COMBATTING GRAND CORRUPTION:
Is International Law the Answer?
February 20, 2015 | 12–4 PM
Austin Hall, Room 111, Harvard Law School
Opening Remarks
JUDGE MARK WOLF
Senior U.S. District Judge, U.S. District Court
for the District of Massachusetts
LUIS MORENO OCAMPO
First Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
Global Practice Counsel, Getnick & Getnick, LLP
Introduction
The past decade has seen an impressive expansion of global efforts to combat corruption. Instruments such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the U.K. Bribery Act, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) have been operationalized to investigate, punish, and prevent bribery of public officials. China has notably embarked upon a recent campaign to eradicate corruption and countries around the world have developed anticorruption strategies and commissions in compliance with the international treaty regime.
Yet many of these national plans remain aspirational and corruption continues to plague developing economies and communities throughout the world. The strides that have been made have largely affected the “supply side” – companies and individuals who pay bribes or offer the equivalent thereof – rather than the “demand side” – public officials or power brokers who request something of value in exchange for conferral of a benefit. This one-sided approach is particularly problematic in situations of grand corruption, defined by Transparency International as “acts committed at a high level of government that distort policies or the central functioning of the state, enabling leaders to benefit at the expense of the public good.” The successful eradication of corruption and its consequences depends upon removing officials who perpetuate misconduct.
For a host of legal, diplomatic, and practical reasons, penalizing corrupt public officials presents many challenges. Nevertheless, a number of ideas have been posited. Scholars, like Sonja Starr, have argued that corruption should be designated an international crime. Civil society groups, like the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption, have advocated for special courts to prosecute cases of grand corruption. Judge Mark Wolf recently authored a paper calling for the establishment of an international anticorruption court.
This timely conference will bring together experts from Harvard, the World Bank, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the private sector, and civil society to assess current challenges and potential solutions to confronting the highest levels of government corruption.
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Co-Sponsored by:
About LIDS
The Harvard Law & International Development Society (“LIDS”) is the premier student-run organization at Harvard Law School focused on issues at the intersection of law, policy and international development. LIDS was founded in 2009 in light of the growing recognition that many pressing challenges in international development are legal in nature.
The group actively promotes dialogue on issues that contribute to a deep understanding of both development practice and law among students, academics, community members, and practitioners. LIDS also offers practical, hands-on, non-litigation learning opportunities for students through semester-long projects with leading development organizations. Finally, LIDS fosters a social network of students interested in law and development from Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Past Symposia
The inaugural LIDS Symposium was held in 2010 and was entitled “Rebuilding After the Storm: The Role of Law in Post-Natural Disaster Development.” The event focused on the challenges that arise in the immediate and short-term aftermath of natural disasters. Symposium participants used the then-recent disasters in Pakistan and Haiti as prisms through which to examine these development issues. Professor Amartya Sen and the former Prime Minister of Haiti Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis delivered the keynote speeches.
The 2011 LIDS Symposium brought people together to discuss “Land Rights in the Developing World: Where do we go from here?” Students, practitioners, and academics covered new theories regarding the interplay of land rights and development, focusing specifically on women’s rights and customary land tenure regimes and on land titling in post-conflict societies. Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and Brahima Kaba, Chairman of the Liberian Land Commission opened the Symposium.
The 2012 LIDS Symposium, “Development Amidst Corruption | Developments Against Corruption,” dealt with corruption and its effects, and highlighted the increasingly global nature of anticorruption efforts. The symposium featured powerful personal narratives from those who have taken significant risks to combat corruption and presented new ideas for tackling corruption in both rich and poor nations. Conchita Carpio Morales, Ombudsman of the Philippines, and Robert Mazur, a former undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, were the keynote speakers.
The 2013 LIDS Symposium, “Trade and Entrepreneurship: Linking Local Growth to Global Markets,” aimed to highlight the legal, political, and economic barriers facing new businesses and aspiring exporters in developing countries. The symposium began with the underlying notion that independent and sustainable development cannot occur without the emergence of successful domestic industries. While approaches such as microfinance gained traction in the past decade, growth of subsistence-level producers and informal businesses into more efficient medium-sized enterprises in developing countries have remained frustratingly slow. Abhijit Banerjee, MIT Economist, Co-Founder of the Poverty Action Lab, and best-selling author of the book Poor Economics delivered the keynote speech.
The Fall 2014 LIDS Symposium, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Rebuilding from Emergency to Development,” explored the challenges encountered in transitioning from conflict to longer-term reconstruction, economic development, and rule of law. Case studies of Rwanda, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Libya helped illustrate both barriers and best practices in promoting economic growth, institutionalizing the rule of law, and implementing justice sector reform. The symposium also considered the meaning and importance of rule of law, institutional development, and economic growth in an effort to provide both concrete tools and thoughtful analysis to practitioners working in post-conflict nations. Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank and former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning for Rwanda, delivered the keynote address.
