these are survivors' lives being destroyed leaving schools. i dop think we need intermediate sanctions. obviously that fine is ash taesh and is at any time meaningful. i don't know if we can look at adjusting it per institution. as far as title 9, we're being way too nice to institutions. as a survivor who suffered at an institution, they don't care. they didn't have a cost. they still don't. we need to change that. anybody ols on fines? >> i would say institutions are already operating i think under a lot of anxiety and fear around addressing sexual assault on a college campus. i would be concerned about adding more sticks with no

carrot additionally. one of the things that we don't have enough of are programs or grants that encourage and inspire innovation and new practices and new knowledge about this issue when we're placing all of our resources in enforcement and we're not complementing that with innovation, then i think we're creating a situation where we do have box checking instead of new thinking. >> i understand what you're saying. i guess what you're saying. one thing that's disappointing to me about this is that we depend on college campuses for innovation for so many things in our society. you have on a college campus -- i don't want to pick on michigan, although i kind of would like to pick on michigan. if you were at kansas, i'd really like to pick on you. your system. you have law school. you have a medical school.

you are training psychologists and psychiatrists. and social workers. you have every discipline and academic excellence in every discipline that is needed to come together on this problem. and you have endowment. you have alumni -- if this problem is causing such stress to universities -- and i think it is because they're worried that they're going to be next, that there is going to be a victim that is going to come forward and tell another horrific tale about how they were marginalized, they they were shunted aside, how they didn't get help, or another heartbreaking suicide when there is a trail of tears and inaction by people that were in a position to help. what i don't understand is why we are not getting more innovation from these college campuses on an interdisciplinary approach that they are willing to put some money behind from their own resources to make it

work better. >> i am very proud to say the university of michigan is in fact innovating, that we created one of the first-ever primary prevention programs for the college age population that we also have implemented an irb-approved control group matched four-year longitudinal study of that program so we can rigorously identify efficacy on our campus, that we're planning to launch a second as well to look at other stages of our efficacy programs. that's because university of michigan has an extraordinary wealth of resources in all of the ways in which you've identified. and we have chosen to invest them in this effort. many campuses do not have that benefit and we need to be able to extend the ability to innovate to other campuses that don't have those kinds of resources because campuses look different and we need to have different kinds of knowledge and different kinds of innovations to address specific campus

populations and for those campuses that don't have these resources, it is important that they be provided the support and encouragement to actually do that research and to do that new thinking. >> so michigan has -- i'm not -- i'm sure you do have a program that you've put together that is excellent. that's one of the reasons you're on this panel. what are we doing? maybe, laura, you can speak to this or any of the other roundtable participants. what are we doing to share that? i mean if you put together a model that works where you've got an interdisciplinary approach, where you've got a criminal justice degree, where forensic interviewing is taught so that there are people on campus who understand there is a big difference, where were you, why were you there, what did you do, as opposed to the kind of interview that should be done when someone is willing to talk about what had occurred.

why are we not seeing this cross pollinate across the country? >> the office of violence against women has considered doing things more of the positive aspect highlighting what has been done and what does work. i think they should be provided resources to do that. i will say in this discussion of carrots, what they find is they'll give grant for three years and the school gets rid of their program when the grant is up. it is about enforcement because schools will have an incentive to keep funding their own programs. they have money. they don't need more. they need to use that money wisely. unless there is a cost, they won't. but there are models of schools that do well. university of michigan has been highlighted. i am very proud that they have done such great things but leave that to newspapers and other things. i don't know if that's really the business of the government to be doing that. government needs to put the incentive in the right place. we don't need to be handing out money to rich and wealthy institutions. harvard is in trouble. hopkins is in trouble. they have money.

they will figure it out. because right now the people that are suffering are the victims who leave school in debt, have no compensation, ever, for what is done to them. we're going to give money, let's give scholarships to survivors who are brave enough to file complaints and have a negative experience on their campus to make the school better for everyone else. >> the prosecutor in me just said we can't give scholarships to someone who's brave enough to make a complaint because then they're going to be cross examined because they got a scholarship. their credibility would be attacked on that. we doesn't do that. but i get the point you are making but it is a valid one. does anybody disagree we should be look at fines tied to the size of the school as opposed to a set amount? >> i don't know that i necessarily agree. i say that reluctantly. i agree with the point that holly made that -- and again, going back to i did make the statement that institutions that have changed have been under

investigation. they haven't even been found in violation yet so they've made the changes from my view based on -- or from where i sit based on the media scrutiny. they've main made changes even before they're been any finding of violation yet. so while fines, i'm sure, serve as some deterrent, i almost think that the public being out there in public, the attention that has been on this issue particularly in the last six months to two years, but six months in particular, i think the spotlight has really shown on this. so i don't know that putting all of the eggs into looking at fines and the energy into looking at fines. i'm not sure it's the way to tackle it. holly makes a great point that i really agree with coming, putting on my prevention hat, working in a community organization in prevention and formally in a college in prevention, i was it.

