Transcripts For CSPAN3 Returning Stolen Assets 20141125

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 that jay made earlier, its precisely this point of linking an asset in a Financial Center to a particular crime in a corrupt or autocratic state. Certainly if youve had regimes in place for 20, 30 years, how are you going to do that . How are you going say this bank account or this particular house was bought with assets that we can trace back all the way back to a thats extraordinarily thats an extraordinary high level of thats a very high burden you are putting on the country to prove that. So i think 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 equivalent value confiscation. That is to say i have proved that there was a crime to the tune of xbillion and i will take now an asset owned by the same person even if that asset not even if of that ascetic not prove the criminal origin so some flex is necessary. And to the earlier point of are we putting too much expected station, too much hope on Asset Recovery . Are we expecting too much to come from Asset Recovery . I think there are certain subtleties which in a culture of corruption such as existed in, for instance, tunisia, and theres a very interesting report which the world bank probably should a couple of months ago called all in the family and it talks about the way in which the ben ali family really had a finger in every pie in the country. And so when you talk about a foreign investor into tunisia, he doesnt have to be told in so many ways you have to pay the son of the president or the soninlaw so much money, there is a subtle way of suggesting that wouldnt be a good idea if you took him on your supervisory board. And so there are lots of instances like that where you really have state capture which maybe we shouldnt be looking to the Asset Recovery system to solve those issues because that is thats not a clear intent that you can say thats where the corruption took place. So, you know, those are the sort of issues, or other things like parliaments really rubber stamping legislation for the ruling family so that it was come pleadly legal if a minister simply awarded a contract to the president s firm because under the law he would be allowed to do that because the parliament had given him the discretion to do that. So sorry, yes . I was going to before i forget i was going to raise a point on that which is that theres a paradox in bringing these case which is is that the more dictatorial the country is, the more the difficult the case is to prove precisely for that reason because it may be perfectly legal to have conflicts of interest or even overt expropriation in the sense you think of 16th century france if youre louis xiv, you own all the property. Whats the corruption if you give it to somebody who you know . And so paradoxically some of our biggest successes come in countries where its an issue of corruption and not necessarily kleptocracy. And in true kleptocracies, meaning where a family or a clan or somebody has expropriate it had tools of state for their own benefit it becomes much more difficult to prosecute. Jay, wouldnt that be an instance where the u. N. Convention on corruption would help you . Because it does set the standard that is applicable to all countries because its pretty universal. I think that should give you absolutely. I think every country wants to appear legitimate so just by signing on to it you have to do it. The question becomes can you prove to a judges satisfaction that that is the law of the land . And so absolutely, those are the arguments we make. I just wanted to point out a paradox that exists in our enforcement regime. There is a point about criminality and to what extent you would be able to fall back on more general Civil Service ethics where you can say well, a minister should act in the Public Interest and clearly here that was not the case it becomes much more difficult from a legal point of view to make the case. Its dual criminality. It has to be a crime in your country and the other country. Thats why its so difficult. But just a few more points of what i think challenges are. We talked earlier about preventative system and the extent to which, yes, its very good if we can be successful in our Asset Recovery efforts but thats expost facto. Would be so much better if we could focus our efforts on making sure that money never ended up in the Financial System in the first place. So that is where Due Diligence obligations by banks are very important and 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 still at the time the efsay, now ifca, on the extent to which branks in those countries had or not implemented Due Diligence obligations for socalled politically exposed persons. And certain the english report is very hard hitting and actually very unbureaucratic. Its very clear that quite a number of banks would deliberately miscategorize certain clients as low risk whereas they had enough information to suggest that the opposite was the case. So i think on that preventative side we still have some work to do. I think also focusing on the enablers, the lawyers, the accountants the Service Providers who tend to set up these constructs of shell corporati corporations. If you talk to many Financial Centers and particularly to the investigators in those countries theyll they often say the same thing and its actually quite a small defined group of the same lawyers and the same accountants, the same trusting companies that we see in many cases. But its very hard to get them on the hook for the crime and very often well i dont know 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 resources to go after those enablers. And in the big, big picture there is such a small category of those maybe its worth focusing more on that. I think those challenges still remain. I dont want to end on a negative note by any way. I think we have come a long way i think if youve worked on something as obscure as Beneficial Ownership for a long time and two years ago you hear David Cameron talk about Beneficial Ownership at the g8 summit, thats extraordinary. Thats something for a few nerds in ministry suddenly become this is big issue absolutely 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. I want to come back at some point to this notion of thinking about changes in how we address these challenges of different modes of corruption and kleptocracy because certainly what youve begun to see are blending of legitimate, illegitimate commercial activities, especially family run state owned enterprises and such. It then gets very hard to quantify and track and ultimately engage a stolen Asset Recovery effort. How you think about as what you were saying modalities of the legal paradigm and the tools we use and what they should look like is very interesting. I want to come back to your point about prevention because i think weve talked about this often. Stolen asset 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. But just to give the audience a sense of what these kind of cases look like, i was wondering 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 an example so the audience gets a sense of whats happening in the real world of stolen Asset Recovery. And, jay, im going to come to you with the same question. Well, lets start with the marcus case. As i mentioned, the marcus case started in 86 when president marcos was toppled. The case has still not really been finalized. We sent back 680 million in 2002, but the philippines then had to enact a law that would allow the victims of the Human Rights Violations of the presidency of mr. Marcus to be to have a right to have access to these funds. And the political problem the filipinos faced was they had to recognize that the presidency under president marcos, there were very systematic Human Rights Violations. And that took a long time and that statute could only be enacted this february. So we will have in a months time a conference in manila to mark the end of the marcos affairs. And remember, that took 28 years. Jean claude duvalier, baby doc, who recently died, was also topped in 86, the same year, and the case is still not finished. Why isnt it finished . I think that is also a phenomenon of increasing concern. Often times these dictators they really wreck their countries which means once they lose power their countries are