Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today 20141107

Enforcement priorities would result in only moderate reductions in overall removals. Would that make any difference if the president extended the guidance to cdp . Yeah, you know, and modest is so modest is not a very precise word, i think its not hard to describe a scenario where you could see removals go down by 10 or 15 or maybe 20 , or some of the scenarios that we described. But, certainly you know, cdp has as we described in our last report, theres been a sea change in how cdp does enforcement, just over the last less than 10 years, from mostly voluntary returns to overwhelmingly formal removals. So if what youre talking about specifically is reducing formal removals. You could reduce that substantially if you decided well go back to an era where youre going to violence tearily return most people. Which you may or may not tie to enforcement priorities, but having said that, the data do suggest that the great majority of people that cdp and prehengds, they apprehend within three days and especially between two weeks of entry. If people who are apprehended within two weeks of entry is a top priority, thats mostly what cdp does. And the second question is for mark, and when you were saying that congressional spending and appropriations is a primary driver of the deportation system and doris, i was wonderering if you could comment on that given your years as former ins commissioner, whether or not the actual, you know, high congressional appropriations really has made the exercise of prosecutorial discretion much more limited in what this i want to push one more premise, i want us to question whether a certain amount of congressional spending necessarily means that that has to be 400,000 removals per year, because that has certainly been the way the administration has at the same time internally we know that many are trying to push for qualitative removals, as opposed to quantitative removals. Its definitely a debate and its definitely a discussion. Both externally and i think within the executive branch. The you know, an executive any agency that gets money from congress has a certain degree of flexibility, in how that spending takes place, that is very, i mean you know as an agency when the congress is trying to give you money generally for carrying out a mission and when it is very specifically targeted. And its really youre at your peril when, with appropriators, having the discussions that go on between appropriators and administrators, an administrator acts differently from what the congress intends. Now it is certainly true that the has intercepted the funding for deportation is quantitative, but also because thats been very clear that thats what the appropriate fors are asking for. So i dont think that i mean, i think that the executive branch has some and i. C. E. In particular here, has some interest in what you see in the numbers. Last year the deportation numbers fell to 300,000, or Something Like that. Now theyre back up to some 430,000, so there certainly is that degree of fluctuation which has not caused, you know, a huge problem for the executive branch, but at the same time, congress expects that money to be used for detention and deportation and administrators within i. C. E. And dhs probably have a little bit of moving room with that, but they would not in a wholesale fashion ignore what it is thats in that appropriations language, i think. So the funding is a very important driver. Anybody want to make final comments . I was just going to get to that, are there any other final questions from the audience . Okay, any final comments anybody would like to make . Thank you, again. Rebecca, how about you . I wasnt queuing you because i didnt have enough to say. Youve had enough air time . I have had enough air time. Thank you all for coming, we somewhat apologize for the density of this information, but not truly because this is very Important Research and the numbers tell us a great deal and so were thankful for your attention. I do want to turn i do want to make an announcement about a future event which is next tuesday, we have the annual Immigration Law and policy conference, which mpi does in collaboration with center for migration studies in new york and clinic as well as georgetown law centers. Its on tuesday at georgetown law center. We have a very, very substantive lineup of panels for this year, very, very good speakers, very, very topical, so the subject is on your chairs, registration closes on friday, so we hope to see you all there next week, with that let me close this and invite people to come forward for any further conversation if you would like to carry on the dialogue, thank you very much. In maryland republican dan bongino conceded the race. He was called the winner thursday night. In a statement to supporters, he said, quote, its now time to move on and allow the citizens of maryland to be heard. We begin at 8 00 p. M. Eastern with three medal of honor recipients who served in world ward ii, vietnam and afghanistan. They spoke at the naval academy. Then at 9 40 on American History tv, former nbc nightly news anchor tom brokaw on his coverage of the fall of the berlin wall. On tomorrows washington journal, Washington Post pollster Peyton Craighill will talk about what exit polls tell us about the demographics and attitudes of voters. And jims thurbar to talk about dividing government now that republicans pulled control of congress. And peter of Georgetown University looks back at the fall of the berlin wall 25 years ago and the sis kans today. Your phone calls and Facebook Comments every day on cspan starting at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. This weekend on the cspan networks, tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan, more e reaction to the midterm elections. On saturday night at 8 00, a debate on the future of the internet and sunday evening at 8 00 on q a, tavis smiley on his latest book. And tonight at 8 00 on cspan 2, German Occupying paris, saturday night at 10 00 on book tvs afterwards, jeff chang on the idea of racial progress in america. And sunday night at 10 00, Edward Wilson on what makes us human and different from other species. Tonight on cspan 3, they reflect on their service of world war ii, vietnam and afghanistan. And saturday at 8 00 on lectures in history, the social prejudice immigrants faced during the 1800s. And sunday night at 8 00, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. Find your Television Schedule at cspan right lane. Coming up sunday Senate Veterans Affair Committee Bernie Sanders will answer questions about efforts to revamp medical care and what to expect in the lame duck skponk his expectations for the republican majority in the senate. Senator sanders is the guest on newsmakers at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern. The 2015 cspan student cam video competition is underway open to all middle and High School Students to create a fiveseven minute documentary showing how a policy, law or action by the executive, legislative or Judicial Branch in the federal government has affected you or your community. Theres 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling 100,000. For a list of rules, go to studentcam. Org. A report found the process for ethics investigations in the house of representatives has improved since the creation of the office of ethics back in 2008, but the report found that the senate has not taken any disciplinary action in years. Up next on cspan 3 a discussion on that report from the Campaign Legal center. This is about 50 minutes. Im the policy director of the Campaign Legal center. I want to welcome everyone. This is supposed to be and what we hope will be a roundtable discussion not just Panel Presentations about potential reforms to the congressional ethics process. We are pleased to have a very wide range of groups that have been a part of discussing what the reforms would look like. Let me just first off give some of the list of the groups who have been participating in the effort to try and really push for reforms in the congressional eth ethics process. In addition to the Campaign Legal center theres the citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington, common cause, democracy 21, Judicial Watch, thomas man, the league of women voters, norm ornstein, the project on governmental oversight, Public Citizen, the sun like foundation, taxpayers for common sense. Its a pretty Diverse Group from the right, the left, the middle and every place in between. What we want to do today is give some information about a study that and be able to have a discussion among ourselves and with any of the staffer folks here to talk about congressional ethics and why they are important and what needs to be do done, what changes should be discussed. At the panel we will go through and let me just have everyone introduce themselves as the folks up here very quickly. Im jim thurber. We cannot lobby, but as an individual, im very supportive of this and have been for years. Citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington. Im craig hohmann, Government Affairs lobbyist and i want to note one of the very few lobbyists who calls himself a lobbyist. Im aaron shesh, the director of legislative affairs at common cause. And im norm ornstein with the American Enterprise institute but also here as an individual. Im going to turn it over to craig who has written a report looking at the Office Congressional ethics and well have him talk about that a little bit and open it up after hes had a chance. First, i want to take a minute or so providing some background about what created the office of congressional ethics. This came in the wake of the jack a bram scandals back in 20 20062007 when our organization saw the organizations here work on drafting and promoting the honest leadership and open Government Act that set up a whole series of new congressional ethics rules along with ethics rules for lobbyists. And one of the key problems that we all noted of the was enforcement. Enforcement has historically as always until oce. The responsibility of members of the congress overseeing members of congress. And both the congressional Ethics Committee, both in the house and the senate side are run by members of congress and they used to, the senate still does operate largely in secrecy. It has always claimed that