so i was charged with preventing alcohol use, suicide, eating disorders, sexual assault, dating -- whatever the issue, whatever that came up through athletics, through greek life. they'd pick up the phone, okay, we have an eating disorder and you need to go out -- >> we will leave the last couple of minutes of this hearing. you can see it all at c-span.org. we'll take you live now to the center for strategic and international studies in washington this morning for a discussion on returning stock marketen assets to middle eastern and north african countries. the panel will talk about similar efforts, similar attempts for ukraine and actions by the international community to address and sanction corrupt regimes. it is just getting under way live here on c-span3. >> cannot imagine a better set of experts 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. emi lechl emil, you weren't 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 high-end corruption and the mechanics of asset recovery. these issues are not new, of course. from the days of ferdinand marc marc 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 timult 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 we've seen internationally. that's what we wanted to do today, have an open discussion and that's exactly what we're going to do. we're not going to present speeches. we're going to have an open discussion. then an open discussion with you. we'll 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. i'll 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 government's 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 clep tokcy and asset recovery initiative for the department of justice, bringing some very high-profile cases even just in the past couple of weeks. jay has deep experience. i won't 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. i'm not very good with it. the legal advisor to the world bank ar stole e bank's stolen asset and recovery initiative, a better piece of

the world bank's 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 world's experts. i'm here to be a simpleton moderator and hopefully will drive the discussion in an appropriate way. so let's 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? >> that's 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 weorked 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. that's 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 g-8. there are initiatives to cooperate among all requested and requesting jurisdictions, which means all the partners involved. we've 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. i'm sorry to start with a disagreement -- >> no, that's good. >> we shouldn't have hoped for

more progress to give it up. i don't know exactly whether we hoped for more progress. because that's 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 too knunisia, for exam. the twist prosecutor. general decided to sell back two-thirds of the funds we had frozen in switzerland to tunisia. that's only after three years. we never had that in the past. the quickest case we've had so far -- don't know if you perhaps have more rapid procedures -- the quickest case in our history took five years. we were efficient because we had an excellence 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, that's 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 north-south issue now where it's not just seen as an issue of the affected countries or the corruption in the developing economies or countries. but it's now an issue for the banking centers and the west in many cases to actually address. i think that's a key theme atic shift that you've seen.

>> 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 don't think there will be great use -- the u.s., uk also switched its policies. 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. they're very active today but i don't think that's enough. 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 it's 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 we're 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 that's not -- those aren't 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 can't use that as a mechanism to take possession and then return those stolen assets. so in the tu.s. that's done through our forfeiture laws, predominantly civil forfeiture laws, because we're dealing with situations where the individuals who are responsible for misappropriating these assets might be outside of the criminal process that the u.s. connectioner sis 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 don't have to prove that

somebody did the crime but you do have to tie the aet 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 that's 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 lafr compl 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 we've seen around the floeglobe, that 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 you've got some of the politics around it. people question whether forfeitures are useful tools or not. for me, i would say yes, it's 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 couldn't do this in the u.s. with people doing it part-time. 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. we're 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. that's the game that we're facing. 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 that's really what's 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 we'd 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 shouldn't 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 we're trying to promote is a rule of law. it doesn't make it does us any good i think if we acquire these goods in a way that violates those basic ten nets ets of fai 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 buy-ins, there is legitimacy to what we've done. it doesn't look like we're 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. >> we'll 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 you've seen the last -- more resources they've talked about, more focus of experts and prosecutors. valentine's talked about politically much more focus on these issues and much more attention in banking centers. what's your perspective on all this? >> thank you. yeah. i'll 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. stlm 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 that's 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 we've 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. it's from that sort of perspective when you ask me to highlight some of the irk use. 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. that's 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. that's not just words, that's not just paying lip service. that's 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 we've seen and it's translated into legislative action as well. asset freezing recall, legislation that many countries have adopted. so a holding measure. 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 wouldn't say proliferating but you see countries taking up those sort of legislations, so what we call non-conviction based legislation where you connect the asset to a crime. typically on the balance of probabilities. won't 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, we're at $4.9 billion. i think we're at $27.7 billion in freed frozen assets. and so let's say we're 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 we're 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. that's an extraordinarily high level of -- you know, that's 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 i'll 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 doesn't 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 shouldn't be

looking to the asset recovery system to solve those issues because that is what -- that's not a clear intent that you can say that's where the corruption took place. . so those are the sort of issues -- or for other things like parliament really rubber sta stamping legislation for the ruling family. that was completely legal as a minist 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

expropriatations. you think of a 16th century france. if you're louis xiv, you own all the property. what's 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 cleptoc 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, wouldn't that be a way the u.n. convention on corruption would help you? because it does set the standards that's 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 government's satisfaction that that is the law of the land. absolutely those are the arguments we made. ry 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. so it becomes much more difficult from purely legal point of view to make the case that was a condition of international cooperation is mutual. it's dual criminality. testimony has to be a crime in your country and in the other country. that's why it's so difficult. republican just a few more points on what i think the challenges are. we talked earlier about

preventive system. the extent to which foreign minister, yes, it is very good if we can be successful in our asset recovery efforts but that's all ex post facto. we need to make sure that money never ended up in the financial system in the first place. that's 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 so-called politically exposed persons.