no longer in the position to really prosecute and to be a partner in that. Take haiti, zaire, congo, other examples. The problem that we have is that the very person that is responsible for the demise, so to speak, of the institution of this country would then also be its first beneficiary and that is what happened to us in the congo, in the mobutu case because the congolese institutions were weakened to a point where we could no longer cooperate with them. So we had to release the funds. Because, as you said, we have to go through judicial procedures. We can not rely on kangaroo courts. So our judges said, look, we can not just confiscate the funds and as long as we dont have evidence coming from congo because the evidence had to come from congo, there was nothing we could do. And in the end, it was the mobutu family that was the main beneficiary and that led switzerland to enact a new statute that is actually for these cases would allow us to confiscate the funds in switzerland without any cooperation from the country concerned and that is exactly what we did and when i come back to the duvalier case, its called the lex duvalier because we enacted it with a view to that case not to lose it. We lost one case, we dont like to lose so we enacted that law and we won the case in the Swiss Supreme Court last september, september, 2013. And we are now in the process of sending back the money to haiti. And perhaps we will touch on this issue, because i would also be interested in how you are going to deal with it. But thats always a challenge because we you know, 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 sending the money back to just see how it evaporates again. So we have to find ways how we can ensure that it will be spent in an accountable manner. So these are just two cases and then you have all the ongoing cases in the wake of the arab spring. Ill come back to you and i want to ask you the question of what are some of the modalities of the return of assets to get it to not just throwing money back into a corrupt environment to be misused again. Well come to that. But jay, can you talk to some of the cases that you and the u. S. Are dealing with and maybe give some examples . We have many investigations going on all over the globe. I think its public so i can speak about things like ukraine where theres an active effort to do it. Unfortunately, i cant speak to specifics about pending investigations because i wouldnt want the money to go fleeing somewhere else. Can you give us what i do want to do is talk a little bit about what weve been able to do since bringing our resources together and, you know, weve had a wide variety of cases that have become public over the past few years. Weve had cases against the former president of taiwan, chen, former president dictator of south korea. Abacha, which i know is longer in the tooth, but we and i think thats an example of how quickly things can go. We instituted a forfeiture action against funds that were located abroad. So this was jurisdiction we had over money not located in the United States but located in various jurisdictions including the uk elsewhere. But we were able to obtain a final order of forfeit your with respect to over 400 million of those proceeds. Theres still 120 million which is being litigated which will have to go through the judicial process. Were able to do that quickly. And were now in the process of enforcing those judgments in foreign courts so that we can actually get our hands on the money and then consider how to repatriate it and finally opian case shows is that in some ways we have to be pragmatic and practical deal with these cases. What were going to do is litigate these cases for 20 years until the end of the time. Without without a sense of the ultimate purpose which is to return assets to the benefits of people affected. And in that case, we took what i think would be considered a fairly aggressive posture against a sitting official who became a sitting official but somebody who was very well connected. And litigated it and had various twists and turns in the litigation which is all public and people can read about it. But then had to make a practical jurisdiction over a set of assets in the United States which we were confident we could win on but which could take another three to four years by the time the litigation and civil discovery came into place and asset which is in all frankness we probably had little chance of getting our hands on, an airplane which was transferred into the state of weak or the yall guinea so it posed problems as to whether any government would assist us in seizing that asset fb though we had legal arguments as to why it wasnt a valid transfer. And in our assessment the settlement we were able to enter into was acquire the entire value of assets that we had realistic possibility of getting our hands on in a realistic time frame. So rather than waiting for another few years to actually try to bring this case to closure and try to i think those are quite frankly the kind of judgments well have to make to f we want to devote our resources. We could do legislative changes but those are slow those are more slow in coming. I think some of the issues that were raised in terms of can we tweak laws to eliminate tracing requirements, et cetera, take time to consider because you have to consider whether it fits within our traditions, within other things so those changes can happen. But theyre longer. So in the meantime i think we have to be im a prosecutor and a litigator and i try to be on the grounds. I think we need to figure out how we get within the tools that we have the money into our possession legitimately and then try to work on repatriating it. Just quickly. For folks who arent familiar with the case, what actually was forfeit forfeited. We were able to forfeit the mansion which im not even sure it was an enormous mansion in n malibu. We were able to forfeit the value of the property located in Equatorial Guinea with respect to the Michael Jackson paraphernalia. Paraphernalia he purchased with corrupt funds. Including life sized statues. Including life sighs status. S i should add there are cases pend in other countries, france most notably, if you happen to travel to paris theres a mansion thats an entire city block in a nice part of paris and there are still on going ca cases and nothing we did affects or immunizes anybody. Doesnt affect other jurisdiction. So its an effective tool or effective way forward in terms of how we balance Due Process Rights and the necessity of judicial process on the one hand with trying to do the best we can within our system of laws to acquire things of value and then go to the next step. Let me ask you one question before we get to the question of recovery and models for recovery. How do you see sort of the ukraine situation going from your perspective and are there other kalss either bubbling or mirjing that are of interest to you from the world banks perspective . I think one of the things that was very interesting in the response to the ukraine goes to the earlier point made is the immediacy of the International Reaction and the breadth of that number of countries that immediately jump to and say, okay, were going to check to see what we have here. I think another thing that is very interesting is the role of Civil Society in actually digging up the evidence and going through those bits of paper that has been strewn in the ponds and elsewhere around the mansion and trying to piece that together and playing such an Important Role in preserving valuable evidence for others to work with. I think those are some of the things that really stand out other things are more run of the mill. The enormous use of Shell Companies in lots of jurisdictions, thats things you see in other cases as well and the difficulties associated with getting behind and proving ownership and control of those entities. Thats probably more common. To the point made earlier about how to return assets, i think we have one example, and please correct me because youve been much more closely involved in that than i have, but the context of kazakhstan, the monies located in switzerland pursuant to an action by the u. S. I think 60 million or less. And the question this was a while ago. The question was how does how are we now going to return those assets back to kazakhstan