they are doing a great job. They do it all confidently. Even though the public doesnt know what they are doing, that is the basis of their effectiveness. Well, that was ridiculous. Following in the wake of the Jack Abram Hof scandal where they did nothing at all and enforcement is the major problem. Then we started promoting an institution called the office of congressional ethics. This office of congressional ethics is staffed and run by outsiders. They cannot be members of congress and not be registered lob gists. Even though they dont actually have any Enforcement Authority or subpoena authority, what they do is conduct an investigation and make recommendations to the House Ethics Committee either to dismiss the case or to proceed with further investigation. We have none of that on the senate side. Let me explain quickly the findings on the report. The report is the case for independent ethics agencies, the officer of congressional ethics, six years later and a history of failed senate accountability. What we found is that throughout the history of the during a decade of inaction from 1997 to 2005, which is a long period, there were only five displi nan actions taken by the House Ethics Committee. Then suddenly we created oce and the office of congressional ethics period of 200 92014 we saw a fourfold uncrease in disciplinary actions by then. Oce has taken up 136 cases in preliminary reviews and of those have only referred a third of them to the House Ethics Committee for further investigation. Most of the cases get dismissed, but still youre seeing a healthy workload going to the House Ethics Committee and because it becomes public record, the House Ethics Committee is actually starting to do its job. Compare that to the senate. We were pushing for a similar outside office on the senate side and i remember senator ted stevens sitting up there on a committee saying theres no problem here. Its working beautifully. Thereafter he came under a sharp ethics scandal of which the senate Ethics Committee never did anything. We have charts at the end of the report. E we take a look at compare that to oce. First of all, they are receiving fewer complaints than ever and there were like 99 complaints filed with the Ethics Committee in 2009. In 2013 last year there were only 26. Were seeing a steady drop in this. Part of the reason is almost every single complaint on the Senate Ethics side gets dismissed. All but four have been misdis missed. Much of the reason why that is happening is because the senate Ethics Committee operates in secret. Even though they publish the number of cases they are taking a look at and published the number of dismissals each year, which by the way is almost an identical number every here, we dont get any kind of record as to what they were looking at, who is being investigated or whats going on. And without that type of accountability on the senate side, the senate Ethics Committee is a failure. The same type of failure that we had on the house side prior to oce. Its a similar velgtive Agency Similar to oc toerks make their ethics process begin working and secondly try to ensure that oce and whatever the senate may do is an effective agency. The one thing they are mising is subpoena authority. It can only ask people to come in and testify. Wed like to see it have Real Authority to conduct its investigations. Thats the summary of the reports. So what we have done is an Informal Group have written letters to the house and Senate Leadership recommending changes in their respective ethics processes as krais noted in the house, the First Priority is to make oce a permanent office. We wait to have the black or white smoke come out to determine whether or not the ethics the office of congressional ethics is going to continue. Wed like to find a way to make a permanent situation and not up every time theres a new congress. We have also encouraged the house leadership to support giving subpoena power to the office of congressional ethics and lastly to inkrecrease the transparency over here on the house ethics side to more information about the information they provide to member offices. On the senate side, our letter talks about creating a smar ethics based on a successful oce. We talk about creating timetables for reports and we specifically talk about not only transparency in the ethics process in the senate, but a new problem that has cropped up dealing with group. S that kind of are not well known and dont have a track record looking to fund travel for senators and the senate staffs looks a at these groups and have no track record and its hard to find information. Im going to turn first to norm. If i could talk about why you think these issues matter. Why should anyone care about e ethics in congress. And why you think its so hard to get even with bipartisan agreement to get this done. First, let me say i believe the office of congressional ethics has been a terrific success. Part of the reason is ill give a little credit to Speaker Boehner and leader pe low si. They chose the initial members and picked good people ranging across the spectrum with very good leadership from two former members of colorado and of florida but including a real mix. Ver chully every decision they made to. Push something out has been done unanimously. Its taken it out of an arena and has worked better with real creditable. More often than not, they will say that a complaint brought doesnt have the merit. And it has much more creditability for the members themselves who have the complaints brought against them than it would if they were done by their colleagues. That gets to the root of the problem that meredith was getting at. When congress is given the constitution responsible to police its own, but its in a dammed if you do, damned in you dont situation. Its easy for them to become politicized and we went through a long period with the criminalization of ethics. It cut ace Cross Party Lines says we wont push anything against your members and well push it all under the rug. Thats why many of us have pushed for independent process respecting the constitutional responsibility that congress has which is what resulted in the ethics and have been multiple attempts to do this in the senate which has brushed it aside. The final decisions have to be made by congress and its filtered through the House Ethics Committee. If you dont have an independent accountability process, then you really dont have an ethics process at all. I would just make one other point. Craig talked about the era. There was another element to this, which is when the Ethics Committee in the house pushed and pushed finally did its job against tom delay, the speaker then in effect fired three members of the Ethics Committee who looked at the evidence and come out with what was actually pretty mild punishment, letters of admonishment, but the chairman and two other members were basically dismissed from the committee. And that shows you how this process can can get caught up in a political hot house. What we want to do when you dont have any enforcement, the word gets out to the members in the staff that anything goes. Theres no you need constant education. Thats Something Else were calling for to make sure they know what the lines are. Or relationships with lobbyists or others or the kinds of things that you can and cannot do with campaign donors. All of those things need to be not only enforced but also taught seriously to members and staff. I have been teaching a course on ethics and lobbying for ten years. It gets a laugh from some of my colleagues, but its very important. We track through merediths good work all of the articles that appear, dozens of them sometimes, each week on ethics problems. They have not gone away. I think the primary problem here has been stated three times, we dont. Have effective enforcement of the 1995 act. We dont have it in 2007 act. And theres a little transparency, a little more transparency and theres problems and solutions to those problems. I think transparency is like oxygen to fire in a democracy. You have to have it. Its cleansing. Its not the only thing. Next for you in the media. There needs to be better access to information from the health Ethics Committee shs the senate Ethics Committee if it does something. And ethics training in education is very important. What does all of this do . It goes against the very human strong human norm. I call it the iron law of reciproci reciprocity. When you have peers judging peers and its in a place where ill help you if you help me, its within each party. Its very difficult to push against that. Thats what these things do. But its for the good of the democracy. Its for the public good and thats why were pushing it. I just want to build a little bit on some things that the speaker said. As craig said before, their transpa transparency is critical here. So w transparency is critical here. So what transparency does specifically is when the oce releases its report at the end of an investigation t has two effects. One effect is to act as to make the House Ethics Committee accountable and it also makes staffers and members more. Accountable because they know that any transgressions will had not just disappear into a black hole of the House Ethics Committee. So for me whats most important here is transparency in the process. And the advent of oce made the process on the house side significantly more transparent. Its not transparent enough, but its gotten somewhat better. Perhaps in response to that, the House Ethics Committee itself has gotten a little more transparent. On their website now, they post the House Ethics Committee reports that it used to be posted you couldnt get those in the past. Theres more to be done on the house side. I would add there are certain documents that are difficult to obtain, even though they are public documents. Documents have been to do with the basic guidance that the Ethics Committee provides. Some of them are online, but not all of them. Particularly historical ones. Those are guidance that members and staff need to have and the public needs to have to know what standards members and staff will be held to. Also information about Legal Defense funds is difficult to get your hands on. On the senate side, as others have said before me, theres much more less transparency. Even the basic rules of what senators are and are not allowed to do are often difficult to ascertain. So