that may be sort of unbureaucratic in its language. it is very clear that quite a number of banks were delibera 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, they'll tell you the same thing. they'll say, it's actually quite a small defined group of the same lawyers, same accountants, same trust companies that we see in many cases. but it's very hard to get them on the hook for the crime.

and they often -- not very often, but often you're after the big fish. you're 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 replain. i don't 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 g-8 summit, that's extraordinary. that's something that was really

something for a few nerds in ministri ministries. suddenly to become tho 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. i'll 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 we've 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 what's happening in the real world of stolen asset recovery. jay, i'll come to you with the same question. >> let's start with the marcos case. as i mentioned, the marcos case started in '86 when ferdinand c marcos was toppled.

t the king had to enact a law to allow 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 month's 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 isn't 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. that's 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 don't have evidence coming from congo --

because the evidence had to come from congo -- there was nothing we could do. 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 don't 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 we're not just writing a collection, 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. >> you have all of the cases in the wake of the arab spring. >> i'll come back to you. i want to ask you the question what are some of the modalities of the return of assets to get precisely to valentine's concern, not just throwing money back into a corrupt environment to be misused again. jay, can you talk to some of the cases that you and the u.s. are dealing with and maybe give some examples from obion as well? >> we have being investigations going on all over the club. think it's public so i can speak about things like the ukraine where there is an active effort to do it. unfortunately, i can't speak to

specifics prf pending investigations because i wouldn't want the money to go fleeing somewhere else. >> i want that talk a little bit about what we've been able to do since bringing our resources together. we've had a wide variety of a w variety of cases that have become public over the past few years. we've had cases against the former president of taiwan. the former president/dictator of south korea. which i know is longer in the tooth but we -- and i think that's an example of how quickly things can go. we instituted a civil 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 else where. but we were able to obtain a final order of forfeiture with respect to over $400 million of those proceeds. there's still $120 million, which is being litigated, which will have to go through the

judicial process. we were able to do that quickly. and are 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 i think with the obn case shows is that in some ways we have to be pragmatic and practical in how we deal with these cases. i think one could take the view that, you know what we're going to do is litigate this, these cases for 20 years, till the end of time. without a sense of what the ultimate purpose is. which is to recover assets, and return it for the benefit of the countries and people affected. and i think in that case, we took what i think would be considered a fairly aggressive posture against a sitting

official, i should say, who became a sitting official, but somebody who was very well connected. and litigated it. and you know, 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 decision as to we have jurisdiction over a set of assets in the united states. which we were pretty confident we could win on. but which could take another three to four years to get a final order of forfeiture by the time the litigation, the civil discovery came into place. and assets which, in all frankness, we probably bore little chance of getting our hands on. an airplane which after litigation was commenced, was it transferred into the title of the state of ek wa toria guinea. so it posed problems whether any government would assist us in seizing that asset, even though we had legal arguments as to why it wasn't a valid transfer. but would pose problems. assets that were located in

equatorial guinea and we were receiving absolutely no cooperation. in our assessment the settlement that we were able to enter into was able to acquire the entire value of the assets that we had a 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 recover assets. and i think those are, quite frankly, the kinds of judgments we're going to have to make if 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 our things, and so those changes can happen. but they're a little bit longer. so in the mean time i think we have to be, you know, i'm a prosecutor and litigator and i

try to sort of be on the grounds practical. i think we need to figure out how we get within the tools we have the money into our possession legitimately and work on repatriating. >> just real quickly, jai, for folks aren't familiar with the obn case what actually was forfe forfeited? >> so in the end we were able to forfeit the mansion, which is i'm not even sure my experts would have to remind me what the actual, but it was an enormous mansion in malibu. we were able to forget the value of the property that was located in equatorial guinea with respect to the michael jackson paraphernalia, so paraphernalia that he had purchased with corrupt funds. >> including life-size statues. >> including life-size statues, and then we were also able to forfeit cars, and other things of value. i should add that there are cases pending in other countries, france most notably,

and if you do happen to travel to paris you'll notice that there's a mansion that's entire city block in a very nice part of paris and they're still ongoing cases. nothing that we did affects or immunizes anybody prospectively. doesn't affect other jurisdictions that might want to go after additional assets. and so from that perspective, i think it's 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 model for recovery. how do you see sort of the ukraine situation going from your perspective? and are there other cases, either bubbles or emerging that are of interest to you from the world bank's perspective?