Location
The upcoming symposium will be held Austin Hall, Room 111, at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Designed by architect H. H. Richardson in the late 1800s, Austin Hall is Harvard Law School’s oldest designated law building.
Address:
Austin Hall, Room 111
1515 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
Schedule
The Symposium will take place from 12–4 PM on Friday, February 20, 2015.
Lunch will be served during opening remarks
12:00 – 12:50 pm: Opening Remarks
The Honorable Mark Wolf
The Honorable Mark Wolf is currently a Senior U.S. District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was appointed to the court in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan and served as Chief Judge from 2006 to 2012 before he took senior status. During his tenure, Judge Wolf has overseen, among other cases, the political corruption trial of a House speaker and hearings into FBI corruption in the 1990s. Before joining the bench, Judge Wolf worked in private practice, served as a prosecutor, and acted as special assistant to a U.S. Deputy Attorney General and to a U.S. Attorney General. He was appointed Deputy U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and headed the Public Corruption Unit from 1981-1985. After taking senior status, Judge Wolf authored a paper entitled “The Case for an International Anti-Corruption Court.” He continues to give domestic and international seminars on the judicial system and combatting public corruption.
Luis Moreno Ocampo
Luis Moreno Ocampo currently heads the global practice of Getnick & Getnick, LLP. From 2003 to 2012, he served as the first Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, where he led cases in seven different countries including Libya, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Prior to his time at the ICC, Mr. Moreno Ocampo supported Argentina’s democratic transition by prosecuting the military junta trials and running investigations into guerilla leaders and Army officers involved in military rebellions. He also investigated corruption involving high-level public officials. Mr. Moreno Ocampo helped establish compliance systems in several privatized services in Argentina and, through his involvement with the World Bank and Transparency International, has designed anticorruption strategies in more than 40 countries. In 2000, he founded “Mercados Transparentes” to provide information about public procurement to the private sector.
1:00 – 2:00 pm: Panel 1
Addressing Demand-Side Corruption Under the Current Framework
Jack Goldsmith (Moderator)
Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Charles Duross
Partner, Morrison & Foerster
Former Head of the FCPA Unit, U.S. Department of Justice
Richard Messick
Anticorruption and Legal Development Consultant
Former World Bank Adviser
Robert Leventhal
Division Chief for Anti-Crime Initiatives, U.S. State Department
2:00 – 2:15 pm: Coffee & Tea Break
2:15 – 3:15 pm: Panel 2
Prosecuting Corruption in International Courts
Sonja Starr (Moderator)
Touroff-Glueck Visiting Professor of Law and Psychiatry, Harvard Law School
Akaash Maharaj
Executive Director, Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption
Matthew Stephenson
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Editor-in-Chief, Global Anticorruption Blog
Alex Whiting
Professor of Practice, Harvard Law School
Former Prosecutions Coordinator, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court
3:20 – 4:00 pm: Closing Remarks
The Honorable Mark Wolf & Luis Moreno Ocampo
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Speaker and Moderator Profiles
Charles Duross heads the Global Anticorruption Practice at Morrison & Foerster and is also a partner in the Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and White-Collar Defense Practice Group. Mr. Duross is a veteran trial attorney, with over a decade of experience focused principally on white-collar criminal matters. Before joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Duross served as a Deputy Chief in the Fraud Section in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). He led the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit and was in charge of all of the DOJ’s FCPA investigations, prosecutions, and resolutions in the United States. Mr. Duross is widely credited with developing the current FCPA enforcement regime. He was also a principal author of the DOJ and SEC joint publication A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a document aimed at rendering FCPA enforcement more transparent and more understandable to the business community. While with the Fraud Section, Mr. Duross led the development of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) template for FCPA cases.
In investigating and prosecuting transnational bribery cases, Mr. Duross worked with every major U.S. Attorney’s Office and law enforcement agency in the United States, law enforcement counterparts around the world, and numerous multilateral development banks, including the World Bank. Mr. Duross also served as the DOJ’s principal representative to the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery.
Mr. Duross earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A. from the University of Michigan. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches trial advocacy, and he has lectured at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Jack Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard Law School where he teaches civil procedure, conflict of laws, foreign relations law, international law, and national security law. His most recent book is entitled The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside The Bush Administration (W.W. Norton 2007), and he has authored numerous books and articles on topics related to terrorism, national security, international law, conflicts of law, and cyber law. Prior to joining Harvard’s faculty, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel from October 2003 to July 2004, and as Special Counsel to the General Counsel for the Department of Defense from September 2002 to June 2003. Prior to assuming his positions in the government, Professor Goldsmith taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2002, and at the University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 1997.