several years ago, my organization found out and others knew about there was a Senate Members manual that guided some of the behaviors of members of the senate. We asked the rules committee for access to this to make it public because it seems absurd they wouldnt know the rules they are held to and it took until several years later that a newspaper reporter was able to obtain this. The senate has further to go in terms of transparency torks bring more accountability to the system. Could you talk a little bit about why average americans should care about this . What do you find when you talk to people outside of washington. I think the public knows the ethics process is broken. Congress placing itself is like a pitcher camming his own balls and strikes and the system is broken and they are here to fix it and to create an independent ethics fully independent ethics process. At a time when congresss Approval Ratings are in the single digits, maybe the teens at best, i think the public would greatly welcome a fully independent congressional ethics process. When we talked with Everyday Americans about this, they are shocked there arent stronger rules and earths process in place like these organizations have helped create welcome transparency. Its not a complete solution, but were working to strengthen that. Have you gotten responses to that from the people that are serving . First, let me just say its very important as norm did to talk about the leadership at oce and the excellent job they have done. Because its very difficult in washington to find many examples that have been able to make most of the recommendations in a unanimous way among republicans and democrats. So i think they deserve credit. Leadership matters in this town. I think they should be singled out. We have written a letter to the leadership of the house asking that they make a Public Statement as soon as possible that oce will be renewed. The only thing we saw was there a press report indicating they were supporter, but we have heard nothing else from the house leadership. We would welcome a statement by the house leaders on both sides of the aisles making very clear they expect oce to resume and we also are hoping that there will be an opportunity to engage in this conversation about how to strengthen oce. We are hearing reports that the lack of subpoena power is actually harming their ability to do their job and we obviously are careful about opening up discussion about oce because we know it has means within the house, particularly those who have been the subject of an investigation, but we also think that e creating this ability for them to get the information they need so they can do a fair job is a kriltically important aspect. So far we have heard other than the report that was right after the letter was sent earlier this fall, its been definitening silence. Its been made much tougher. Any member who has an investigation thats begun through oce gets a lawyer and the lawyer reflexively says were going to stone wall. Were not going to give you anything. We hoped when the office was created they get indirect subpoena power where they go to the chair and ranking members. But when lawyers do this it creates friction and trouble and even more difficulties. Anybody who has a referral to the Ethics Committee doesnt like it. Its tough to get this going and to keep it going. But if it ends, there will be an enormous outcry. My guess is even some of the 7 or 8 who still approve of congress will turn against it and when john mccain says they are down to blood relatives and paid staff, they are going to lose a whole lot of those too. Norm, i have not met oneover the 7 to 8 . Id like to add one thing and thats the Historical Context of the senate. It was senator obama who pushed the idea of an office of Senate Ethics. It got onethird of the senate in support of it. It was 36 votes. And thats in the context of theirs over 30 states that have an office of public integrity. They are doing this in the states that they couldnt do it in the senate. We have a tough lift here, but its very important. Just to give some background in case people are miswrg this question is coming from, oce was created as part of house rules. As a result it has to be renewed each session that the house comes back. That is a potential weakness if the house suddenly chooses not to renew oce. However, with the current leadership of Speaker Boehner and nancy pelosi, im now comfortable that oce is not in danger with this leadership. Last session we had a crisis for awhile because the Board Members and oce were supposed to be term limited out and new people appointed and then the board e reauthorized. Neither Speaker Boehner nor nancy pelosi thought of that or realized that they had to do it. E we were getting right next to the next session. And this whole board would have gone defunt, but both speaker bainer and nancy pelosi sat down together, ended the term limits for the board and renewed the office of congressional ethics. So with this house leadership im not worried about oce being in danger. However, if we do see a change in the leadership. They were pressuring Speaker Boehner to reauthorize the house of congressional ethics. Theres a broad ideological support. We hope that will continue as well. I would like to note that among the groups that have been involved in these discussions are Judicial Watch and the National Taxpayers union. What we really tried to do is create a dialogue thats not based on right or left or republican or democrat, but really ethics standards that apply across the board because any of us who have been in washington for any period of time know ethical problems are not reserved to one party or the other. Its inherent in the nature of politics. So we have really tried very hard to ensure that the work that we do is nonpartisan and i think thats an important message, particularly as we get close to the election. This is not about one party or another. This is about the integrity of the institution. One other note here which is for the members of the office of congressional ethics, its really a thankless task. They dont get paid anything. They have to spend a lot of time on this. They are vilified on a regular basis for the first couple years. And its a tribute to them they have kept this up and decided to stay on. A couple of them are getting fairly old now. The former member of illinois from minnesota. So at some point theres going to be changes. E we also want to be sure when the changes occur, the leaders step up to the plate once again and pick people of the same quality and integrity. One question on what you just said about National Taxpayers union. I just noticed the size of your letters that a couple of the groups union didnt support the senate office. Oneover the senate copies, theres only one difference because one of the groups got originally left off. So theres only one difference, so ill make sure you get that. The National Taxpayers union, the only thing they raised concerns with when we were talking about the senate was travel. And i think that was because there are groups here. Myself included. I think Public Citizen who have been in favor of eliminating privately financed travel for senators and members of congress. That was not a position that National Taxpayers was particularly comfortable take i ing. So they said they would rather not go there. But they do support the independent agency. Right. Just procedurally speaking, is that a decision thats solely made by Speaker Boehner and leader pelosi or something the house well, they probably would have to take some action in house rules to take this. And i would note there are different ways you can do subpoena power. You can give subpoena power to third parties as opposed to the members themselves. You can give them full subpoena power o to any witness involved in an allegation, but that would have to come from the leadership and it would have to be contained in the changes in the house rules. But there are while all the house rules are recreated every two years, we dont have a lot of concern that the Standing Committees like agricultural or the ways and means are going to disappear any time soon. That is a concern that remains to some degree what the office of congressional ethics. So part of the effort here is to try u to figure out are there ways to make sure that the office of congressional ethics is really embedded in the expectation of the Standing Committees that will occur at each new congress. By the way, a little anecdotal story about subpoena power. I think all the reform groups supported having oce back in 2008 when it was being debated. However, congress wasnt willing to go that far. They stripped it of subpoena power. That caused, you know, somewhat of a division. I know i and meredith were two who were saying, okay, were not going to oppose creating oce, but this isnt probably going to work. Norm insisted we were wrong. Oce has done its job as the numbers show and the reason is because of the transparency element it still has, even without subpoena authority. Yes, sir. The two questions on the fantasy, if they were given subpoena authority, is there any separation of powers of this independent agency having direct oversight responsibility in addition to criminal justice rules . A person can refuse to answer on the right to selfincriminate with criminal law, but can they based on an ethical violation . I dont think theres a concern in the house investigating its own members and staffers. It provides for the house to govern its own membership. I dont see why you would have a separation of power certainly within, and i dont see a problem if you were looking to third parties, somebody who is funding travel or Something Like that who isnt in the government. The second one again . Just the form of the subpoena power, how it would be envisioned. Is this the type of thing a person would have a right to not selfincriminate on the basis something theyd say would submit they committed an ethics violation . I have to admit i havent thought that through. I dont know if other people have views on that. Generally speaking, the right to selfinkr selfincrimination is under the fifth amendment. I dont necessarily see where that would apply to the context of having to do with violations of house ethics rules. Obviously some of the house ethics rules are based in criminal statute so there may be some grounds there for making