without effectively giving them back to a country that and to corrupt people who can then do with them what they want and the modality that was found to set up a foundational role in deciding how those funds are to be used and something similar, we hope, and we have been given indications and there have been stories in the press as well will happen with money that was recently returned by liechtenstein in if abacha case again after 14 years of litigation to feerj ya finally to all the processes of first instance appeal to the European Court of human rights. Eventually case closed, 230 million returned a few months ago. And there are again the minister of finance of nigeria who, by the way, was very instrumental when she was at the world bank in setting up the stolen Asset Recovery initiative has indicated that that money will go through a separate entity, a foundation or an ngo, the world bank will play a role where Civil Society in nigeria will play a role for specified purposes, Youth Development is the umbrella that its under now. So there are ways in of dealing with returns o of assets and ensuring the transparency of use of that. Switzerland, in trying to be more aggressny this field, youve been leading the charge. Youre about to host the third forum on arab Asset Recovery. Can you talk about, a, what you see coming out of that conference thats going to happen in the first week of november and, secondly, what you see the role of switzerland not just for purposes of dealing with what may be in the Swiss Banking system but internationally in this space . Im interested in your sense of where things are headed from a swiss perspective. Lets first address the effort, three years, on Asset Recovery and, again, thats a venture that we do in close contact with the world bank and the g7 countries. We dont expect a specific result. What we want to do is provide a forum to see, to look back now at the last year since the last forum to see what has worked, what hasnt worked, where do we have to put our focus on . It reese very clear the focus will be put on an increased cooperation. We have had great successes and, again, i think tunisia is a very encouraging example. In the tunisiaen case probably there will soon be a return of a lot of the funds, probably not compared if you look at the global signs that were involved but it will be a its a bit more difficult in the case of egypt given the countrys development and, again, also in egypt they are very encouraging signs of an increased cooperation and we could then also go into a restitution mode soon. And i think that would be the topic at the conference. Now, as to switzerlands role, we have received a mandate, so so to speak, in the last assembly of state parties of this u. N. Conference against corruption because i think all of us slowly come to realize that if you have now this great instrument that is the u. N. Convention against corruption but its not sufficient just to put it in your statute books because i give you an example. If you have an International Obligation to engage in mutual legal assistance, there are so many ways you can do that. If we receive, for example, a request from country x and we look at the request and we can say, well, sorry, that request is not sufficient. Back to sender. We return it to the sender. Thats one thing, we could also say, look, sorry, this is not sufficient but if you put it like this and do that do you just apply your statute books . So its like we come into a new dimension we have the right rules on our statute books but now we have to breathe life into them. We got a mandate by the Assembly State parties to now look what are the Lessons Learned in our passion practice. We have organized a conversation in january in switzerland with a group of countries and experts who have been involved in these cases to see what has worked and i think, jay, you mentioned the importance of trust. And trust is absolutely essential in resolving cases. Well, trust, fine, but how do you establish trust . I remember when i first traveled to geneva in 20112017, they told me why should i trust you . Why should i believe you . You took our money in the first place and now you tell us youre going to help us. And i had to explain, look, im a government official, not a banking official so the banks took, the government never agreed to that. We are fighting corrupt money in switzerland. So you have to establish trust. So in some countries you can build a relation shipp but in a postrevolutionary society you have subsequent changes of government. I dont know how many governments theyve had since the downfall of mr. Qaddafi in libya, but each time you have to establish a new relationship. What we want to do, and thats what we did in this conference in switzerland, look into the practices. How do you do that . And what then are also important lessons . Ill just give you another example. Its the timing of mutual legal assistant request is essential. If you send too early you may wreck your case. If you send it too late you may not even have a case. So you really have to choose the right moment. How do you do that . All these lessons, put them together. We put together a document that we will send out next year the conference. I hope with the help of all the countries involved, certainly world bank, then to see its like Asset Recovery 2. 0. What is the next . How can we mention really make it even quicker, more efficient . Because i think these remain the main challenges and i fully agree with the examples that the two of you mentioned. Of course we have to go through judicial proceedings because the whole credibility of the process relies on that but we have to get better because it does take too much time. You introduced this thing but let me ask you this. How much resistance have we felt from the Banking Community . Whether in switzerland and otherwise . Emile talked about the onus put on banks in the preventative context to know their customer to engage in heightened Due Diligence for politically exposed persons known as peps in the field. Is there resistance from the banks to say, look, its not our job. And certainly i heard this in the wake of the arab spring banks saying look, on one day these are good guys and the countries that were supposed to be doing business with and the next day theyre toppled regimes and were supposed to be hunting their assets and so arent we, the banks, getting caughting in the political winds here . Have you felt resistance given what are fairly aggressive steps on your part . The world is changing and the banks are changing and we felt it directly there was, as you said, some not a lot but there was some opposition in switzerland because we froze the funds in the wake of the arab spring extremely quickly. We were the first to freeze and the banks criticized us for doing what they said was an isolated act. Now the European Union came of it later. But what t European Union did was announced their freeze. I dont know if thats very clever. Thats an invitation to take out your money so you have to be quick. The swiss government was quick but it got criticized by the bank. What happened in between and thats very interesting because were preparing a statute. Because the swiss government so far has always acted on the kind of an emergency power that is given to in the the swiss constitution. The deal with parliament was that okay, the parliament accepted what the government did but it said you have to submit a statute, a draft statute to have the whole range of activities of the government in this field debated by parliament. Were now in the process of doing this in parliament so we drafted a statute that is a comprehensive like how to do manual of everything we did so far. And the interesting thing is that the banks are fully behind it. Because they have realized that the Reputational Risks for bank and this is what has changed the Reputational Risk for banks is just too high. To come to the ukrainian context when the swiss government froze and that also is a progress at the first time we froze together on the same day as other Financial Centers. That would have been impossible two years ago. This time we coordinated among some centers of the European Union just a few days later but when some of the banks contacted me, some of the big banks in switzerland told me, look, no, we have no problems