Tag Archives: corruption

Canada takes a further step to combat international human rights violations and corruption

The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act

Overview

On October 4, 2017, the House of Commons has unanimously voted to pass Bill S-226, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (the “Act”),[1] that is commonly known as the Magnitsky law.[2]  The law is named after Sergey Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer who uncovered a large tax fraud and was detained and died in a Moscow prison on November 16, 2009.  Bill S-226 received Royal Assent on October 18, 2017.

The Act imposes various sanctions, including freezing of assets and travel bans, on foreign nationals responsible for gross violation of internationally recognized human rights and significant corruption.  Among other things, the Act permits issuing orders against anyone in or outside Canada who are dealing, directly or indirectly, with the property or financial affairs of the foreign national that is the subject of an order or regulation under the Act.

On November 3, 2017, regulations under the Act were enforced combating the activities of 52 foreign nationals who are believed to have been engaged in gross human rights violations or significant corruption activities.  The majority of the named individuals are the nationals of the Russian Federation, in addition to the nationals of Venezuela and South Sudan.  The Russian government has not welcomed the law.  It retaliated with its own list banning the entry of various Canadians into Russia.  As part of the retaliatory measures, Russia’s officials stated that the government viewed the law as yet another attempt to exert pressure on Russia.

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Corruption Prosecution Collapses After Wiretap Evidence Excluded

The high-profile corruption prosecution of two executives and the alleged intermediary to a foreign government has ended dramatically after a judge excluded the wiretap evidence collected by the RCMP. The defendants – Kevin Wallace & Ramesh Shah, both former Vice-Presidents at SNC-Lavalin, and Zulfiquar Bhuiyan, a dual Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen – were charged under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act for bribes allegedly paid by SNC-Lavalin to secure a contract to supervise construction in Bangladesh.

The construction project was to build a multipurpose bridge connecting the southwestern region to the rest of Bangladesh. [1]  It was intended to stimulate economic growth by allowing transport of passengers, freight, natural gas, telecommunications and electricity.[2]  The project was forecast to cost approximately $2.9 billion and was funded, in part, by a $1.2 billion credit from the World Bank.

The Canadian investigation started after a World Bank investigator provided information obtained from four tipsters to the RCMP.  The tipsters alleged SNC-Lavalin was in the process of bribing Bangladeshi officials to secure the contract to supervise construction.  The RCMP never met any of the tipsters, but spoke with one by telephone.  The information provided by three of the four tipsters was obtained from other sources, but the RCMP never spoke with the tipsters’ other sources where identified.  The RCMP used information from the tipsters to obtain authorization to wiretap the private communications of the three defendants.  The information gathered on the wiretap led to the charges being laid.

Intending to challenge the wiretaps, the defence applied for a third party production order to compel senior investigators of the World Bank to appear before a Canadian court and produce documents.  The trial judge granted the applications.  The decision was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.[3]   The Court overturned the trial judge’s decision.  The Court held that the World Bank did not waive its immunity by voluntarily providing information to Canadian law enforcement officials accordingly, its documents were immune from production.  Further, the Court found the documents requested were not relevant to the challenge of the wiretaps.

The defence subsequently brought a successful application to exclude the wiretap evidence.  Justice Nordheimer found that the two preconditions for a wiretap – (i) reasonable and probable grounds to believe an offence is or has been committed and (ii) investigative necessity – were not met and the wiretap should never have been granted.  On the first criterion, Justice Nordheimer noted that the RCMP relied almost entirely on information provided by the tipsters.  In his view, that information was not sufficient to provide reasonable and probable grounds because it was not compelling, credible or corroborated.  He was particularly critical of the reliability of the information.  He wrote:

The fact that a particular investigation may be difficult, does not lower the standard that must be met in order to obtain a [wiretap] authorization. Reduced to its essentials, the information provided in the ITO was nothing more than speculation, gossip, and rumour. Nothing that could fairly be referred to as direct factual evidence, to support the rumour and speculation, was provided or investigated. The information provided by the tipsters was hearsay (or worse) added to other hearsay.[4]

On the second criterion for a wiretap, Justice Nordheimer found that the RCMP failed to establish there were no other reasonable ways to investigate the allegations.