a fifth amendment defense, but i wouldnt see it being am publicable in near violations of house rules that arent based in criminal law. I can address both of those. When we were going through what was a pain staking process of trying to create this panel, we had a working group working with them. We were a part of it. And we went through each of these issues as he went back to his members. It was enormous across the board resistance to direct subpoena power. Which at one level, you can understand the members were frightened of any outside group having authority over them. There were questions about having an outside group. I think they could probably be resolved, but what we really aimed for was an indirect power run through the Ethics Committee, which we thought would probably work enough. What we wanted was at least to have a backup where either members or staff would feel reason to communicate with and offer information and testimony to the panel instead of whats now happened in far too many cases. As i said, its lawyers just instinctively say were not going to give them anything. I think in most cases, it works against their clients, but theres that. On the second question, this is the same kind of question that emerges whenever any Congressional Committee has a witness in front of it. Namely, if there is a potential criminal violation, then of course, you can say that youre invoking the fifth amendment. Presumably the committee can offer you some immunity. Its not clear that the office could offer immune ta, but. Almost every instance of a potential ethics violation or allegation that were talking about does not involve criminal activity. It involves a violation of the ethics rules and so theres no protection there. For the most part if a member of staff tried to do that, it would work against them. It would probably look pretty foolish. Another question . Donovan. Is there any indication of that subpoena power is really necessary . Have there been case where is people just dont cooperate so nothing gets done . Yes. The reports that we have from oce is that this is a growing problem. That they have found that when they go to conduct their investigations, folks are lawyering up and shutting up. So they want to be able to do a full and thorough investigation. When people wont talk to you and give you records, you basically cant do that. So its a problem. They have done a lot of reports. They have gotten a lot of information. Yeah, the reports i have read. Theres a lot of voluntary participation going on, but in many of the cases, especially when they get more extreme, you find that a number of parties involved in the cases are not participating. You know, it puts oce in an awkward position too because they have got to issue a report with some sort of recommendation to the Ethics Committee. And if no one is going to talk to them and explain what happened, that just leaves questions wide open. So sometimes oce will send a referral to the Ethics Committee saying we cant answer these questions. So we it. You know. Use your authority. Saying they have a negative input, right . If somebody doesnt answer. They say we assume they have something to hide and we send toyota the Ethics Committee. Say you deal with it. Isnt that pretty much. I understand its a growing problem. When it first created the noeg of not cooperating seemed, you know, it was going to leave a bad mark, if you will, by your name. Increasingly, they are finding people are saying, were not going to cooperate. So they are left with this inability to come to what they consider is a good resolution. They end up forwarding stuff to the Ethics Committee. You know, the process begins. If they had subpoena power they could get definitive answers and be able to make more definish ty conclusions. The same lawyerses for the parties that urged the parties not to participate in an investigation before oce, p if oce then sends a report to the Ethics Committee saying we cant answer these questions so we recommend you pursue the investigation, the same lawyerses will say youre using our lack of participation as a negative mark. Therefore carrying on the investigation. So, you know, thats part of the awkward situation. If oce had subpoena authority it could do more factual based research. Off the top of my head i can think of one example. There is an investigation of congressman bill owens and pete roscum involving trips to tai n taiwan. If i recall correctly it talked about how lobbyists who were involved in organizing one of the trips including the lobbying firm of al domato didnt provide documents or information which made oces job difficult trying to understand what was going on. The point is to make the investigation thorough so they can reach the best possible conclusion without kicking it oh the House Ethics Committee in the first instance. What is your reasoning or oces reasoning for why people are you said early on in the investigation. Is it that they expected oce or some of the cases because they have continued to do so little in terms of requiring that full action. We dont have to do it thim. They have been surprised to some degree that oce has been effective. It seems to go ahead and have it in a manner that reached bipartisan agreement. There are fairly low expectations for ork ce when it first came into being. Except from norm. I do think one of the great things that happened with oce is we used to have a situation for a long time when there were criminalzation of policy and party differenceses where you have some outside group bring an ethics complaint. It would be used. Shes under investigation. That really burned a lot of people who have done nothing wrong. What oce has been able to do now it has credibility and independent authority to clear people at a relatively expeditious way so they dont have the cloud hanging over their heads. For plenty of others, they would much rather delay, stonewall and basically use it against the panel. One of the reasons they want to do that is we did manage to get and it was just as important. It gets to the point many panelists made, transparency here. That the oce reports if the Ethics Committee doesnt take action on them, well get published. For some of the members, theyd just as soon have published reports if they can rely on an Ethics Committee not taking action, not include information they may find embarrassing. Its a dynamic that works in some ways to improve the process. But without at least some cudgel to get information out there it clouds up the process. One of those who testified before the task force on this, the original idea and concept was to create an office that would be in charge of investigations. Then you have the House Ethics Committee that would do the process. When it was put together it didnt work out that way. You have an investigation by oce. Then you have another investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Not only do you have duplication. The whole point here is to provide two thingses. One, members of the public, confidence that allegationses are being looked at and resolved fairly. For the members the ability to say, look, somebody looked and i got a clean bill of health. Therefore im fine. Really you have to have an oce thats Strong Enough to say we have, in fact, looked at all the facts. We didnt make a recommendation to move forward because we felt the facts werent there. We are a little bit caught in between at the moment. A clean bill of health. They dont have subpoena power. Emphasizing that the budget is only 1. 5 million for the office of congressional ethics. There are only nine members. As far as size and budget, do you have any specific recommendations for the numbers . We dont want to see too much of a bigger one. Also to have an effective conversation. With one of the issues they recently dealt with, the oce dealt with dealing with violations of lobbyist disclosure laws. That took a lot of resources. They really have reported that if they had more resources they could have looked maybe at more issues in dealing with lobbyist disclosure violationses. They dont have the resours. We are not looking for a huge increase. Its important that we have an uh office thats able to pursue the facts where the facts lead them. Not make a decision we cant go there. We dont have the Staff Resources to investigate. I would like to add whatever an appropriate budget would be. It is necessary. I want to repeat the ethics process on the senate is broken. It isnt working. Its not doing its job. If we need to create a semi independent agency with its own budget to make it work on the senate side, thats really whats necessary. Any other questions . Typically with these changes, there is a crisis. Why now in how you gauge prospects of success in the current environment. Anybody. This is a joke. We are waiting for a scandal. This is ready to go after that. Thats what youre talking about. Usually after a scandal there is reform. We got two votes in the senate. Both instanceses, an independent office was rejected roundly and soundly in a bipartisan way. The senate closed the ranks when it comes to Something Like this, if not anything else. We have to be realistic. This is not likely to happen unless and until there is a scandal of significant proportions that it then becomes clear to a larger audience that the senate has no ethics process. They are forced to move. What we want to do is keep pressure on. Now weve got a model. We know what works, what doesnt and what could be improved. Its ready when the time comes that they can just plug it in and well have a better process. Ideally it will be what we envisioned which meredith talked about which is an independent office that connects almost like a prosecutorial and a grand jury to decide whether there is enough there. To take it to the Ethics Committee which acts like judge and jury. The first judge and jury before it gets to the whole body and present evidence. The most important thing is to find the opportunity and traction to make it happen. We dont have any credibility here. Whatever mernls, you pretty much know in the senate. I would answer now this way. We all know the polling numberses in the approval of congress. We know there is a feeling in washington becoming increasingly irrelevant to our political discourse. If nothing useful is going to happen in washington. Knowing that the Senate Ethics process is broken. Knowing the house ethics process