with that because we went after the ukrainian business a while ago. Its just too hot. And i think thats that theyre increasingly recognized by banks and let me make a last point. I think we should underestimate a huge change that is taking place over the years. If you look back 20 years ago corruption was accepted as a fact of life. In some countries you have to deal with it. Thats part of the landscape. In some of the jurisdictions it was possible take bribes from your taxes. Its an offense to bribe other countries. That means that corruption today is seen as a phenomenon we can fight. We just have to keep on fighting it and hopefully we will one day be able to erase it. Last point, i promise. I think we should continue to suppress prevention. Asset voefr like a fireman and if Everything Else has failed we have to identify the funds and send them back but we should really emphasize prevention. We shouldnt get these moneys in the first place. I want to build on something atton said. Another part of what my section does is we bring actions against Financial Institutions for violations of what we call in our country the Bank Secrecy Act and also for other violations and you do hear sometimes from Financial Institutions, you know, were being what theyre focusing on are kind of blocking violations. But the pep regulations are completely separate, and those are ongoing obligations that Financial Institutions have to make sure they know their customer, know the source of the income. And i think that what has changed is that banks are now focusing on Reputational Risk but also on, i think, trying to figure out if theres a Business Model out there that allows them to know their customers in a way that a local Community Bank does. The difficulty for a Global Financial institution is you dont have facetoface relationships with your customers. And maybe marketing to a global audience. And i think what needs to change is it needs to become part of the dna of the Financial Institution where theyre not just seeing this as an obligation, theyre spending to a checkthebox exercise but it becomes part of what Business People do. Its not just the compliance person telling the business person, you know, you need to follow this rule. Because theyll follow it. Theyll find a way to check the box and circumvent it. The question is when a business person on boards a client, are they asking the right questions to know what their business is, to know who these people are when a transaction happens. Will they understand the source of that income, et cetera . That does have to work its way into the very Business Model of a bank before we dont see these major actions and other things against them. And i think some of them are starting to get the message that thats what they need to do. They need to stop thinking about this as something imposed from without and something they need to do as part of their daily operations. Before we open it up to the audience, i have one more question, maybe emile and jay can answer quickly. Are we seeing new methodologies for regimes or klepto krats to move money, to hide money . The art world, purchasing of highend art certainly in the context of the Islamic State youve seen articles and opeds about the use of antiquities and the sale of antiquities to raise money. Are we seeing any new modalities or typologies in the spaces that are of interest, emile . I think you might see, as you mentioned, new classes of assets just because that happened to be available and thats something that can be invested in. But if i think of my good friend bob mayza who was on an undercover investigation guy from customs and he went undercover in the cal i cartel in the 90s and did extraordinary work gathering information undercover for two years, wrote a book about that called the infiltrator which is currently being turned into a film. And he he did obviously a lot of work as a customs agent and still now does work as advisor and has his own firm. He has this magnificent slide where he juxtapose what is he saw in the beginning of the 90s and what he sees today so, yes the class of asset might have changed and now there are other things they can lay their hands on but the way that they are involved, okay, because legislation has changed. So theres some tweaking there. But the underlying thesis pretty much the same. The separation of money in different jurisdictions and making sure that those huge legal distance, i would say, between an asset and the ultimate beneficiary and that is still the underlying purpose and that will happen regardless. So i think in that sense its quite interesting to see how much things have stayed the same. I would say the same thing. I think money launderers today are very much like portfolio managers. Theres an entire illicit world that services organized crime klepto krats of various source and theres an excess between organized crime and clept krat in various countries. The failed state is the substrait in which organize crime flourishes and they work off of each other. Theres a financial infrastructure that supports them. And i think we in Law Enforcement sometimes end to when a case arises we say, ah, thats a new mode of doing things. Then when another case arises, oh, theres a trend from n this direction. So i think what you have to recognize is theres a sophistication out there thats the same as the sophistication on the legitimate side. These are people who are trying to make their transactions look like legitimate transactions so they can place cash in the system, they can layer it and distance themselves from the illegal conduct and ultimately integrate it into the economy. And thats the reality. A less colorful example is before the talk i gave a little while ago i read the 2005 treasury Risk Assessment and i was shocked. The seven things they identified there are the exact seven things were looking at today and thats the reality. I dont think thats something to think, you know, were failing. I think thats reality. Just because crime doesnt exist anymore, it doesnt mean that weve failed in fighting crime. Crime exists because its something that comes from human nature, greed is part of human nature and there are just realities out in the Financial System that can be exploited. Theyre going to be exploited by different people in different ways and theyre going to manage their assets just like a legitimate personal will manage his assets or her assets. And thats all thats happening, theyre using different modalities to move around. I think we just need to be careful of shifting all of our resources to horses because we found out the mexican cartels are now using horses to launder their money or, you know, to par bonns because abacha was using them. We just need to limber and realize that we need to to understand the Financial System the way it actually works. Wonderful. Lets open it up for questions. Were going to have a microphone. So wait for the microphone, identify yourself, please, and then ask us a question. We want to get as many as possible. While were identifying the first question, well go to the first gentleman over here. I want to thank the Swiss Embassy for their support. They brought valentin here. Valentin has been the catalyst for these events for us. I want to thank him for spurring us to do these in support of the Swiss Embassy. Zbles. Would you like me to stand . Yes, please. My name is sandy sere, im a lawyer in washington and i have a question. Before i ask the question, i need to disclose that i am serving as a volunteer pro bono counsel for two ngos for the file comments in regard to the repatriation of the abacha assets, one a nigerian ngo and one the u. N. Coalition the u. N. Convention against corruption coalition, which is sort of an offshoot of Transparency International in berlin. The u. S. Civil forfeiture statute requires the Justice Department to cooperate fully, although that may not be the statutory language, with the state department in making decisions on the method of repatriation. I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on that and particularly identify who some of the players are at the state department that you would work with in a case such as abacha. And, secondly, if you could elaborate a bit on whether there are any opportunities for a more fu fullsome explanation of how the department would work on repatriation