Professor Goldsmith earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, and a B.A. from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and Judge George Aldrich of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal.
Robert Leventhal is the Division Chief for Anti-Crime Initiatives in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ Office of Anti-Crime Programs at the U.S. State Department. Mr. Leventhal supervises teams dedicated to advancing U.S. interests related to, among other things, anticorruption, anti-money laundering and terror finance, and transnational organized crime, through development and implementation of policy, diplomatic, and programmatic initiatives in those areas. Since joining the State Department in 2007, Mr. Leventhal has led the anticorruption team. In that capacity, he has played a key role in developing U.S. government policy on international anticorruption efforts, coordinating U.S. government participation in a wide range of multilateral anticorruption initiatives, such as anticorruption treaties and recovery of stolen assets, and managing support for projects to promote good governance.
Prior to joining the State Department, Mr. Leventhal served as director of the Europe and Eurasia Division (formerly known as ABA-CEELI) of the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative. He oversaw rule of law technical assistance programs in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia and coordinated the Rule of Law Initiative’s anticorruption programming. Previously, Mr. Leventhal worked as the Program Director for Transparency International-USA, a public defender for the Legal Aid Society of New York, and a member of the U.N. Mission in Guatemala tasked with criminal justice reform during the negotiation of the 1996 Peace Accords.
Mr. Leventhal earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkley. He clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Akaash Maharaj is the Executive Director of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), a worldwide alliance of parliamentarians working together to combat corruption, advance democracy, and uphold the rule of law. GOPAC has 52 national chapters, and is present in every region of the world. In addition to his overall responsibilities, Mr. Maharaj directs GOPAC’s project on international prosecution of Crimes Against Humanity, its efforts on institution building in fragile states, and its work on reconciliation in conflict states.
Before joining GOPAC, Mr. Maharaj served as the CEO of Equine Canada, the CEO of the Concordis Foundation – an organization that focuses on international conflict resolution – a Senior Consultant for KPMG Consulting, the Managing Director of the Magnum Opus consortium, and a consultant for McKinsey & Co.
Mr. Maharaj earned his M.A. from Oxford University in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and was the first overseas student elected President of the student government in the history of the 900-year-old University. He has been decorated twice for his work on peace in the Middle East and for his service to Canadian and international sport. Mr. Maharaj is an international athlete, and was a triple gold medalist at the International Championships of Equestrian Skill at Arms. He led the Canadian Equestrian Team and federation as CEO through the team’s most successful Olympics, Paralympics, and World Equestrian Games.
Richard Messick is an international consultant on legal development and anticorruption issues for international organizations, development agencies, and non-governmental organizations. From 1997 to 2012, Mr. Messick worked at the World Bank. He served first as Senior Public Sector Specialist in the Public Sector and Governance Group advising Bank staff on judicial reform. Later, he served as Senior Operations Specialist counseling staff and policymakers in Bank client countries on a broad range of governance and anticorruption issues including right to information, conflict of interest, and legislative and regulatory reform. Mr. Messick has been a member or adviser to the teams overseeing governance, anticorruption, and private sector reform projects in over two dozen countries. He was also named to advise World Bank clients on the Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery initiative (StAR).
Prior to joining the World Bank, Mr. Messick served as a senior consultant to Freedom House, a senior fellow at Hernando de Soto’s Instituto Libertad y Democracia in Lima, Peru, and an advisor to the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research. Mr. Messick was Chief Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the chairmanship of Senator Richard Lugar in the 99th Congress and was Chief Counsel and Research Director of the National Senatorial Committee.
He has authored papers on topics including anticorruption legislation, judicial reform, and the origins and development of courts. In addition to his publications at the World Bank, he has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as well as in the American Political Science Review and Judicature.
Mr. Messick received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Luis Moreno Ocampo currently heads the global practice of Getnick & Getnick, LLP. From 2003 to 2012, he served as the first Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, where he led investigations in seven different countries including Libya, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and was involved with the response to twenty major crises of the 21st century, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prior to joining the ICC, Mr. Moreno Ocampo supported Argentina’s democratic transition by serving as a deputy prosecutor in the military junta trials and running investigations into guerilla leaders and Army officers involved in military rebellions. He also investigated corruption involving high-level public officers. Mr. Moreno Ocampo helped establish compliance systems in several privatized services in Argentina and, through his involvement with the World Bank and Transparency International, has designed anticorruption strategies in more than 40 countries. In 2012, the World Bank appointed Mr. Moreno Ocampo to lead an expert panel to examine an alleged corruption conspiracy related to a $3 billion project in Bangladesh. In 2000, he founded “Mercados Transparentes” to provide information about public procurement to the private sector.