needs improvement, one of the ways you begin to reconnect with members of the public is you have a congress thats viewed as having good ethical standardses, high ethical standards and a process that workses. When you have a process where allegations arise, for example, in the senate, and go into the black hole, never to be heard from again, this is not a way to crawl out from the single or the te teen digits and increase congressional approval. Its not the total answer. It is part of answer of how you reconnect a representative body with the american people. Trying to get Senate Candidates and senators talking about ethics issues over the next couple of weeks during the Campaign Season could be a healthy so the public can see solutions that senators are proposing. At least getting this to be a salient issue. Well do something about it in the near future. We know now the committeeses that write the rules for the respective bodies are, in fact, meeting. Thats actually happening now. So if we wait until january the rules will already have been written. This is the period between now and january where the rules for the respective bodies are actually considered and are ready to go on day one. Now is the time. Any other questionses . I want to thank the people here. Thank you for coming. If you have any further questions we would be happy to stay afterwardses and talk to you. Thank you. In maryland sixth Congressional District republican has conceded to john delaney. The Associated Press called congressman delaney the winner thursday night after absentee votes were counted. In a statement to prorters mr. Bongino said it is time to move on and allow the liz citizens oh of maryland to be heard. On news makers, independent vermont senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the veteranses affairs committee. He talks about efforts to revamp the v. A. By robert mcdonald. The Lame Duck Congress and what he expectses in the next congress with Republican Leadership and campaign 2016. News makers, sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. In the last four years it is house of representatives voted more than 50 times to appeal all or part of the Affordable Care act. Yesterday john boehner held a News Conference and said the house will vote again to repeal the socalled obamacare legislation. The second paragraph of your oped in the wall street journal talked about it. How do you walk the balance without getting sucked back into that being the predominant issue. So it isnt the predominant issue when you have new freshmen coming in who never had the chance to repeal obamacare and try to tweak it to vote for a full repeal . Obamacare is hurting our economy. Its hurting middle class familieses. Its hurting the ability for employers to create more jobs. So the house, im sure next year it will move to repeal obamacare. It should be repealed and replaced with common sense reforms that respect the doctorpatient relationship. Whether that can pass the senate, i dont know. In the house it will pass. Well pass it. That doesnt mean we shouldnt do other things. There are bipartisan bills that passed the house, sitting in the senate. That would make changes to obamacare. There is a bipartisan majority in the house and senate for repealing the medical device checks. There is a bipartisan majority in the house and senate for getting rid of the independent payment advisory board. The rationing board in obamacare. How about the individual mandate . There are a lot of democratses and republicans who believe this is unfair. Just because we may not be able to get everything we want doesnt mean we shouldnt try to get what we can. You mentioned three or four different issues there, potentially votes. Doesnt that cycle congress right back into this obamacare and the number gets into the 0s or 70s . Isnt there a bipartisan majority in the house and senate to take some of the issues out of obamacare. We need to put them on the president s desk and let him choose. Congress has been in recess since september. This upcoming wednesday both the house and senate will reconvene at 2 00 eastern. Awaiting action in the house, federal spending for the remainder of fiscal 2014, the governments currently operating on temporary funding that expires in december. Votes are planned on nominees and a child care block grant program. Both parties will hold leadership elections for the 114 congress which start this is january. When congress is back in session live coverage of the house on cspan. See the senate live on cspan 2. Here are a few of the comments we have received from viewers. Calling to tell you how much i enjoy q a at 5 00 on sunday on the west coast. Everything stops in my house. I turn off my phone. I get my coffee and its the most enjoyable hour on television. Yesterday was very informative. Good opinions. I enjoyed listening to him and the comments on today. He was accurate and on point. He was not using his own personal innuendo. I enjoyed it. I hope you have more guests like that. But he was right on target this morning. Im calling to say that i think, like many people, cspan is wonderful. But as to criticisms criticismst have none. Im a partisan person. The reason i have none is you all do a tremendous job of showing just about every side of everything and the way people look at things in d. C. And elsewhere. I take my hat off to you. Thank you very much. Continue to let us foe what you think about the programs you are watching. Call 2026263400. Email comments cspan. Org. Or send us a tweet cit is span, comments. Join the conversation. Like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. Now to a conversation on attempts to recover the assets of dictators over thrown in the arab spring. Dictators from egypt, libya and tunisia held billions of dollars stolen from their countries allegedly. Most of the money has not been recovered. From the center for strategic and International Studies this is about 90 minutes. Good morning. If you are new to the headquarters, i know some of the panelists have this is their inaugural visit here to headquarters. Welcome. Well have a reception. We hope you can join us. Welcome. We are being joined via live stream on internet as well as cspan. Keep in mind that youre on tv as well as we are. Behave. We are very excited to not only be hosting the panel. The panel entitled returning stolen assets, current issueses and future challenges. Im ecstatic to have the panel here. I could not imagine a better set of ex perts to speak to the range of past, current and future issues and challenges. Let me set the stage in part because we gathered about two years ago actually, valentine, jay and i. Emil, you werent with us. We talked about the arab spring and with much hope what was to come. Not just from the autocratic states in north africa but what was happening systemically around the world in dealing with highend corruption and the mechanics of Asset Recovery. These issues are not new, of course. From the days of Ferdinand Marcos, to others, these are issues and regimes and themes that are with us and will be with us for a number of years. But what we wanted to do today is to talk about where we are as an International Community in the u. S. On dealing with Asset Recovery. In particular, in the wake of the arab spring and some of the disappointments, in the wake of the tumult and politics and transition in ukraine, and in light of some of the recent cases, in particular brought here in the u. S. And certainly weve seen internationally. Thats what we wanted to do today, have an open discussion and thats exactly what were going to do. Were not going to present speeches. Were going to have an open discussion. Then an open discussion with you. Well speak for about an hour among ourselves. Then open it up for questions and dialogue with all of you. With us, as i said, a world class panel. Ill introduce them to you. You have their backgrounds and bios so i will be brief. To my left, ambassador valentine zellweger. Very good friend of mine. Legal advisor, in essence in charge of all of the swiss governments efforts on Asset Recovery. Seen as a real star in these efforts. Happy to be back. To his left, jay, section chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering section of the department of justice. Jay is the general on Asset Recovery for the u. S. Government running now the cleptocracy and Asset Recovery initiative for the department of justice, bringing some very highprofile cases even just in the past couple of weeks. Jay has deep experience. I wont give you his deep background because it is embarrassing how impressive it is, but he is the u. S. Expert on these issues. To his left is emil, forgive me with your last name. Im not very good with it. The Legal Advisor to the world banks stolen asset and recovery initiative, a better piece of the world banks efforts to deal with all of the systemic and technical and capacity issues around Asset Recovery. A long standing expert, published proficiently and profusely on these issues and a world recognized expert. So you do have three of the worlds experts. Im here to be a simpleton moderator and hopefully will drive the discussion in an appropriate way. So lets begin. Valentine, let me start with you. We sat here two years ago and were talking about the hopes of Asset Recovery in the context of the arab spring. From your perspective, what has gone right, what has gone wrong, and where are we on these issues, at large, as an International Community . Thats a good question. A lot has happened in the past few years. The most important things that have happened is that Asset Recovery is now very much on the forefront of international news. Switzerland, the marcos case, an example. We then started to be proactive on Asset Recovery for about 28 years. For a very long time we worked on all the cases you mentioned. All the cases can you mentioned were swiss cases. By did so because we were under pressure. We recognized that. The Financial Sector was under pressure, have to do something. But for a long time we were pretty much alone in the field. That has radically changed we talk about groups of people. We have 30 to 40 former power holders in these countries. Thats the first difference. The cases are much more complex, much more challenging in solving. But the most important change is that there is a recognition not only in those countries but also in the Financial Centers that