>> i think one of the things that was very interesting in the react -- response to ukraine goes to the earlier point made by valentin is the immediacy of the international reaction, and the breadth of that number of countries that immediately jumped to and said, okay, we're 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 had been strewn in the palms 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 i'd say run of the mill.

i mean, the enormous use of shell companies in lots of jurisdictions. i think that's something that you see in other cases, as well, and the difficulties associated with getting behind and proving ownership and control over those entities, that is probably more common. to the point made earlier about how to return assets, i think we have by an example, valentin, please correct me, because you've been much more closely involved in that than i have, but the context of kazakhstan, the moneys located in switzerland pursuant to an action by the u.s. i think $60 million more or less, and the question, this was awhile ago, and the question was 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 of that was to set up a foundation in which switzerland, kazakhstan, world bank and civil society, as well, played a role in deciding how those funds be used. and something similar, we hope, and given indications, it's always in the press, as well, will happen with money that was recently returned by liechtenstein after 14 years of litigation to nigeria. finally, through all the

processes of first instance appeal, appeal to the european court of human rights, eventually case closed, 230 million return ed a few months ago. there again the minister of finance of nigeria who was very instrumental when she was still 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 ngo, where 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 it's under now. so there are ways in of dealing with returns ofs apets and assuring the transparency of use of those assets. >> valentin, switzerland in

trying to sort of be more aggressive in this field, you've been leading the charge, you're about to host the third forum on arab asset recovery. can you talk about "a," what you see coming out of that conference that's going to happen 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? i'm interested in your sense of where things are headed from the swiss perspective. >> let's first address the arab forum on asset recovery, that's a venture that we do in close cooperation with the world bank, and the g-7 countries. we do not expect a specific result. you know, that it would change the world. but, what we want to do is to provide a forum to see, to look back now at the last year since the last forum, to see what has

worked, what hasn't worked, where do we have to put our focus on. and i think it's very clear the focus will have to be put on an increased population. we have had great successes, and again, i think tunisia is a very encouraging example in the tunisian case, probably there will soon be a return of a lot of the funds, probably not compared, if you look at the global sums that were involved, but, it will be a very important restitution. it's a bit more difficult in the case of egypt, given the country's development. and again, also, in egypt, very encouraging signs of an increased cooperation, and we could then also go in to a restitution mode soon. and i think that would be the topic of the conference. now, as to switzerland's role, we have received a mandate so to speak in the last u.n.

conference against corruption, because i think all of us slowly come to realize that if you have now this great instrument that the convention against corruption, but it's not sufficient just to put it in the 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," we look at the country, we can say, whoa, sorry, that request is not sufficient, back to sender. we return it to the sender. that's one thing. we could also say, look, sorry, this is not sufficient but if you put it like this, and if you do that, and if you then turn it around, we can then answer. and that -- you will say that's a little detail but i think that is really the decisive factor. do you cooperate, and then the

latter example isn't so much of cooperation, or do you just apply your statute books? so it's like we come in to a new dimension. we have not the right rules on our statute books but now we have to breathe life into them. we've got a mandate by the parties to now look what are the lessons learned. in our past practice. and we have organized a conference in january in switzerland to -- with a group of countries and experts who have been actively involved in these cases to see what has worked. and i think, jai you mentioned the importance of trust. trust is absolutely essential. in resolving the cases. trust, find. okay but how do you establish trust? how do you do that? i remember when i first traveled to tunisia in 2011 they told me exactly as emile indicated, they told me why should i trust you? why should i believe you?

you took our money in the first place, now you come and tell us you are going to help us. and i had to explain, look, i'm a government official. i'm 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. but then you have all these issues like for example in some countries, you're able to build relationship. but in a post-revolutionary society often you have all these subsequent changes of government. you take the levin case which is very familiar to you. i don't know how many governments they had since the downfall so each time you have to start a new relationship. what we want to do and that's what we did in this conference with switzerland, look into the practices. how do you do that? and what then are also important lessons? i just give you another example. it's the timing of mutually legal request is absolutely essential. if you send it 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 next year to the conference. i hope that with the help of all the countries involved, certainly the world bank, are meant to see. it's like a bit like asset recovery 2.0. what is the next dimension? how can we really now make it even quicker, more efficient? because i think these remain the main challenges. 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 person relies on that. but, we have to get better, because it does take very much time. >> you introduced this -- but let me ask you this. how much resistance have you felt from the banking community, whether in switzerland or otherwise?

