Today’s Guest Post is by Craig R. Arndt, an international lawyer living in Bangkok. In the course of a long career, he advised multinational clients on a range of corruption-related matters and has represented those injured by corruption in actions to recover damages.

The drafters of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption recognized that corruption was a transnational disease. And that accordingly, no country could fight it on its own. Hence, in its very first article the Convention makes it clear that states ratifying it are obliged to “promote, facilitate, and support international cooperation and technical assistance in the prevention of and fight against corruption.”  

Article 35 of the Convention sets forth one of the ways states are required to work together to curb cooperation. It provides that each party must “ensure that entities or persons who have suffered damage as a result of an act of corruption have the right to initiate legal proceedings against those responsible . . . to obtain compensation.”

Rick has documented the sorry state of civil recoveries by bribery victims in transnational cases (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). That state is now even sorrier thanks to two recent decisions by American federal courts of appeal. In the words of one commentator, the two “gut” article 35.