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Corruption and thefts of public assets harm a diffuse set of victims, weakens confidence in public institutions, damages the private investment climate, and threatens the foundations of the society as a whole. In developing countries with scarce public resources, the cost of corruption is an impediment to development: developing countries lose between US

Corruption and thefts of public assets harm a diffuse set of victims, weakens confidence in public institutions, damages the private investment climate, and threatens the foundations of the society as a whole. In developing countries with scarce public resources, the cost of corruption is an impediment to development: developing countries lose between US$20 to US$40 billion each year through bribery, misappropriation of funds, and other corrupt practices. Corruption is by no means a \"victimless crime.\" This study aims to explore the standing of States and Government entities as victims and the possible recourse to private actions to redress public wrongs. States and Government entities may act as private litigants and bring civil suits to recover assets lost to corruption. The goal of this work is to promote knowledge and understanding as well as to increase the use of civil remedies and private lawsuits to recover stolen assets in the context of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) offences. The UNCAC, the global standard for the fight against corruption, does not contain a legal definition of corruption itself but lists an array of offences, including public and private sector bribery and the embezzlement of public and private sector funds. The study will mainly focus on these two types of corruption, namely bribery and embezzlement of funds. This study is not intended in any way to minimize the importance of criminal proceedings and confiscation in addressing acts of corruption. Rather, it will show that civil law remedies can effectively complement criminal penalties by attacking the economic base of corrupt activities both in the public and the private sectors. In fact, given the magnitude of the challenges, all avenues of asset recovery, be they criminal or civil, should be explored simultaneously in order to tackle corruption from each and every angle and achieve the goals of deterrence and enforcement. Hence, while criminal law expresses society's disapproval of the corrupt acts and aims at dissuasion, punishment, and confiscation of illicit proceeds, civil law focuses on victims' interests and aims at compensation and restitution. These procedures may occur sometimes in parallel, sometimes sequentially. An effective response to corruption very often requires concomitant use of both criminal and civil law remedies to achieve the desired result.

Thought to be adumbrated by § 14 of the original Restatement of Restitution2 (Restatement), then adopted as a \"rule\" in the leading New York case of Banque Worms v. BankAmerica International,3 the proposition is that a creditor without notice who receives a mistaken payment on account of the debt is entitled to keep the money, free of what would ordinarily be the restitution claim of the mistaken payor. Because a payee who incurs a detrimental change of position in consequence of the payment already had an unquestioned defense to restitution, \"discharge for value\" operated to protect payees who had not changed position-who would possibly be left unharmed, merely back where they started, if they were required to return a mistaken payment. \"10 And instead of the traditional syndicate of bank lenders, the recipients of the extra money were asset managers representing hundreds of hedge funds.11 Many of these asset managers were already preparing litigation against Citibank, challenging some controversial steps taken earlier that year to refinance (and postpone the maturity of) part of Revlon's outstanding debt.12 Citibank discovered its mistake the next day and asked the recipients to return the mistaken transfers.' Following a bench trial, District Court Judge Jesse M. Furman ruled that the payees who had refused to return the bank's money were entitled to keep it20- making chumps of the payees who had sent back the other $400 million. Judge Furman observed, to begin with, that \"[t]he law generally treats a failure to return money that is wired by mistake as unjust enrichment . . . and requires that the recipient return such money to its sender.

This research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of conventional punishment in restoring state financial losses and formulate a more effective non-conventional punishment model. With a socio-legal approach, the collection of legal materials is carried out through literature studies, while the analysis of legal materials uses descriptive techniques. The results revealed that conventional punishment-including imprisonment, nominal fines, and limited asset forfeiture-has not optimally recovered state losses due to slow inter-agency coordination, disproportionate fines in the Anti-Corruption Law, and a legal culture that prioritises imprisonment over restitution so that the recovery rate is only 15-20%. In contrast, non-conventional punishments such as progressive fines of up to 100%, civil forfeiture, and infrastructure social work have the potential to increase asset recovery to 60-85% if regulated lex specialis in the Anti-Corruption Law and Anti-Money Laundering Law and supported by an integrated monitoring system with civil society participation and blockchain technology. Recommendations include the establishment of an Asset Recovery Task Force under the KPK, ratification of asset repatriation agreements, and whistleblower incentives of 15-30% of the value of assets recovered.

After eight years of civil war, parts of Syria are now free from conflict. In recognition of the return to peace, the government officially welcomes back all who fled the country to escape violence. Yet, a pattern of property expropriation supported by the government during the war limits the ability of some to return and reclaim their homes and businesses. We argue here that intentional changes to law and policy regarding property rights during the war has led to asset losses for members of groups opposed to the government and created a barrier to property restitution and the return of these groups. We examine legal documents and secondary sources identifying government actions and their impact, noting the proliferation of laws that systematically erode the property rights of people who lack proximity, legal status, and regime allies. As the results of these laws manifest after the war, a disproportionate number of Syrians who opposed the government will find themselves without the houses, land, and property they held before the war began.