emile talked about the onus put on banks in a preventive context to know their customer. to engage in heightened due diligence for political spokespersons known as peps in the field. is there resistance from the banks to say look, it's 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 we're supposed to be doing business with, and then the next day they're toppled regimes and we're supposed to be hunting their assets. and so, aren't we, the banks, getting caught in the political winds here, in an unfair way? have you felt resistance given what are fairly aggressive steps on your part? >> look, the world is changing. and even the banks are changing. and we felt it directly. there was, as you said, there wasn't 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 them. the banks criticized us for

doing what they said was an isolated act. now the european union came a bit later. but what the european union did, they announced their freeze. i don't know if that's very clever. because if you announce a freeze, that's an indication you just 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 that's very interesting, because when we're preparing the statute, because the swiss government so far has always acted on a kind of an emergency power that is given to it in the swiss constitution. the deal with parliament was that, okay, the parliament accept what the government did, but it said you have to submit a statute, a draft statute to have, you know, the whole range of activities of the government in this field debated by parliament. we're now in the process of doing this in parliament. so we drafted a statute that would really, 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 a bank, and this is what has changed, the reputational risks for banks is just too high. and to come to the ukraine in context when the swiss government froze, and that also is a progress for the first time we froze together on the same day as other financial centers. that would have been absolutely impossible only two years ago. this time, we coordinated among some centers of the european union came just a few days later. but when some of the banks contacted me, some of the big banks in switzerland told me, look, we have no problems with that because we went at the ukrainian business awhile ago. it's just too hot. and i think that's an indication that the reputation risks are increasingly recognized by banks. and i'm sure that this also applies to other countries. and just let me make a last point. i think we shouldn't

underestimate the huge change that is taking place over the years. if you look back 20 years ago, corruption was accepted as a fact of life. well in some countries you just have to deal with it. that's part of the landscape in that country. in some of the jurisdictions, it was possible to deduce bribes from your taxes. not only is that no longer possible but it's an offense to bribe in 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. but that brings me to the last point, i promise, i think we should continue to stress the importance of prevention. asset recovery is like the fireman. if everything else has failed, then we have to identify the funds and send them back. but we should really emphasize on prevention.

we shouldn't get these moneys in the first place. >> thank you. >> i just want to build the last thing valentin said, that's the attitude of the financial institutions. 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, where we're being whipped by the political winds but they're focusing on blocking violation. 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 there's 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 don't have face-to-face relationships with your customers. 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, they're not just seeing this as an obligation, they're responding to a check the box exercise, but it becomes part of what business people do. it's not just a compliance person telling the business person, you know, you need to follow this rule. because they'll follow it. they'll find a way to check the box and find a way to circumvent it. the question is, when a business person onboards a client, are they asking the right questions to know what their business is, to know who these people are, when a transaction happens. do they understand what the source of that income, et cetera, and that really does have to work its way in to the very business model of a bank, before we don't see these major

actions and other things against them. and i think some of them are starting to get the message that that's what they need to do. they need to stop thinking about this as something that's imposed from without, and something that 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 jai can answer quickly. are we seeing new methodologists for regimes or klepto contracts to move money, to hide money, you know, the art world, and, you know, purchasing of high-end art certainly in the context of the islamic state we've seen articles in op-eds about the use of anticties in the sale of antiquities to raise money. are we see any new mow taldies or typologists in the case that are of interest? emile? >> i think you might see, as you mentioned, new classes of assets just because that happens to be available and that's something that can be investigated.

but if i think of our good friend bob mazer who was undercover investigation guy from customs, and he went undercover in the cali car tell 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,undercover for two years, 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 does work as adviser, and has his own firm, but still does some investigations. and he has this magnificent slide where he juxtaposes what he saw in the beginning of the '90s, and what he sees today. and why it's magnificent is because it's exactly the same. the modalities are exactly the same. so, yes, the class of assets

might have changed. and now there are other things they can lay their hands on. but the way that money is being actually, you know, and every now and then new shell companies or new types of companies are involved, okay, because legislation has changed, okay. so there is some tweaking there. but the underlying is 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 beneficial, that is still the underlying purpose, and that will happen regardless. so i think in that sense, it's quite interesting to see how much things have stayed the same. >> james? >> i would say the same thing. i think that money launderers today are very much like portfolio makers. there's an entire illicit world that services organized crime, clementocrats, and there's a

secondous between organized crime and kleptocrats in countries. it's the substrate in which organized crime works and they work off each other and there's a financial structure that supports them. we in law enforcement sometimes when a case arises say oh, that's a new moid of doing things. and when another case arises, oh, there's a trend in this direction. i think what you have to recognize is, there's a sophistication out there that's 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 kwukt and ultimately integrate it into the economy. and that's the reality. less a colorful example is, you know, before a topic i gave a little while ago i read the 2005

