Papers by Guillermo Jorge
U4 Brief, 2007
Descargue este informe y encuentre mayor información sobre la UNCAC para especialistas en desarro... more Descargue este informe y encuentre mayor información sobre la UNCAC para especialistas en desarrollo en (en inglés) www.U4.no/themes/uncac/ U4BRIEF
U4 Brief, Oct 5, 2007
Corruption impacts all aspects of life from access to clean water and clean air to life expectanc... more Corruption impacts all aspects of life from access to clean water and clean air to life expectancy rates, poverty levels, and personal safety from crime and terrorism. Still, there are no universally accepted standards for measuring corruption. What is agreed upon is that by any measure the numbers involved are staggering: The World Bank estimates that more than $1 trillion is paid in bribes each year. That figure does not even include amounts of public funds embezzled and plundered by high government officials. aDDitional reSourceS UNODC (2006), "Asset recovery: Background paper", Paper presented at the First Conference of State Parties of the United Nations Convention against Corruption [
y auspiciado por la Embajada Británica en Buenos Aires. El proyecto tiene como objetivo reforzar ... more y auspiciado por la Embajada Británica en Buenos Aires. El proyecto tiene como objetivo reforzar los incentivos para la lucha contra la corrupción, aumentar la cantidad de denuncias por corrupción en los organismos del Estado y lograr la incorporación de nuevos mecanismos de control de la corrupción entre los actores estatales. En el marco del proyecto, entre otras actividades, han sido capacitados fiscales nacionales en el tema de recuperación de activos de la corrupción pública. Las opiniones de este documento son de exclusiva responsabilidad de sus autores.
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or l... more Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the "institutional complementarity theory." The first case study centers on proceedings concerning bribes paid by subsidiaries of Siemens AG, a German company, to obtain and retain a contract to provide national identity cards for the Argentine government. The second case study examines events stemming from overbilling in the construction of a courthouse in Brazil. Analysis of these cases suggests that the institutional complementary theory is credible. At the same time, the findings suggest that local institutions have greater potential, and foreign institutions have more limited potential, than the theory assumes.
This paper is designed to provide a first approach to some questions raised by the Global Adminis... more This paper is designed to provide a first approach to some questions raised by the Global Administrative Law Project concerning the anti money laundering system, as a global governance project, and how it works in Latin America. We address some interactions between actors at the global, regional and local level. So we have organized our presentation according to those three spaces: 1) global standards, 2) regional efforts and 3) national experiences, where we present the contrast between Brazil and Argentina.
This paper is designed to provide a first approach to some questions raised by the Global Adminis... more This paper is designed to provide a first approach to some questions raised by the Global Administrative Law Project concerning the anti money laundering system, as a global governance project, and how it works in Latin America. We address some interactions between actors at the global, regional and local level. So we have organized our presentation according to those three spaces: 1) global standards, 2) regional efforts and 3) national experiences, where we present the contrast between Brazil and Argentina.
Verfassung und Recht in Übersee, 2021
This paper was written in 2015 but not published. Due to recent interest in reading its theoretic... more This paper was written in 2015 but not published. Due to recent interest in reading its theoretical argument on institutional modularity, it is being made available in 2020 as a Working Paper, unchanged from the 2015 text.
Research conducted along the last twenty years has shown a strong relationship between weak democ... more Research conducted along the last twenty years has shown a strong relationship between weak democracies and corruption. Corruption lowers tax revenues, increases government operating costs, increases government spending for wages and reduces spending on operations and maintenance. Corruption also diminishes public trust in government institutions, which is a crucial factor in the transition to democracy. When ratifying the United Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) 2 , Romania agreed to seriously consider criminalizing illicit enrichment. Illicit enrichment is defined as a significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income. The international obligation contracted by Romania consists of making "a genuine effort to see whether [illicit enrichment] would be compatible with [its] legal system". 3 This report aims to contribute to such an effort, offering a comprehensive analysis of the crime, its constitutional and human rights limitations and different alternatives to deal with unexplained wealth compatible with the current Romanian legal framework, including the recently created National Integrity Agency. The following report is divided into 5 interrelated sections. After a brief introduction and discussion of Romania's historical background in establishing a democracy and enumerating constitutional restraints in order to help prevent abuses of power, section B discusses the basic international legal framework surrounding illicit enrichment. The section details recent developments in the area of criminal law for prosecuting and/or preventing crimes of greed. It also contains an analysis of the recent developments regarding the legal burdens of proof required to prosecute such crimes including the actual reversing of the burden in some countries, and the legislative approach of requiring proof of knowledge of an illicit origin rather than the predicate offense, itself. An examination of how other countries have approached the prosecution of such crimes and implemented new legal tools and 1 The methodology applied included desktop research of legal sources, and field interviews (Bucharest, April 2007).
y auspiciado por la Embajada Británica en Buenos Aires. El proyecto tiene como objetivo reforzar ... more y auspiciado por la Embajada Británica en Buenos Aires. El proyecto tiene como objetivo reforzar los incentivos para la lucha contra la corrupción, aumentar la cantidad de denuncias por corrupción en los organismos del Estado y lograr la incorporación de nuevos mecanismos de control de la corrupción entre los actores estatales. En el marco del proyecto, entre otras actividades, han sido capacitados fiscales nacionales en el tema de recuperación de activos de la corrupción pública. Las opiniones de este documento son de exclusiva responsabilidad de sus autores.