we have to work together. For example, we have you several International Conferences in the context of the g8. There are initiatives to cooperate among all requested and requesting jurisdictions, which means all the partners involved. Weve never had that in the past. We always tried to solve cases bilaterally. Now we all work very closely together with the world bank and i think that is an extremely Important Development because now i come to the your point that we may not have made the progress we hoped for. I disagree with that point. Im sorry to start with a disagreement no, thats good. We shouldnt have hoped for more progress to give it up. I dont know exactly whether we hoped for more progress. Because thats still one of the remaining challenges, these cases take a long time to be solved. If you look now at the progress we made in some of the cases, if you take tunisia, for example. The twist prosecutor. General decided to sell back twothirds of the funds we had frozen in switzerland to tunisia. Thats only after three years. We never had that in the past. The quickest case weve had so far dont know if you perhaps have more rapid procedures the quickest case in our history took five years. We were efficient because we had an excellent cooperation with nigeria in that case. Now in tunisia we solved the case within three years, and i think that in part is also due to an Excellent International cooperation. We could solve the case because we have close cooperation with tunisia but also because we worked with other jurisdictions. And in order to collect all the information you need, thats the best approach. So i am pretty confident for two reasons. First, Asset Recovery is now a topic on the international agenda. And second, International Cooperation has usually increased over the past two years. I think that is a very Important Development. Your point about this being a northsouth issue now where its not just seen as an issue of the affected countries or the corruption in the developing economies or countries. But its now an issue for the Banking Centers and the west in many cases to actually address. I think thats a key thematic shift that youve seen. To some ex tent. Its interesting. Talking about the northsouth issue. We do know in the context of the arab spring, there are huge sums in Financial Centers. Our partners in tunisia tell us in the cooperation with the north is much better than with some of the southern Financial Centers. That is something that we certainly will have to work on because we will have to create the level playing field. I dont think there will be great use in the big Financial Centers like the u. S. Uk also switched its policieses. Uk is much more proactive than they used to be due to a bbc program they aired in 2012 that severely criticized the uk government. They have really come around. Theyre very active today but i dont think thats enough. We have a close cooperation. We should extend that cooperation to southern Financial Centers. Jay, can you speak just a little bit about sort of the shift in the u. S. Approach even over the last couple of years, and maybe take us through this latest case which has gotten so much attention with the seizure of the malibu mansion and the Michael Jackson statute and the rest. Sure. I think it is important to recognize that there has been a shift but its hardly been a shift more in efforts than desire. The efforts to recover stolen assets on the u. S. Side goes back many years to the 90s. We have cases going back years. I think what changed about four or five years ago was a concerted effort on the part of the u. S. Government to devote resources to develop expertise in the core of prosecutors who can bring these types of cases. So the attorney general, going on four years, launched the Asset Recovery initiative. I think that was a recognition that at least with the legal system that were working with in the united states, Asset Recovery is a judicial procedure. There are blocking statutes, blocking mechanisms that. Are built by the department of treasury but thats not those arent actions that can lead to recovery of assets and return of assets because they literally are like a dam. It prevents assets from flowing to the affected countries, but we cant use that as a mechanism to take possession and then return those stolen assets. So in the u. S. Thats done through our forfeiture laws, predominantly civil forfeiture laws, because were dealing with situations where the individuals who are responsible for misappropriating these assets might be outside of the criminal process that the u. S. Connection is either as a legal matter or as a practical matter in terms of extradition, et cetera. So we really focus on the use of civil forfeiture, aware what we have to do is tie the assets to a crime. You dont have to prove that somebody did the crime but you do have to tie the asset to the crime. That requires sophisticated financial investigations where we can trace money that emanated from a corrupt act to the asset. Proving that case takes specific evidence and thats really where the game is. Can we collect evidence that evidence is located i understandly. The crime scene, if you will, is the country in which it occurred. If that country is cooperating, that may help but the events may have happened a long time ago. The countries not cooperating, that layer has an additional layer of complexity so you may have to get witnesses who are located in third Party Countries who might be willing to talk. You then have to get financial records. And cooperation i think has improved tremendously over the past few years but we still have issues in terms of sharing financial records, getting financial records that can then be admitted in court. I think with the rise of some of the data privacy laws that weve seen around the globe, thats actually made it more difficult. They have valuable assets, but they make it very difficult oftentimes to get the Financial Information that we need to prosecute these cases. Then you have to put it all together and convince a judge that these are valid cases to be brought and should result in forfeiture judgment. Then youve got some of the Politics Around it. People question whether forfeitures are useful tools or not. For me, i would say yes, its one of the most valuable tools we have to attack corruption and criminal conduct. All of that is a long way of saying that the recognition, we couldnt do this in the u. S. With people doing it parttime. We had a lot of prosecutors that were doing this and other types of cases, but if we were going to bring these types of cases we needed a dedicated core of prosecutors to do it with sophistication and financial investigations, and sometimes an organized crime. Were talking about cleptocracies are sometimes criminal organizations that masquerade as governments but are really expropriating assets for the benefit of themselves. So you need the skills of a financial investigator, of an organized crime prosecutor, courtroom skills. The whole gamut. You need to get sophisticated, trained people who can do this. Because on the other side, i will tell you, the best firms are representing the claimants in these cases. So the people we have to go up against are some of the best of the best. Thats the game that we have to play. So right now the department has devoted ten prosecutors to this unit within my section who work exclusively on these cases. In addition, the attorney general Just Announced in february the ukraine Asset Recovery forum the creation of a specific fbi squad that will focus on these cases and especially in cases that are occurring in real time, as you mentioned. What has changed is we can now respond to events that happened on the ground as opposed to going back 15, 20 years trying to piece together the puzzle. That makes a huge difference. I think thats really whats changed, is a recognition of what it will take to win these cases. And it takes a while. Perfect example, a case was filed a number of years ago, pretty much on the very soon after the initiative was announced. But we were dealing with a government that was not cooperating with evidence that was largely located in the country. Financial records that had to be obtained but also pieced together through a web of complex shell corporations that hid the true ownership of these. And at the end of the day assets that we might or might not have been able to get our hands on. And so i think one of the hallmarks of the settlement that was reached was that we managed a essentially forfeit or acquire, through other means through the Settlement Agreement the value of all the assets that we have the potential of getting to extract an agreement that there would be no further assets brought into the country, and if they were, this was not prospective immunity of any sort. It was an understanding that if for some reason the claim wed never get our hands on comes back into the country, we will reserve the right to go after it. If other assets come into the country we will continue to proceed. But i think we shouldnt underestimate how difficult a job this is. These are complex civil litigation cases. We have to recognize that if we want to do this right, then it may take some time. A part of what were trying to promote is a rule of law. It doesnt make it does us any good i think if we acquire these goods in a way that violates those basic tenets of fairness, due process, et cetera. It takes time. I can tell you this from the perspective of a prosecutor but i also appreciate there is then public buyins, there is legitimacy to what weve done. It doesnt look like were running kangaroo court. We win some, we lose some. I think that in and of itself is a very important lesson to countries emerging from different types of political circumstances. Well come back to that case. There are some interesting lessons from that, of course. Recall talk to us about the evolving world bank role. The Star Initiative is relatively new and talk to us about that. Then talk to us well, speak to us from your perspective what youve seen the last more resources theyve talked about, more focus of experts and prosecutors. Valentines talked about politically much more focus on these issues and much more attention in Banking Centers. Whats your perspective on all this . Thank you. Yeah. Ill just give you a bit of a background on what this Asset Recovery initiative really is. It is an