treasury risk assessment and i was shocked that the seven things that they identified there are the exact seven things we're looking at today. and that's the reality. i don't think that's something to think we're failing. that's reality. just because crime doesn't exist anymore, doesn't mean we failed in fighting crime. crime exists because it's something that is from human nature. greed is part of human nature. and there are just realities out in the financial system that can be exploited. they're going to be exploited by different people in different ways and they're going to manage their assets just like a legitimate person will manage his or her assets. and that's all that's happening. they're using different modalities to move things around. we have 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 bond

because abacho was using them. we just need to be limber and realize we need to understand the financial system the way it actually works and distinguish legitimate conduct. >> wonderful. let's now open it up for questions. we're going to have a microphone, so wait for the microphone. identify yourself, please, and then ask us a single question. we want to get as many as possible. while we're identifying the first question we'll go to this gentleman over here. i just want to thank the swiss embassy for their support. they've brought valentin here. valentin has been the catalyst for these events for us. i want to thank him for spurring us to do these, thank you very much. yes, sir >> would you like me to stand? >> yes, please. >> my name is sandy sirk, i'm a lawyer in washington, and i have a question for mr. ramaswamy but also others. before i ask the question, i need to disclose that i'm serving as a volunteer pro-bono counsel for two ngos that have

filed comments in regard to the repatriation of the abache assets. one a nigerian ngo, and one the u.n. coalition -- the u.n. convention against corruption coalition which is sort of a offshoot of transpairenty 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 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 the case such as abache. and secondly, if you could elaborate a bit on whether there are any opportunities for a more fulsom explanation of how the

department mechanically would work on repatriation issues, and whether views from the public are welcome in the context of a court case. that's a long question. and i apologize -- >> let's get to the answer. >> thank you. >> first of all i'll start with the last one, that's the easiest. my view, of course we accept comments and suggestions from the public. that's what we do and 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 forfeited assets can be used for. we do work very closely with the state department. the list is too long. i don't think i could give you a laundry list of who we work with. there are people in budget, people in the more programattic areas that we work with.

and one of the challenges that we have is how do we use the authorities given to us in our forfeiture statutes to fund certain categories of things, and how do we work with the state department, others, to identify one, recipients who can receive the funds, and who we are authorized to give the funds to. and two, who are khmer size a degree of oversight to make sure that the funds don't get recycled back in to corruption or don't fuel corruption in and of themselves. i think there are different models that exist out there. i think the reality is that i'm 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, so a foundation was created in that instance. and i think everybody will agree with it was a very effective way

of getting money back, a responsible way. and the tag line that i like to use, i'm actually borrowing from the actual supervisor who leads the group, but responsible repatriation is what we want to focus on. in obn there are a number of different mechanisms we're going to have to use. part of the money will be forfeited. part of the money will be going to an as yet undesignated entity and there's a very specific procedure in place to determine who that entity will be. but of course, we welcome views. i can't say that these decisions are easy and everybody will be happy with the decisions that are made. but we are trying 20 do the best we can within the legal confines of what we're given. >> right here. mr. coupler. >> many things to juan and the

panelists for an excellent presentation. i have basically two questions. my first question to ambassador zellweger is, the government has been having a long dialogue with the swiss government on the recovery of black money or unaccounted wealth from india. now to what extent are the stringent bank secrecy laws in switzerland an impediment to not only recovery of those assets but also the disclosure of ownership information of those assets? that's one. the other to emile and to jai is to what extent are -- is the recovery of terrorist assets in terms of their legal and judicial challenges different from recovery of assets belonging to peps. thanks. >> the answer is very simple there's no banking secrecy if we talk about illegal acts.

so if we can request from a prosecutor in another country, there is no banking secrecy. we have very stringent customer rules. so we're quick in being able to give the information. we do have, as you say, we have -- we have had long discussions with the indian government, but that is for tax evasion. and tax evasion used not to be 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's an agreement with the indian government, as to what exactly we have to be disclosed. and as you just indicated there is a new indian government that we now hope that we will be able to resolve the case much quicker than we could do. >> jai, emile on the question of terrorist assets, 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 it's one of the predicate acts. terrorism is, in fact, a predicate act for forfeiture. so -- and you know, we've brought cases against terrorist assets in chicago there's a public case where we are forfeiting al qaeda assets in connection with the civil forfeiture action. the challenges are what you would expect. it's getting assets. oftentimes 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 it's abroad you then have to get per 34igs 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 that's not relevant, but that would cause the government to dismiss its case if it were forced to do so. on the criminal side there's something called the classified information procedures act which requires the government to turn over and declassify any exculpatory information but there's 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 there's no analogous structural thing and so it's a little bit more free flowing. sometimes we make arguments that cipa should apply, you know, has sort of criminal component. we sometimes make arguments it's state secret which are much harder to make. but those are the consolation challenges that emerge. ultimately in the 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 that's it. but the structure is the same. we go after those assets and i think there's some notable cases where we suck he'ded in doing so. >> yeah, and emile, very quickly. >> yeah, that would be the same for most -- i mean those rules apply internationally, and is considered to be a predicate for money laundering such just as corruption. most of the debate when it comes to terrorist assets is not actually about confiscation of those assets but the freezing and the designation of terrorists, which is not a confiscation process. just to be -- and that's where a lot of the debates surrounding the legitimacy of that, the designation process itself, whether it's in conformity with due process ends up. that's where there's a very big difference with politically exposed persons where you really -- when you start confiscating, you know, you have an act there whereas that designation process is supposed