issues and whether views from the public are welcome in the context of a court case. Thats a long question. And i apologize. Lets get to the answer. Thank you. First of all, ill start with the last one, thats the easiest. My view, and i think its shared by everybody i work with, were public servants. Of course we except comments and suggestions from the public, thats what we do and thats what we should do as good stewards of the public trust. Having said that, we are also we work within the confines of statutes that govern what forfeiture forfeited assets can be used for. We do vwork very closely with te state department and the list is too long. I dont think i could give you a launtry list of who we work with but there are many people over there, there are people in budget, there are people in the more programmatic areas that we work with. And one of the challenges that we have is how do we use the authorities that are given to us in or forfeiture stat chuchs to fund certain specific categories of things and how do we work with the state department and others to identify, one, recipients who can receive the funds who we are authorized to give the funds to and, two, who will exercise a degree of oversight to make sure that the funds dont get recycled back into corruption or dont fuel corruption in and of themselves. I think there are different models that exist out there. I think the reality is that im not sure that one model is going to work in every case. In the case of the boda foundation, the funds were in switzerland, they were legal realities so a foundation was created in that instance and i think everybody will agree it was very effective way of getting money back and a responsible way. And the tag line that i like to use, im borrowing it from the actual supervise or who leads the group but responsible repatriation is what we want to focus on. In obiang, there are a number of different mechanisms we have to use. Part of the money was forfeited. Part of the money will be going to an as of yet undesignated entity. And theres a very specific procedure in place to determine who that entity will be. But, of course, we welcome views. I cant say that these decisions are easy and everybody will be happy with the decisions that are made. But we are trying to do the best we can within the legal confines of what were given. Right here. Mr. Kumar . Many thanks to the panelists for an excellent presentation. I have basically two questions. Im with the center for national policy. My first question to ambassador zellweger is the new Indian Government has been having a lot of dialogue with the swiss government on the recovery of blackmun, or unaccounted wealth from india. Now, to what extent are the stringent Bank Secrecy Laws in switzerland an impediment to not only the recovery of those asset bus also the disclosure of ownership information of those assets . The other, to emile and to jay is to what extent are is the recovery of terrorist assets in terms of their legal and judicial challenges different from the recovery of assets belonging to peps . Thanks. The answer is very simple. Theres no banking secrecy if we talk about illegal acts. So if we get requests from a prosecutor in another country, theres no banking secrecy and we have very stringent know your customer rules so we are quick in being able to give the information. We do have, as you say, we have had long discussions with the Indian Government, but that is for tax evasion. And tax evasion used not to be a criminal offense under swiss law. That is changing. We are now adapting to International Standards but that is at the heart of the dispute and there is a disagreement with the Indian Government as to what exactly will have to be disclosed and as you just indicated theres a new Indian Government and we now hope that we will be able to resolve the case much quicker than we could do so in the past. Jay, emile, on the question of terrorist assets versus pep assets . Sure. From the u. S. Perspective, the Money Laundering and forfeiture laws that govern terrorist assets are the same ones that govern other types of conduct. The key is that you have to prove that its one of the predicate acts. Terrorism is, in fact, a predicate act for forfeiture. So weve brought cases against terrorist assets in chicago theres a public case where we are forfeiting al qaeda assets in connection with the civil forfeiture action. The challenges are what you would expect. Its getting evidence. Often times the challenge in the National Security arena is that much of the information is classified. It may be classified from the u. S. , it may be classified abroad. If its abroad you have to get permission from the Foreign Government to declassify that information so that it can be used. There might be a concern over what we call gray mail, which is a tactic that is sometimes used to try to force the government to disclose information thats not relevant but that would cause the government to dismiss its case if it were forced to do so. On the criminal side, theres something called a classified information procedures act which requires the government to turn over and declassify any exculpatory information but theres a process in place where a judge can look at information in camera, meaning privately, to make that determination. So that you avoid the situations. On the civil side, theres no analogous structural thing and so its a little bit more free flowing. Sometimes we make arguments that should be applied to forfeitures if it has a quasicriminal component. We sometimes make arguments of state secret, which are much harder to make. But those are the constellation of challenges that emerge. Ultimately its a judicial process, we need evidence, not information and how do we get evidence of National Security issues as opposed to what might be criminal issues . And thats it. But the structure is the same. We go after those assets and i think theres some notable cases where weve succeeded in doing so. Emile, very quickly. That would be the same for most i mean, those rules apply internationally. Terrorism is considered to be a predicate for money launtderring just like corruption. Most of the debate when it comes to terrorist assets is not actually about confiscation of the assets but the freezing and the designation of terrorists, which is not a confiscation process. And just to be and thats where a lot of the debate surrounding the legitimacy of that, the designation process itself, whether its due process, thats where theres a big difference where with politically exposed persons where you really when you start confiscating you have an act there. Whereas that designation process is supposed to be administered in the process and if the freeze is then held on for 10, 20 years, doesnt it become very close to in fact clear fact of confiscation . Gentleman in the back. Steven donahue from mccarty associates. Thank you very much for hosting this. Any time that a ruler steals money, hes taking it away from schools and hospitals and infrastructure of his own people. A question for jay. Following on the intelligence versus Law Enforcement information question, theres also a tension between the Law Enforcement aspects of this and the diplomatic aspects of this. How does the interagency work when youve got a ruler in office that is cooperating on a diplomatic front but is stealing the money for his family . What i can honestly say is that our decisions of whether to bring a case are tactical decisions, are prosecutorial decisions. Even if those instances, and we do have, the obiang case being one, we want to make sure theres information that were not precluded from sharing that information because of investigative necessity or legal requirements like grand jury secrecy. We dont want interagency partners to be surprised by what were doing. But theyre completely separate. It doesnt matter to me, to anybody in the leadership of the Justice Department, and i think, quite frankly, even on the diplomatic side, nobody in this process wants to see the process somehow short circuited by people weighing in with diplomatic conversations. We informed people so that they can take the appropriate diplomatic steps to manage whatever fallout needs to be managed but i am i feel confident and im i can tell you with 100 certainty that in our cases we certainly dont succumb to pressure and