initiative as the world bank and the United Nations office on drugs and crime, really to help countries requesting and requested countries to put in practice chantry 5 of the United Nations convention against corruption chapter 5 is on Asset Recovery and based on the principle that countries will return the proceeds of corruption back to the Financial Centers will return the proceeds of corruption back to the countries who have suffered from corruption. And we do that in a number of ways. We started off very much i think on the more policy level advocacy level trying to put Asset Recovery on the map. There is a big Asset Recovery handbook trying to make people aware of all of the pitfalls involved in Asset Recovery. Trying to be a bit of advocacy as well, what are the barriers to international Asset Recovery. What are the legal barriers. What should countries be doing to demand those barriers, to break through those barriers, on the topic you just touched on, trying to push the envelope on Beneficial Ownership. The misuse thats tk made needs highlighting of Shell Companies in both onshore and offshore jurisdictions. We started very much trying to push policymakers. I think in the wake of the arab spring and now after the events in ukraine weve become more focused on working directly with countries together. Building capacity in developing countries on how one conducts financial investigations, how one reaches out, what are the typical conditions for mutual legal assistance, basic step by step stuff, but also and the arab forum on Asset Recovery is one of the examples of that, as with the Ukraine Forum on national recovery, trying to provide a bit of a neutral venue where requesting and requesting states can meet and discuss the issue of trust is very fundamental, i think, to successful Asset Recovery. Certainly if you looked at the experiences just after the arab spring, there was a perception in some of the countries that if these Financial Centers were happy taking the proceeds of our former rulers, why should we trust them now . Why would we work with them now . Why would they help us . So trying to, on both sides, act as a broker and bring the parties together i think has been an increasing part of the role of the stolen Asset Recovery initiative. Its from that sort of perspective when you ask me to highlight some of the issues. If you look at the landscape of Asset Recovery, it is through that lens that we look at it. First point, absolutely, are the attention given to Asset Recovery is quite effective here. There was the United Nations convention against corruption and that i think the financial crisis has helped particularly fiscal authorities zero in on the abuse of Shell Companies for all sorts of purposes. Thats in no small measure. Think Civil Society. I see some Civil Society here as well has contributed in no small measure. I think for a variety of reasons we are we are now seeing increased attention at the political level and elsewhere on the issue of Asset Recovery. Thats not just words, thats not just paying lip service. Thats also putting in place the sort of task forces that dave was talking about just now. The unit that ambassador zellweger referred to earlier. You have a number of dedicated Police Officers this is in the uk example specifically focused on the proceeds of corruption in the london finance system. Those sorts of things, and for sometimes Asset Recovery units sometimes it is just about breaking down boundaries between passive governments that used to make work too much in silo, the Financial Intelligence unit may be connected to the corruption unit which may not be tied in to what the regulators are doing. I think breaking down those boundaries between different parts of government is very much something that weve seen and its translated into legislative action as well. Asset freezing recall, legislation that many countries have adopted. So a holding measure. E. U. Has done that. Switzerland has done that. Just after arab spring. A list of these persons, freeze their assets now. It is not a judicial freeze in the context of judicial action. It is an administrative freeze giving the countries time to prepare their judicial action. I think that sort of innovative legislation is happening. The civil forfeiture legislation that i think in america has been around for a very long time but in many other countries is still relatively new. You see that i wouldnt say proliferating but you see countries taking up those sort of legislations, so what we call nonconviction based legislation where you connect the asset to a crime. Typically on the balance of probabilities. Wont go into too many details. But anyway, look at legislative action to make it easier for a country to get stolen assets, the proceeds of corruption. I think those are all very positive, positive developments. Of course, there are still challenges. If we look Asset Recovery initiative, we have the Asset Recovery watch where we try and track international Asset Recovery efforts. And i think at this stage, i think actual returns so far, were at 4. 9 billion. I think were at 27. 7 billion in freed frozen assets. And so lets say were in total at maybe 8 billion. If you look at the whole landscape of corruption, it may be not a whole lot but ambassador zellweger made a very good point. Maybe we put too much burden on the system of Asset Recovery. Maybe were expecting too much to happen in the context of Asset Recovery, which is, after all, a judicial process. You soon overburden it and put all your hopes in we can do it that way. Maybe there are other things that may be looked at as well. One of the challenges that comes up and it relates to the point of civil Asset Recovery that jay made earlier precisely this point of linking an asset in a Financial Center to a particular crime in a corrupt or autocratic state. Certainly if you had regimes in place for 20, 30 years, how are you going to do that, how are you going to say this bank account or this particular house was bought with assets that we can trace back all the way back to a time period. Thats an extraordinarily high level of you know, thats a very high burden you with putting on a country to prove that. So i think that where we would like to see some more development is on that question of linking the asset to the crime, and maybe more systems of value confiscation. That is to say, i have proved that there was a crime to the tune of x billion, and i will take now an asset owned by the same person even if that asset is not i cannot prove the criminal origin but ill still be allowed to take it. So some flexibility on that front i think is necessary. And to the earlier point of are we putting too much expectation, too much hope on Asset Recovery, are we expecting too much to come from that recovery. I think there are certain subtleties which, in a culture of corruption such as existed in for instance, tunisia, World Bank Published something called all in the family, and it talks about the way in which the family really had a finger in every pie in the country. And so when you talk about a foreign investor into tunisia, it doesnt have to be told in so many ways, you have to pay the sum, so much money. There is a subtle way of suggesting that would it be a good idea if you took him on your supervisory board. So there are lots of instances like that when you really have maybe we shouldnt be looking to the Asset Recovery system to solve those issues because that is what thats not a clear intent that you can say thats where the corruption took place. So those are the sort of issues or for other things Like Parliament really rubber stamping legislation for the ruling family. That was completely legal as a minister, simply awarded the contract because parliament has given him discretion to do that. Before i forget i was going to raise a point on that. There is a paradox in bringing these cases which is that the more dictatorial the country is, the more difficult the case is to prove essentially for that reason. Because it may be perfectly legal to have conflicts of interest or even overt expatriations. You think of a 16th century france. If youre louis xiv, you own all the property. Whats the corruption if you give it to somebody who you know . So paradoxically, some of our bigger successes come in. Countries where it is an issue of corruption, not necessarily cleptocracy, the true meaning being where a family or clan or somebody has expropriated the tools of state for their own benefit. It becomes much more difficult to prosecute. Jay, wouldnt that be a way the u. N. Convention on corruption would help you . Because it does set the standards thats applicable to all countries. Because there is the ratification is pretty universal. I think that should give you absolutely. I think in a sense every country wants to appear legitimate. Just by signing on to it, you have many hooks to do it. The question becomes can you prove to the governments satisfaction that that is the law of the land. Absolutely those are the arguments we made. Just found it a paradox that exists this kind of our enforcement regime. Yes. There is a point about dual criminality which is really what you are talking about. To what extent you would be able to fall back on more general Civil Service ethics where you would say the minister should act in the Public Interest and here clearly that was not the case. The extent to which foreign minister, yes, it is very good if we can be successful in our Asset Recovery efforts but thats all ex post facto. We need to make sure that money never ended up in the Financial System in the first place. Thats i think where Due Diligence obligations by banks are very important. I think maybe something is i hope something is changing in the culture of banks. There were some very interesting reports by the swiss regulator and by the english regulator at the time on the extent to which banks in those countries had ump, or not, implemented Due Diligence obligations for socalled politically exposed persons. That may be sort of unbureaucratic in its language. It is very clear that quite a number of banks were deliberately mischaracterizing certain clients as low risk where they had justification to show just the opposite was the case. So i think on the preventive side we still have some work to do. Focusing on the enablers lawyers, accountants, trust and Company Service providers. You tend to set up these constructs