to be an administrative process and if the freeze is held on for 10, 20 years doesn't it become very close to, in fact, de facto confiscation? >> gentleman in the back? >> thank you, juan, very much for hosting this. any time that a ruler steals money, he's taking it away from schools and hospitals, and infrastructure of his own people. a question for jai. following on the intelligence versus law enforcement information question, there's also a tension between the law enforcement aspects of this and the diplomatic aspects of this. how does the interagency work when you've 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 in those instances, and we do have the obn case being one, certainly we want to make sure that there's information to the extent that we're not precluded from sharing that information because of investigative necessity or legal requirements like grand jury secrecy. we don't want interagency partners to be surprised by what we're doing. but, they're completely separate. it doesn't 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 and have it short circuited by people weighing in with diplomatic considerations. we inform 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

i can tell you with 100% certainty, that in our cases, we certainly don't succumb to pressure, and i can proudly say that we haven't faced any pressure. >> this is a fundamental question when you talk about prevention and how to deal with sitting rulers or regimes. valentin, i'm actually very curious to hear from the swiss perspective. the swiss are known for their diplomacy and their neutrality. how do you think about dealing with this issue in an ongoing context, not a historical case? >> well, happy to hear that we're known for our diplomacy. i didn't know that. >> we certainly rely upon it. >> i would say exactly the same as jai just said for the u.s. context but i say it from the foreign ministry perspective. we did have an extremely sensitive case last year and it's now 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. in 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 prosecutorial actions of our colleagues in the justice ministry, without being, you know, aware of it, i think that in some cases could be a risk for our representation, for our missions in the countries. we certainly have that in the context of libya. you remember that the son of gadhafi was arrested in switzerland. we certainly did not interfere in that. but we had a two-year crisis that amounted almost to constitutional crisis in switzerland, because gadhafi

then took two swiss citizens as hostages. and it blocked the swiss politics for almost two years, and it was only resolved when gadhafi had to leave the country. so just to come back, thanks for applauding swiss diplomacy but in this case the diplomacy doesn't 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. and we do accept it. >> yes, sir. right here in the middle. >> peter humphrey, i'm an intelligence analyst. i'm wondering if, when all else fails, if the white hat hackers might not be able to resolve these situations at an infinitely cheaper cost? i'm wondering who might authorize that? what element of the national command? or could it be done by the worker bees? i'm wondering what the nexus between treasury and the white hat hackers might be? and i'm wondering how the banks

might respond when a dekrepate asset suddenly disappears off their accounts. do they look the other way or do they make a stink? >> the issue of covert and cyber capability. someone want to take that? >> i used to be a cyber prosecutor so i have some appreciation for what you're talking about. but luckily i'm a prosecutor in a law enforcement agent and we don't engage in that because quite frankly it's useless to me. i can't use any of that information acquired in that way in a court of law. and it causes enormous problems from a discovery perspective and otherwise. i'm in the fortunate position of not having to deal with it. i think folks who are on the intelligence side could probably speak to it more. but in the world i live in, it doesn't help because i can't 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. you know, what is the role of the private sector in this? is it to gather evidence? to be sort of a catalyst in other ways? emile, what's your sense of that? maybe not in the cyber context, but otherwise? >> i think we, as valentin said earlier, i think we've seen increased participation by and interest by the private sector. i think it's been always focused, as i said in my introductory marks, been very much focused on the financial institutions. that's for obvious reasons. i think where many countries are still facing problems is on the, as i mentioned in the beginning, the enabling, the enablers, the lawyers, the accountants, who in some countries and in the european union, are subject to money laundering obligations, and have to report transactions.

but in other countries, are actually do not, u.s. being one of them. and it's actually, as far as i understand, correct me if i'm wrong, it's unthinkable here but the lawyers would be regulated for anti-money laundering purposes. i think there there's really quite a bit of a divide between europe, and america on this. >> one last question, want to be respective of the time. sir, 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, i'm an attorney here in washington. just wanted to get your thoughts on a senate report awhile back about atiku from nigeria who is now probably going to contest in this next election for president while money laundering and all of that sounds a lot like the abache stuff and i'm just wondering why no action has been

taken against him, imbeing atiku? >> obviously i can't confirm, deny, or say anything about any particular case. look, i think it's 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 we essentially pursue cases that we have, can develop evidence of. i don't know the specifics of that investigation or non-investigation or what you're referring to. but, if we had evidence, we would be investigating it, and we'd pursue it. but i don't have any specifics about that. >> i'm sorry, there was a senate report that the resources that came in were -- it was a money laundering investigation, and that was the conclusion of the senate report.