i can proudly say that we havent faced any pressure. This is a fundamental question we talk about, prevention and how to deal with sitting rulers or regimes. Valentino, im very curious to flare the swiss perspective. The swiss are known for their diplomacy, right . And their neutrality. How do you think about dealing with this issue in an ongoing context, not a historical case . Well, im happy to hear that were known for our diplomacy, we didnt know that. Well, we certainly rely upon you. I would say the same that jay said for the u. S. Context but i say it for the Foreign Ministry perspective. We had an extremely sensitive case last year and its in the public so i can talk about it. We have a prosecution against the daughter of the uzbek president who was the uzbek representative at the u. N. And geneva. And you could imagine that this was highly sensitive. So we did not interfere, we declared her a persona non grata which is a very serious step you take and we i think you made an extremely important point, sometimes you have to cooperate because there are security issues. If we were surprised by a prosecutorial action of our colleagues in the Justice Ministry without being aware of it, i think in some case there is could be a risk for our missions in the countries and we certainly have that in the context of libya. You remember that the son of qaddafi was arrested in switzerland. We certainly did not interfere in that but we had a twoyear crisis that amounted almost to a constitutional crisis in switzerland because qaddafi then took two swiss citizens as hostages and it blocked the swiss politics for almost two years and it was only resolved when qaddafi had to leave the country. So just to come back, our thanks for applauding us for diplomacy but in this case diplomacy doesnt play any role at all. We have a strict separation of powers and if the prosecutors decide to go against anybody, we will just have to accept it. We do accept it. Yes, sir, right here in the middle. Peter, im an intelligence analyst. Im wondering if when all else fails if the white hat hackers might not be able to resolve these situations at an infinitely cheaper cost. Im wondering who might authorize that, what element of the National Command authority or could bit done by the worker bees . Im wondering what the nexus between treasury and the white hat hackers might be and im wondering how the banks might respond when a decrepit asset suddenly disappears off their accounts. Do they look the other way or do they make a stink . The issue of covert and cyber capabilities. Someone want to take that . I used to be a cyber prosecutor so i have some appreciation for what youre talking about but luck i im a prosecutor and Law Enforcement agent and we dont engage in that because quite frankly its useless to me. I cant use any of that information acquire in a court of law. So im in the fortunate position of not having to deal with it. I think folks who are on the intelligence side can probably speak to it more, but in the world i live in, it doesnt help because i cant use any of it in a judicial proceeding. But more broadly, the issue of the role of the private sector, emile, you talked about the role of Civil Society. We certainly have experience with private sector side of Asset Recovery. What is the role of the private sector in this . Either to gather evidence . To be sort of a catalyst in other ways . Emile, whats your sense of that . Maybe not in the cyber context but otherwise. I think we as was said earlier, weve seen increased participation by an increased interest by the private sector. I think its been always focused as i said in my introductory roa remarks its been focused on the Financial Institutions. Thats for obvious reasons. I think where many countries are still facing problems is on the as i mentioned in the beginning, the enablers, the lawyers, the accountants, those advisors who in some countries and in the European Union are subject to antiMoney Laundering obligations and have to report transactions. But in other countries are absolutely not. The u. S. Being one of them. And as far as i understand it, jay, correct me if im wrong, its unthinkable lawyers would be regulated for antiMoney Laundering purposes. I think theres really quite a bit of a divide between europe and others. One last question, i want to be respectful. Sir, at the very back there. Very back. Thanks for this forum. I would direct the question to the doj official. Your name, sir . My name is kenneth, im an attorney here in washington. I wanted to get your thoughts on a Senate Report about atikou in nigeria who is going to context in this next election. It sounds a lot like the abacha stuff and im wondering why no action has been taken against him. Him being atee cue. Obviously i cant confirm, deny or say anything about any particular case. Look, i think its an open question as to what our reach is in a whole bunch of cases, i think on the Law Enforcement side we recognize that we have limited resources. And so weve essentially pursued cases that we have developed evidence of. I dont know the specifics of that investigation or what youre referring to, but if we had evidence, wed be investigating it and wed pursue it. But i dont have any specifics about that. Im sorry. There was a Senate Report that the resources that came in were it was a moneylaundering investigation. And that was the conclusion of the Senate Report. Understood. I guess from our perspective, theres just a difference between the information evidence thats in the Senate Report and whats admissible evidence in a court of law. So, like i said, i cant comment on anything specific thats going on. But thats where when you asked why nothing had been done, its just a matter of more time collecting evidence of sorts. There could be a whole host of problems, but i dont know what the situation is there. This is great mplt i hope you found this educational, enjoyable and certainly, hopefully, sets the stage for another discussion. Hopefully not in two years, maybe next year, talking about Asset Recovery, 2. 0. Please join me in thanking our panelists and thank you all. [ applause ] this is our prime time programming across the networks. Here on cspan3, its a look at how one community in america is looking at the recent flux of undocumented american immigrants to provide children with education and hemt services. The center for Immigration Studies hosts this event. On cspan2 at 8 00, a discussion on cronyism in government. A director of legal studies at the california based i ran institute shares his thoughts from colorado. Heres a preview. As long as we view governments role as essentially dividing us into warring factions or warring interest groups, krucorruption will be t rule using force with one person against another. So perhaps a better word for the term that people refer to or the term that they use, cronyism, i would say instead of crony capitalism, which is a horrible term. It suggests that capitalism is subordinated to the group or to the tate. When people talk about cronyism, its the view that the state is supreme. So if we want to fix this problem, the only solution is, i would sum it up as leave us the hell alone. And joan us tonight on cspan with interviews of iowa congr s congress. This is part of our weeklong series. Ive often said that the republicans do have a legitimate argument. They filibuster bills because theyre not allowed to offer amendments. Theyre not allowed to offer amendments because they filibuster bills. Its one of those chicken and egg things. So the best way is to get rid of the filibuster. Guarantee that the minority will be allowed to offer germane amendments to any bill thats on the floor. Germane amendments. To that legislation. With reasonable time limits for debate. The most eloquent order in the congress. Henrique tollman. He said im not wild about this impeachment, but there are 23 americans serving active prison sentences for committing perjury. How do you justify that and turn a blind eye to the president. He said i cant do it. And ill always remember henry saying that. At 1 30, attend a Ground Breaking ceremony with former secretaries of state. And Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas at 8 30 p. M. Eastern. Thats this thanksgiving week on cspan. For our complete schedule, go to cspan. Org. General perkins serves as