Despite their centrality to the International Criminal Court's reparations and legal assistance schemes, the Court's powers to identify, trace, freeze and seize accused persons' assets have largely been neglected by academics, practitioners and the Court. Jean-Pierre Bemba Combo's recent compensation application brought the consequences of this neglect sharply into focus. Seeking to address this lacuna in existing scholarship, this article views the Court's jurisprudence and practice through the prism of Prosecutor v Bemba, applies the lenses of both rationalist and constructivist theory to outline the Court's asset preservation regime and explores a range of reforms to strengthen and improve its effectiveness. Rationalist insights support the conventional view that recalcitrant and rejectionist states pose the greatest threat to the effectiveness of the Court's asset preservation efforts. Accordingly, this analysis supports those who argue that stronger enforcement measures, likely involving greater cooperation with the United Nations Security Council, are desirable. Constructivist analysis, however, directs attention to matters of identity and role-attribution, which this article argues can both explain and support a more nuanced, iterative understanding of state cooperation and the relationship between the Court and states parties which may assist in addressing the myriad technical and jurisprudential problems which have plagued the scheme.

In the wake of the Second World War, cultural officers from the western Allied powers recovered several million objects plundered by the Nazis – works of art, Judaica, fine furniture, collectible books and archive collections. Recent books and films have popularized the history of the heroic art recovery effort, but less well-known is the story of what happened to objects that were never returned to rightful owners. In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, postwar governments selected the best of the unclaimed objects and distributed them to public museums, ministries, embassies and other state buildings. This public use of recovered art quietly endured until the 1990s, when heightened awareness of Holocaust-era assets led to greater public and press scrutiny and an increase in restitution claims. This article examines the origins of postwar art custodianships in a comparative analysis of French, Belgian and Dutch restitution policies. The comparison reveals national differences in the scope of looting operations and postwar restitution policies, yet the broad contours of each government’s approach to ownerless art are remarkably similar. In all three cases the custodianships continued the long-term dispossession of Jewish owners wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators.

In Federal Republic of Brazil v Durant International Corpn [2016], the Privy Council upheld the long-disputed concept of backwards tracing. This article argues in favour of the establishment of backwards tracing and attempts to clarify several confusions arising in the development of backwards tracing, in particular those terminological difficulties. Deriving from the clarification effort, it is advocated that the orthodox tracing process can be interpreted from an additional perspective, based on the ‘negative option’ obtained (but often neglected) by a tracer. Accordingly, it is time to rename backwards tracing as ‘Declarative Tracing’.

Millions of American adults and children struggle with debt stemming from economic sanctions issued by the criminal and juvenile courts. For those unable to pay, the consequences—including incarceration, exclusion from public benefits, and persistent poverty—can be draconian and perpetual. The Supreme Court has nevertheless concluded that many of these concerns lie outside the scope of the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause. In interpreting the Clause, the Court relied upon a limited set of historical sources to restrict “fines” to sanctions that are punitive in nature and paid exclusively to the government, and to define “excessive” as referring to—either exclusively or primarily—the proportionality between the crime's gravity and the amount of the fine. This Article takes the Court at its word by assuming history is constitutionally relevant, but it challenges the Court's limited use of history by providing the first detailed analysis of colonial and early American statutory and court records regarding fines. This robust historical analysis belies the Court's use of history to announce historical “truths” to limit the scope of the Clause, by showing significant evidence that contradicts those limitations. The Article uses the historical record to identify questions regarding the Clause's meaning, to assess the quality of the historical evidence suggesting an answer to such questions, and then to consider that evidence—according to its value—within a debate that incorporates contemporary understandings of just punishment. Under the resulting interpretation, the historical evidence articulated in this Article would support an understanding of a “fine” as a deprivation of anything of economic value in response to a public offense. “Excessive,” in turn, would be assessed through a broad understanding of proportionality that takes account of both offense and offender characteristics, as well as the effect of the fine on the individual. The proposed interpretation more faithfully reflects the history and its limitations, and broadens the Clause's scope to provide greater individual protections.

Quong examines the permissibility of killing innocent aggressors and innocent threats in self-defense. He shows that despite its intuitive appeal, the moral responsibility argument does not establish the impermissibility of killing innocent aggressors or threats. The most the argument can do is remind people of the presumption against killing innocent persons. He also considers cases of self-defense that involve lethal threats.