This study examines the extent to which the modular approach to anticorruption enforcement has ta... more This study examines the extent to which the modular approach to anticorruption enforcement has taken hold in six South American countries. We describe the process of enforcing anti-corruption law, in functional terms, and why modular design might be an optimal way of reconciling the advantages and disadvantages of coordination among institutions. We then identify a number of factors that might influence the design of the anti-corruption institutions adopted in any given country. Next we examine whether and to what extent modular institutional design has been implemented in anti-corruption enforcement in six South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru. For each country we describe the institutions responsible for enforcing anti-corruption law, the coordination mechanisms they have developed, and factors that have hampered the development of those mechanisms. Our results show that the same functions or combinations of functions are often performed...
Corporate Compliance on a Global Scale
Verfassung in Recht und Übersee
One of the most pressing challenges in anti-corruption law is whether and how to coordinate enfor... more One of the most pressing challenges in anti-corruption law is whether and how to coordinate enforcement across multiple agencies, that is to say, under conditions of institutional multiplicity. One approach is modular enforcement, which involves dividing responsibility for enforcement among multiple institutions that are able, but not required, to coordinate their activities. The relatively impressive performance of Brazil’s anti-corruption agencies around the beginning of the twentieth century has been attributed to this kind of institutional modularity. We examine whether other similarly situated countries adopted the Brazilian approach. Specifically, we compare the extent to which the modular approach to anti-corruption enforcement was reflected in the national anti-corruption institutions of Brazil and five other South American countries as of 2014. We find little evidence that Brazil’s neighbors adopted the modular approach and suggest a variety of political, intellectual and i...
In the fight against money laundering, information on politically exposed persons (PEPs) is highl... more In the fight against money laundering, information on politically exposed persons (PEPs) is highly relevant for financial institutions as it is about customers deemed to be high-risk due to their public functions and the degree of influence they can exert. This document reviews the regulatory and operational frameworks to access and exchange of information on PEPs in Central American countries, as well as the enhanced due diligence measures under implementation in these countries. The main findings indicate that there are legal constraints in relation to the definition of PEPs and the obligation to declare beneficial owners. There are also operational constraints in terms of the measures implemented to identify PEPs and to ensure the integrity of information systems. Likewise, this document presents recommendations to address the barriers identified and analyzes best practices to help strengthen the detection and prevention mechanisms used by Central American governments and financial institutions for cases in which PEPs use the financial system to launder money obtained through corruption and related crimes.
AJIL Unbound
Most Latin American countries are in the process of implementing international anticorruption sta... more Most Latin American countries are in the process of implementing international anticorruption standards, including standards for combating corporate corruption. Primarily based on the U.S. experience with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), these international standards for combating corporate corruption are coalescing into a standardized paradigm, which requires states to establish corporate liability regimes that incentivize companies to prevent, self-police, and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in exchange for more lenient sanctions.
U4 Brief, 2007
Corruption impacts all aspects of life from access to clean water and clean air to life expectanc... more Corruption impacts all aspects of life from access to clean water and clean air to life expectancy rates, poverty levels, and personal safety from crime and terrorism. Still, there are no universally accepted standards for measuring corruption. What is agreed upon is that by any measure the numbers involved are staggering: The World Bank estimates that more than $1 trillion is paid in bribes each year. That figure does not even include amounts of public funds embezzled and plundered by high government officials. aDDitional reSourceS UNODC (2006), "Asset recovery: Background paper", Paper presented at the First Conference of State Parties of the United Nations Convention against Corruption [
U4 Brief, 2007
Descargue este informe y encuentre mayor información sobre la UNCAC para especialistas en desarro... more Descargue este informe y encuentre mayor información sobre la UNCAC para especialistas en desarrollo en (en inglés) www.U4.no/themes/uncac/ U4BRIEF
Abstract will be provided by author.
Money laundering refers to the process or processes through which the proceeds of certain crimes ... more Money laundering refers to the process or processes through which the proceeds of certain crimes are first disguised and then legitimized so that they may be enjoyed without risking discovery and prosecution. While anti-money laundering efforts were initially implemented through domestic legislation, it soon became evident that the effectiveness of the system would heavily depend on how homogenously it was applied accross borders. In fact, empirical evidence shows that money laundering operations typically include an international dimension of one sort or another. Should the anti-money laundering legal regime be limited to some countries or not enforced homogenously, those seeking to launder the proceeds of their crimes would do so in the jurisdiction where their conduct would not be subject to stringent controls. The only effect of exclusively domestic anti-money laundering measures would this be a change in the geographical distribution of the phenomenon. This paper explores the development of international anti-money laundering standards and presents their main features in those specific areas that are most relevant to the question of international asset tracing and asset recovery, namely, the standards to prevent and detect transfers of proceeds of crime; the standards related to the adoption of provisional measures to prevent such transfers or the disposal of assets under investigation and the standards of confiscation of proceeds of crime domestically and in cross-border proceedings. It focuses on the rules and standards developed under the auspices of the United Nations, the European Union and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
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Papers by Guillermo Jorge