the commander of the u. S. Army training and doctrine command. This is hosted by the World Affairs council and is about 1 20. Good ovuming and welcome. Im heidi shoup. On behalf of the board, its my pleasure to welcome you all here this efing. Id like to thank aldrich law firm for hosting us in their spaces this evening. Tonight, our focus is the changing u. S. Army and preparing for americas future military actions. Our guest is general david g. Perkins, commander, u. S. Army training and doctrine command, or tradoc. To our knneutral, nonpartisan podium. When they were directors of the National Security agency. And, of course, the honorable chuck hagel, secretary of defense. At a time when our world is facing a multitude of challenges, a Council Seeks a better to better prepare ourselves and our children for the 21st century environment. General perkins graduated from the u. S. Military and was commissioned in 1980. He completed the ranger and airborne schools and served in the sirmts from platoon leader to staff positions. His distinguished career included command of the fourth infantry at ft. Carson from 2011 into 2014. In 2003, general perkins commanded the invasion of iraq. His unit was the first across the border and first to enter the downtown government areas of baghdad. The general is featured in the book thunder run, the armored strike to capture baghdad. He received the silver star for his part in that invasion. On march 14th, 2014, general perkins assumed command of trade ok. In 1988, he received a masters of science degree in me can tal engineering from the university of michigan and in 1999 he received a masters degree from the Naval War College he is well positioned to take on tonights topic, the future of the army in the complex world. His title taken from the u. S. Army operating concept win in the complex world, that paper published weeks ago. Our discussion is with Jason Campbell at the Rand Corporation where he focuses on interNational Security force instrument in a post conflict reintroduction. He as a degree and is currently working on the ph. D. From my alma mater from Kings College in london. We will take your questions after the presentation and the discussion. Just a reminder, please silence your Electronic Devices at this time as a courtesy. Join me in becoming general david perkins. All the microphones turned on and turned off. That challenge here this evening. I ark appreciate the chance to come here and speak with you all. And have a discussion about how the United States army is viewing the future in our role in it. We will look forward to the discussion following this as well as the ability it get questions from the audience and its helpful for me to get your insights about the aspects that may not be clear or things you think we may have overlooked or oversimplified. One of the things that they do for the army, we sort of have one of the bumper stickers. Were the architect of the army. We design the army of the future. We describe what the future operating environment is like. We come to grips with what role the army has on that and determine what capabilities they have to fulfill the in the future that we described. At this time in our history, its kpiding to do this into the army and saying we want to be informed by our recent multiple years of war and not captive to them. We want to be informed by them as to what they can give us as we look to the future and try to innovate and get out in front of our headlights so that we will always maintain that advantage that our nation has with the United States army. The that we played, we write our operating concepts for the army. Thats really our first attempt with regards to all of the products that we produced to say what is it that the army is going to have to do . We try to describe the future and i say not predict it, but describe the future. Describe the role of the army in that and that leads us to what capabilities. It drives another series of documents, what we call the war fighting concept and the capabilities document. This is really the broad initial process of coming to an intellectual visualization of what it is the future is going to look like and what it is the army does about it. This is not the end you will and be all document. I have a number of talks about this. People say i read through the whole document and it doesnt discuss the color of the new bayonet. Eventually we will get to the color of the bayonet. This is not the role here. I need to contextualize that. Shortly after i got into the command and the staff of the army, they met with me. The chief of staff of the army met with me and said we need to start putting emphasis in the future and we need a new operating concept because it will drive really the rest of the army for a number of decades. So you sort of need to get after this. As i always tell folks, life is really all about metrics. You have to be able to measure what it is youre doing and know if youre going in the right direction and where you want to go. And in my previous assignment before i was here as the host kindly mentioned, i was at fort leavenworth, which is where we write doctrine. And they said we need to update our counter insurgence manual. The manual that a great warrior, general petraeus did when he had that job and was New York Times best seller list and sort of a mustread document. So sort of a heady responsibility. Saying take this manual thats been harold in some way revolutionary, at least evolutionary, and update it. He said in the process of doing that, you need to speak with the original authors to get their insight, what intellectual process did they go through and Lessons Learned in writing this. I said, all right, sir, ill do it. So general petraeus at that time, cia, came down and spent the day. We had a conference. We talked about all of the processes, both intellectual and physical that they went through in writing the manual. Went out to other authors. Got their input. About six months later, i went back and said, hey, sir, were looking at this. I have a new vision of how we want do the manual. We want to change bits and pieces of it. Awning. Did you talk to the original authors . Yes, sir. He said, well, did you talk to all of them . I said, i think so. In fact so far, ive spoken with 100 of the five original authors of that document. And so that actually became the new metric and therefore the metric for success of the one that im writing is if i can get a hundred people to claim they wrote it, it will be as good as the one we have now. Life is all about metrics. And so when i got passed to have the new armored operating concept, i said, let me talk to folks who have written one of these before and got feedback. So i talked to retired chiefs of staff of the army. Former tradeoff commanders and we talked to colonels and sergeant majors. And i said, what does right look like . When is the last time the army had an operating concept that you even remember. With the last one that you remember, that drove change, that was foundational, your way of thinking about it, and unanimous response i got was air land battle. That is the last time the army had a clear vision of where it was going and could articulate it and it drove a series of significant changes in the army from the material to the way that we train to the kind of leaders we develop. So battle is the metric. David, if you can do something half as good as early in battle then it might be worth your effort. So i said, roger, i got that. So being tradeoff, i said we probably have a copy of it around here. So okay, send me a copy. Send me the digits. Well, what they did first is they actually brought me a hard copy. They actually used paper. And in fact this is a xerox copy and a copy they brought me on my desk and this is one that we all knew and loved as we grew up sort of in the height of the cold war and if really revolutionized not only the way the army thought about war but what kind of material we bought and how we trained our leaders an how we developed them. So i started reading through this. This is the 86 version and a couple of things jumped out at me. First one you can see the quote pulled out of there. Is it really describes the armys approach of the tactical and operational level of war. Now as most folks know, there is actually three levels of war. The operational and strategic. They