He served an Associate Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Buenos Aires and as a visiting professor at Stanford University and Harvard Law School, where he taught seminars on anticorruption. He is also currently a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University. In 2011, The Atlantic included Mr. Moreno Ocampo among the Brave Thinkers, a guide to people who risk their reputations, fortunes, and lives in pursuit of big ideas. In that same year, Foreign Policy designated him one of the 100 Top Global Thinkers.
Mr. Moreno Ocampo received his law degree from the University of Buenos Aires Law School.
Sonja Starr is the Touroff-Glueck Visiting Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Harvard Law School. Beyond her visiting appointment, Professor Starr is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches criminal law, international criminal law, and a seminar on the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. Before joining the faculty at Michigan Law School, Professor Starr taught at the University of Maryland School of Law and spent two years at Harvard Law School as a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law. Among other topics, her research interests include prosecutorial conduct, sentencing law and policy, remedies for violations of criminal defendants’ rights, and re-entry of ex-offenders. She uses quantitative empirical assessment of the effects of criminal justice policies as well as analysis of legal theory and doctrine to conduct her research.
Prof. Starr received her A.B. from Harvard College and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and was awarded the American Bar Association’s annual Ross Student Writing Prize. Professor Starr has clerked for Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Judge. Mohamed Shahabuddeen of the shared Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Between these clerkships, she was an associate with Goldstein & Howe, PC, in Washington, D.C., a firm specializing in U.S. Supreme Court litigation.
Matthew Stephenson is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches administrative law, legislation and regulation, anticorruption law, and the application of political economy concepts to public institutional design. His research focuses on the application of positive political theory to public law, particularly in the areas of administrative procedure, anticorruption, judicial institutions, and separation of powers.
Professor Stephenson is the Editor-in Chief of the Global Anticorruption Blog, a forum devoted to promoting analysis and discussion of the problem of corruption around the world. This blog provides a platform for sharing information and ideas across disciplinary and professional boundaries, and fosters constructive debate about corruption’s causes, consequences, and potential remedies.
Professor Stephenson received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University, and his A.B. from Harvard College. Prior to joining the Harvard Law School faculty, he clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court and for Senior Judge Stephen Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Alex Whiting is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School where he teaches, writes, and consults on domestic and international criminal prosecution issues. His areas of academic interest include international law, procedures of international criminal tribunals, criminal law and procedure, and prosecutorial ethics. From 2010 until 2013, he worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. He first served as the Investigations Coordinator overseeing all office investigations and then as Prosecutions Coordinator, overseeing the office’s ongoing prosecutions. Before working at the ICC, Professor Whiting taught as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, again with a focus on prosecution subjects.
From 2002 to 2007, Prof. Whiting was a Trial Attorney and then a Senior Trial Attorney with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was lead prosecution counsel in Prosecutor v. Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu, and Haradin Bala; Prosecutor v. Milan Martic; and Prosecutor v. Dragomir Miloševic. Before his time at the ICTY, Professor Whiting served as a U.S. federal prosecutor for ten years, first with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., and then with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston. He focused on organized crime and corruption cases.
Professor Whiting received his J.D. from Yale Law School and his B.A. from Yale College. He clerked for Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of the Eastern District of New York.
The Honorable Mark Wolf is currently a Senior U.S. District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He was appointed to the court in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan and served as Chief Judge from 2006 to 2012 before taking senior status. While on the bench, Judge Wolf oversaw, among numerous other cases, the political corruption trial of a House speaker, the prosecution of a reputed New England Mafia boss, and hearings into the FBI’s corrupt relationship with informants in the 1990s. Judge Wolf also led efforts to allow videotaping of civil cases in the courthouse.
Prior to joining the bench, Judge Wolf worked in private practice, served as a prosecutor, and acted as special assistant to a U.S. Deputy Attorney General and to a U.S. Attorney General. He was also appointed Deputy U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and headed the Public Corruption Unit from 1981-1985.
After taking senior status, Judge Wolf authored a paper entitled “The Case for an International Anti-Corruption Court.” Several organizations including Not In My Country, Transparency International-Uganda, the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda, IPaidaBribe Kenya, and IMPACT of Canada have endorsed the International Anti-Corruption Court. Judge Wolf is continuing to give seminars domestically and internationally on judicial system and combatting public corruption.
Judge Wolf received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. from Yale College. He was a fellow at Harvard Law School from 1989 to 1990 and a lecturer at Boston College Law School in 1992. He served in the Army Reserve from 1969 to 1975.
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Questions? Please contact Elizabeth Loftus at eloftus@jd16.law.harvard.edu