of shell corporations and if you talk to many Financial Centers, particularly to the investigators in those countries, theyll tell you the same thing. Theyll say, its actually quite a small defined group of the same lawyers, same accountants, same trust companies that we see in many cases. But its very hard to get them on the hook for the crime. And they often not very often, but often youre after the big fish. Youre after that corrupt official in country x. And it may be just a waste of your exhaust to go after those enablers. Because in the big picture, they are the small fish. But actually, in the big, big picture, there is such a small category of those, maybe it is worth focusing more on that. So i think those sort of challenges still remain. I dont want to end on a negative note. I think really we have come a long way. Two years ago you hear David Cameron talk about Beneficial Ownership at the g8 summit, thats extraordinary. Thats something that was really something for a few nerds in ministries. Suddenly to become this big issue is extraordinary. As is the fact that there are so many people here today. This debate is clearly generating some interest so i think those are hopeful signs. Ill leave it there. Wonderful point. I do want to come back at some point to this notion of thinking about changes in how we address these modes of different corruptions. Governments republican blend region legitimate and illegitimate activities. It gets very hard to quantify and detract and ultimately engage in a stolen Asset Recovery effort. So how you think about as you were saying, sort of modalities of the legal par dime and the tools we use and what those should look like is very interesting. I also want to come back to your point about prevention. I think weve talked about this often, stolen assets is an issue of not just corruption in Law Enforcement but of development and economic reform. Very important in terms of where developing countries are going. So i want to come back to that. Just as sort of to give the audience a sense of what these kinds of cases look like, valentine, i wonder if especially given your historical view, your role in switzerland, can you give us a sense of the kinds of cases that are still under way now and that you see as still prominent in the swiss financial and legal context . Just give us some examples so the audience gets a sense of whats happening in the real world of stolen Asset Recovery. Jay, ill come to you with the same question. Lets start with the marcos case. As i mentioned, the marcos case started in 86 when Ferdinand Marcos was toppled. The philippines had to enact a law that would allow the victims of the Human Rights Violations of the presidency of mr. Marcos to have a right to have access to these funds. The political problem the philippines faced was that they had to recognize that the presidency under president marcos, there were very systematic Human Rights Violations. That took a long time and that statute can only be enacted this february. So we will have in a months time, we will have a conference in manila to mark the end of the marcos affairs. And remember, that took 28 years. A similar case, Jean Claude Duvalier who recently died was also toppled in 86, the same year. The case is still not finished. Why isnt it finished. I think that is also a phenomenon of increase concern. Oftentimes these dictators, they really wreck their countries. Which means once they lose power, their countries are no longer in a position to really prosecute and to be partner. Take congo, other areas. The problem that we have is the very person that is responsible for the demise of the Economic Institution of its country would also be its first beneficiary. Thats what happened to us in the congo because the congolese institutions were weakened to a point where we would no long other cooperate with them. We had to release the funds because, as you said, and i think jay made a very convincing case, we have to go through judicial procedures. We cannot rely on kangaroo court. Our judge said we cannot just confiscate the funds. As long as we dont have evidence coming from congo because the evidence had to come from congo there was nothing we could do. Without any and in the end it went to the mabutu family. A statute was enacted exactly for these cases to confiscate the funds in switzerland without any cooperation from the country concerned. That is exactly what we did in the duvalier case. We enacted with a view to the case not to lose it. We lost one case. We dont like to lose. We enacted that law and we won the case in the Swiss Supreme Court september 2013. We are now in the process of sending back the money to haiti. Perhaps we will touch on this issue because i would also be interested how are going to deal with it in the context of your case. Because by being active on Asset Recovery and the restitution of funds, there is also some kind of an expectation in our countries that were not just writing a check, putting it to the mail office and send the money back to see how it evaporates again. So we have to find ways how we can ensure that it will be spent in an accountable manner. These are just two cases. You have all the ongoing cases in the wake of the arab spring. Ill come back to you. I want to ask you the question what are some of the modalitiest to ask you about the return of the assets to give the concern of not just throwing money back into a rupt environment. You can talk to the cases that you and the u. S. Are dealing with . We have many investigations going on all over the globe. I think reich the ukraine and the effort to do it. I cant speak to specifics about pending investigations because i wouldnt want the money to go fleeing somewhere else. I want to talk about what we have been able to do since bringing our resources together. We had a wide variety of cases that have been public and we had cases against the former president of taiwan, chen. The last dictator of south korea. I know its long, but thats an example of how quickly things can go. This was jurisdiction we had over money not located in the united states, but various jurisdictions elsewhere. We were able to obtain an order of forfeiture with respect to over 400 million of the procee proceeds. There is 120 million being litigated. We are able to do that quickly. I think it shows that in some ways we have to be pragmatic and practical. One could take the view that we are going to litigate these cases for 20 years until the end of time. Without a sense of what the ultimate purpose is. They turn it for the pen fit. I think in that case we took what i think would be considered a fairly aggressive posture against a sitting official, but somebody who was wellsected. And litigated it. Had various twists and turns in the litigation. How people can read about it. Then they had to make a practical decision as to we had jurisdictions over a set of outfits and we were confident we could win and could take three to four years by the time the litigation discovery came into place. In all frankness, on an airplane which after litigation was commenced. Whether any government would assist us and why it wasnt a valid transfer. We were receiving no cooperation and the settlement we were able to enter into was able to acquire the realistic possibility of getting our hands on in a realistic time frame. Rather than trying to bring this case to close to recover assets. Those are quite frankly the kinds of judgments we are going to have to make if we wanted to devote our resources. We could do changes, but those are more slow in coming. Some of the issues that were raised in terms of can we tweak laws to eliminate tracing requirement, et cetera take time to answer and those changes can happen. In the meantime, we have to be im a prosecutor and we we need to get in legitimately. For folks who are not familiar with the case, what was forfeit forfeited . We were able to forfeit the mansion which was im not sure, but experts forgot to remind me about it. An enormous mansion in malibu that we were able to forfeit and the value of the back to the Michael Jackson partner. The partner that he had performed with corrupt funds. Including lifesized statues. Including lifesized statues and we were able to for get cars and other things are value. There cases cases spending in france and there is a mans with an entire city block. Nothing that we did affects or immunizes anybody prospectively. It doesnt affect others that might want to go after assets. I think its an effective way for the in terms of how we witness the systems of law and trying to value and go to the next step. Let me ask you before we get to the question of recovery and models. How do you see the ukraine situation going and are there other cases of interest to you from the world banks perspective . One thing that was very interesting in that goes to that is the immediacy of the International Reaction and the breath of that number of countries that immediately jumped and said we are going to check to see what we have. Going through the bits of paper that were in the ponds and elsewhere and playing such an Important Role in preserving valuable evidence for others. Those are the things that stand out. The enormous use of Shell Companies and lots of jurisdictions. Something you see in other cases as well. Proving control over the endoities is more common. To the point of how to return assets, i think we have by example kazakhstan, the monies located in switzerland and pursuant to doing action by the u. S. 60 million . More or less . And this was a while ago. How are we going to return back without giving them back to the country that the people and the Voter Foundation in which the u. S. And switzerland and world bank and Civil Society played a role in deciding how the funds be used and given indications and stories in the presses as well, that will happen with money that was returned by the case again. After 14 years of litigation. And finally all the processes of the first appeal to the European Court of human rights. Case closed. 230 million returned a few months ago. The minster of finance who was very instrumental and indicated that that money will go through a separate endoity of foundation and nigeria will and there ways in dealing with returns of assets and ensuring the transparency since use. You are about to host the third form on the Asset Recovery. Can you talk about what you see coming out of that