infrastructure projects, it paid intermediaries a total of $35 million knowing that they would be partially transferred to government officials. These criminal practices earned the company a $278 million benefit—a return on “investment” of over 694% (the highest among all the recipient countries). Will these revelations have significant consequences for the prosecution of corruption cases in Argentina?

The answer is probably no, at least not in the short term. Continue reading →

Five Things Washington Should Do to Help Latin America Curb Corruption

Posted on by
4

The following is based on a March 24 talk I gave at the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations.  It is posted in a slightly different form on “Latin America’s Moment,” the Council’s blog on Latin America.

One of the most promising developments in U.S. foreign relations is the all out war on corruption being waged across Latin America.  From “Operation Car Wash” in Brazil to investigations of presidential wrongdoing in Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama, across the region independent, tenacious prosecutors and investigators are out to end the massive theft of state resources that for so long has hobbled political development and throttled economic growth.  Americans should be cheering for these corruption warriors, for we have much to gain if they succeed.  Less corruption translates into more stable, reliable political allies; it means faster, more equitable growth and that means shared prosperity and less northward migration.  Finally, less corruption in government will offer American firms new opportunities. Think what the end of corruption in Brazilian public works would mean for U.S. engineering and construction companies.

But given the stakes in Latin America’s corruption war, America should be doing more than cheering from the sidelines.  It should be doing everything it can – without infringing the sovereignty or sensibilities of Latin neighbors – to see its corruption warriors succeed.  Here are five things to start with: Continue reading →

The Golden Handshake: Background Rules and the Choice of Restoring Money or Doing Justice

Posted on by
4

The anticorruption community has recently put more emphasis on freezing, seizing, and repatriating the assets of corrupt kleptocrats. But while this move is in many ways welcome, it is still the case that essentially none of the most infamous kleptocrats have ended up behind bars. Even when governments go after the illicit assets of these kleptocrats, their cronies, and other “politically exposed persons” (PEPs), the governments seeking asset recovery often find themselves put to an uncomfortable choice: either to accept the return of only a part (sometimes a small part) of the looted wealth in a settlement, or to continue to pursue their attempts, often in vain, to seize and repatriate all (or at least most) of the stolen assets.

Sophisticated PEPs know this, and usually take advantage of the slowness of the asset recovery process (as well as their ability to use their ill-gotten wealth to hire top-notch legal talent to wage a protracted legal battle), to the point where the governments are willing to allow the PEP to secure the “golden handshake” of a favorable settlement. Nothing illustrates this better than the attempts to recover the assets of former Nigerian President Sani Abache and of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi. Abache’s family’s lawyers stiff resistance to asset recovery efforts eventually led to a settlement whereby the Abache family returned $1 billion–but got to keep $300 million. In the latter case, the Kenyan authorities insisted on recovering the full amount–and have ended up with nothing. The Kenyan experience has served as a cautionary tale, inducing for example many of the Arab Spring countries to accept settlements they would have never accepted two years ago. This result frustrates the foundational principle of penology that a criminal who gets caught should end up worse off than he would have been if he did not commit the crime. A corrupt official who knows that the worst that can happen is that he might have to give back half or two-thirds of the money he stole is unlikely to be deterred.

At the moment, it does not seem realistic to expect more severe criminal punishment for many kleptocrats, so reliance on settlement will continue for a while. Accordingly it is important to figure out how to use settlements to guarantee the maximum restoration of assets. The two most important factors that shape the content of a settlement are national and foreign justice. Consider each in turn. Continue reading →

Fixing the Mutual Legal Assistance Regime: Some Thoughts on Reform

Posted on by
1

Last week I reported that the United States was often slow to respond to requests from other nations for evidence needed to prosecute corruption cases in their courts and that as a result some cases have had to be dismissed.  I also noted that, as of spring 2013, 4500 requests awaited processing, a backlog the Justice Department blames on a shortage of personnel.  In a comment on the post. Matthew asks two questions:  1) are there other ways besides adding staff that countries can reduce the delay in responding to requests for legal assistance and 2) is the U.S. the only country with a large backlog of requests.

Continue reading →