say it is a conscious effort and we are coming out of vietnam and we had a number of things that werent quite right in the army. They just wanted to bite off a certain amount and focus specifically to the operational level and did not discuss the strategic level of war. That was a conscious decision. Because an Army Operating concept really does three big things for the army. I tell folks, soon after i got tray dock i found that people had ideas about the army, which is good. So they are always trying to search me out and give me ideas, good ideas. And they would come up with answers and the army needs do this and do this, you know. And you know, see this laser pointer, the army needs lots of laser pointers. They are great, shiny. They fit in your pocket. Press a button. They are really great. So the army had more of these to point the way for people to follow. And we would be fine. And somebody else would come and say, no, dave, you need one of these. You need the bottles. You fill it full of water. And comes to me with what i would call small answers. This is a solution, this solution, this solution. Respectfully when i write an army concept, im not interested in small answers. My job is to ask Big Questions. So i tried to avoid getting roped into buying into small answers and asking Big Questions. So the first big question when you write an Army Operating concept is what level of war are you going to build an army for . Thats a pretty significantly big question. What level of war are you going to build an army for . Because that determined the size of the army. It determines what it looks like. It determines its capability and material and how you develop people. So thats the first big question. It ended up being a great model because of the intellectual rigger that it went through the analytical process and asked Big Questions. First question again level of war. Tactical operations level explicitly stated it in the manual so as not to have any ambiguity about what we are focussing the army at. The next thing an Army Operating concept has do is describe the future. Describe the environment. Not predict it, but describe it. If you look at the picture there on the map, this is right out of the manual, obviously this manual was written out of 82. It was written about the height of the cold war. It was written for a very specific enemy. It was written for the soviet union. Very well known enemy. If you take a look at the picture in the book there, it looks eerily similar to the Central Plains of europe. If you were standing at pulpit looking east, it would look similar to that picture. It was written for a well known part of the world. This is not to fight jungle warfare. This is to fight the soviet union on the Central Plains of europe. So you have to ask, when you describe the environment as what is the enemy, very well known enemy. Where are you going to fight that enemy . On the Central Plains of europe. You have a picture. What coalition are you going to fight that army with . Nato. It was a very well known coalition. It had very well established packaged techniques and procedures. You had the nato blue hand book. You had a very well developed process for Decision Making in nato. It was very clear how decisions were made and who made them and had authority do it. So when you talk about the battle and describe the future as the authors then saw it, it is described as one with a very well known enemy to fight in a very well known place with a very well known coalition with very well known packet of procedures. The way i encapsulate that is air land battle with the deal with the known. You know, in a broad sense, it was to deal with the known. So now we have answered two of the three Big Questions that operating concept does. Again, were not focussing on small answers, Big Questions. Level of war that youre going to build an army for and describe the future. The question answered, level of war. In this one, tactical operational. Future described is known. In other words, we know what were building this army to do. Then the third thing is, if you do know the level of war that youre building an army for, and in this case, you describe the future of the operating environment, now define the problem. Define the problem that youre trying to solve. Again, when people bring me answers, i always tell them, this may be an answer but to what problem . Define the problem before you try to sell me an answer. Define the problem as, next slide, clearly articulated, in their manual. Is fight out number and win. Actually, this is very powerful problem statement for one, it is very clear. Fight out number and win. By defining the problem now based on the echelon of war youre talking about and based on the description of the future, you now can start getting to answers. You can say, well if i have to fight out a number and win, i probably have to have a tank that can maneuver. Cant just fire from a stationary position. I probably have to have a tank thats accurate. Have a tank thats heavily armored, because it will have enemy bullets shot and it can return et cetera. So then you start to look at and say, i need a very fast tank that can shoot on the move and very accurate and heavily armored. And we have an m1 tank. The m1 tank was no accident. It was designed to solve this problem. Fight out number and win. You may say, another thing i have to do is i have to engage uncommitted echelon because we knew a lot about the enemy. We knew the soviet union arranged themselves in echelons. We knew their combat formations. We studied them at length. So i need to engage before they commit themselves to the Central Plains of europe so i can attribute them otherwise numbers are not in my favor. Maybe if i can fly a helicopter, it can engage multiple targets at once. And launch rockets that can fire deep before it is within my range. So what you see by going through this intellectual construct of defining the level of war that you build an army for, describe the place that in the future that you think it will operate in and then asking yourself what is the problem im trying to solve, it then determined now i know what kind of weapons system. I need to have Weapons Systems that fight outnumber and win. I can do that by maneuver. I need to have a doctrine that i can fight throughout the depth of my battle space. I cant wait until im just in the close fight. That means i need to have Training Centers that i can arrange large formations at so they can fight through the death of formation. So we build a Training Center at fort irwin. And we build an opposing force, that is built just to act just like the soviet union. In fact we have visual modifications. So that is the power of an operating concept. If you go through the deliberate intellectual rigger in it, it starts driving all kind of things in your organization. So when people say, why did you build an actual Training Center, i have to replicate the soviet union. Why . Because thats what is defined as the problem. Why did you have a tank . Because that is what you need to win. Why an apache . Why combined arms . Why are you training in combined arms . Because helicopters have to fight with tanks, with artillery, et cetera like that. So the general calls and majors, have you combined arm. Because we give them the vehicles that were built to design the problem that were trying to solve. So you see how powerful an operating concept in. You read the manual, it doesnt say anything about an m1 tank. It doesnt say anything about the national Training Center. What it does is it lays intellectual foundation that then drives you to build those things to solve the problem. So thats again that you read the operating concept that we just put out, it doesnt say anything about the next bayonet. It doesnt say anything about the next tank. What it does is it describes the level of war. It describes the future and a problem that we have a to solve. Those are the three things the operating concept does. So weve done that. So next slide, next bill, our concept is called unified land operations. Unified land operations and the problem we are trying to solve is win in the complex world. I will talk you through that fairly quickly. Now did you notice, if any of you are former armor officers out there if the crowd, you will notice a slide on the left is black and white own the one on