Justice Nordheimer concluded that the wiretap should not have been issued, and the evidence gathered by wiretap violated the defendants’ Charter rights to be free of unreasonable search.  Accordingly, he excluded all of the private communications intercepted from the evidence at trial. The Crown admitted that it had no reasonable prospect of conviction without the wiretap evidence.  The prosecutor decided not to call any evidence, and all three defendants were acquitted.

This was certainly not the end that Canadian prosecutors envisioned to a case the World Bank described as “a high-level corruption conspiracy among Bangladeshi government officials, SNC-Lavalin executives, and private individuals” that was proven by “credible evidence corroborated by a variety of sources.”[5]  The collapse of the Canadian case was caused, in large part, by deficiencies in the RCMP’s preliminary investigation.  Investigators appear to have taken insufficient steps to vet tipster information before seeking authorization for wiretaps.  This failure rendered the wiretap evidence inadmissible.  This case underscores the importance of the preliminary stages of the investigation and highlights opportunities for defence counsel seeking to exclude evidence obtained by wiretaps authorized primarily on the basis of tipster information.

[1] World Bank “Bangladesh Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project”, online: http://projects.worldbank.org/P111017/bangladesh-padma-multipurpose-bridge-project?lang=en

[2] Ibid.

[3] World Bank Group v. Wallace, 2016 SCC 15

[4] R. v. Wallace. 2017 ONSC 132 at para 71

[5] World Bank, “World Bank Statement on Padman Bridge” (29 June 2012) online: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2012/06/29/world-bank-statement-padma-bridge

Corruption in the Aviation Industry? “Please Say it Isn’t So!”

The international aviation industry is highly competitive, international, and yes, known for allegations of corruption. Whether buying, selling, maintaining, servicing or supplying an aircraft, an airport, or the supply chain or related needs, corruption risks associated with the aviation industry is well documented. Companies and individuals involved in the industry face pressures and temptations to flout the law to gain business advantage. However, the legal and business consequences of airline corruption includes, but is not limited to, criminal investigations, prosecutions, convictions, penalties, reputations being destroyed, disgorgement of profits, shareholder losses from the drop of share price, careers ruined, civil law suits launched by investors, loss of confidence by the investment community, legal fees, fines, and jail terms for individuals involved.  Several examples illustrate the serious risks and consequences of corruption in the global aviation industry.

In June 2012, Brazil-based Embraer S.A., the world’s third largest commercial aircraft manufacturer, indicated in its Form 6-K (Report of Foreign Private Issuer) filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), that the company had received a subpoena from the SEC inquiring into certain operations concerning sales of aircraft. In response to this SEC-issued subpoena and associated inquiries into the possibility of non-compliance with the U. S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), Embraer retained outside legal counsel to conduct an internal investigation on transactions carried out in three specific countries.

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White Collar Crimes: a menace to South African businesses

The slow rot of the private and public sector

Since the early 2000s, there have been numerous news reports in South Africa indicating that white collar crime is on the rise. From 2014, despite police statistic reports indicating an 11% decrease in economic crimes, independent studies conducted by PwC indicate a burgeoning increase in fraud, money laundering, corruption, collusion and bribery by senior management in companies and by politicians in high ranking government positions.[1]

South Africa has the potential to increase the number of its successful prosecutions if a greater emphasis is placed on the importance of prosecuting white collar crimes.

Economic crime is constantly evolving and becoming a more complex issue for organisations and economies.  In South Africa, more than two thirds of South African organisations have experienced economic crime.[2] The overwhelming cause of the increase in white collar crimes is that detection methods are not keeping pace, local law enforcement agencies place little to no emphasis on white collar crime, bundling together a broad range of illicit activity, including insider trading and credit card fraud together with public procurement fraud and private sector corruption, and there is a general failure to prosecute and punish these crimes effectively. Further, many individuals facing charges of fraud, corruption, money-laundering or insider-trading have the ability to delay prosecution by launching numerous appeals and other actions.[3]  This accompanied by South Africa’s back-logged High Court system, the inability of the National Prosecuting Authority (The NPA) to prosecute economic crimes and the poor levels of investigation by police services, in no way serves to deter individuals from committing such crimes.

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