>> understood. i guess from our perspective, there's just a difference between the information in evidence that's in the senate report, and what's admissible evidence in a court of law. and so, as i said i can't comment on anything specific that's going on. but a lot of it could be that, you know, gathering of physical evidence just takes a longer amount, more time than collecting information of other sorts. a whole host of explanations but i don't know what the situation is with that. >> this is great. 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. but please join me in thanking our panelists. and thank you all. [ applause ]

we'll have a reception out here. you're welcome -- a reminder if you missed any of this discussion it's available at c-span.org. live coverage going on now over on c-span2, the house oversight and government reform committee is hearing testimony on the u.s. response to ebola. testifying before the committee, the health and human services assistant secretary for preparedness and response and a number of other security and health officials. that's going on now at c-span2. and we welcome your comments by

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recently spoke to university presidents of the big ten conference about challenges facing higher education, including student debt, admission policies, and campus safety. here's our interview with university of nebraska lincoln interim president james linder. it's 40 minutes. >> this week on the washington journal we kicked off our month-long series of interviews with university presidents, as part of our c-span bus's big ten college tour. this morning joining us on the c-span bus at the campus of the university of nebraska in lincoln is the interim president dr. james linder. thank you, sir, for being with us. let me begin with the size of the university of nebraska lincoln, and also the cost. >> well, thank you very much greta. it's a pleasure to be with you today and i appreciate the fact that you're doing this service to educate students and the public at large about the importance of higher education.

the university of nebraska system has four campuses. one of which is the university of nebraska-lincoln, which is a big ten school. it has a little over 25,000 students. there are 51,000 students in the entire system. and that actually represents record enrollment for us. and the cost of an education at the university of nebraska lincoln is around $8,000 a year. which actually that's the lowest in the big ten. >> out-of-skate tuition comes in at $22,000 a year. how much financial aid is there available? >> we made a serious effort to provide financial aid for our students. particularly on the side of grants and scholarship. about three-quarters of students receive some type of grant or scholarship, depending what year they're in of education. >> the gallup recently just did a poll back in april, young adults cite college costs as

their top money problem. i'm wondering, and this has sparked a debate in our country. is college worth it? how do you answer that question, dr. linder? >> well, i think the university of nebraska regents and our state legislature have had access and affordability among its priorities for many years even before the recent discussions on costs. and we believe in nebraska that college is worth it. really, the opportunity to educate the next generation of nebraskans, that go out and form companies, service businesses, and have degrees that can support higher technology is really essential for both a growing economy and having an informed citizenry. >> how much majors are available at the university of nebraska?

>> wow, that's a stump the president sort of question. you know, we have -- we have many colleges and many degree programs, some of which actually lead to a b.s., then of course graduate programs and certificate programs. it probably exceeds 100 in total and that includes both online education as well as education that occurs on campus. >> how do you address at the university of nebraska lincoln, this issue of job placement. after kids graduate, what's the rate of them getting a job and how do you encourage or do you encourage kids to pick majors, professions that will get them a job when they graduate? >> well, there's a lot of important questions that you've asked there and i'll dissect that a bit.

first of all, in terms of the colleges experience, we want our students to be aware of the fact that they should obtain some skill during college, that is valuable to a potential employer. now that doesn't mean we want to provide a technical education, we want to make sure that students first of all have the range of experiences that lead them to have a full and productive life. so that implies there would be good counseling for those students, as well as opportunities for internships, working with companies, seeing what it's like to be in the workforce so they can develop those critical thinking skills and having experiences at other campuses or outside the country in terms of study abroad. >> the "boston globe" recently reported with this headline that business leaders downbeat on workers prospect. and despite an improving economy and record corporate profits business leaders are skeptical

about their ability to compete abroad and downright pessimistic about the prospect of increase in pay and improving living conditions for american workers. and in this report, they cite issues of higher education. what are some challenges you see in higher education that impact our economy? >> i think there are several challenges as you have alluded to. one is there is a changing social exact between companies and the workforce. and companies are increasingly looking for individuals who have some important technical skill which is why there's so much dialogue about s.t.e.m. education. we are fortunate this year at the university of nebraska-lincoln to see an 8.6% increase in our enrollment of students in engineering programs. and i think students are realizing that having these skills is important because it is what employers are looking

for. >> we're talking with dr. james linder, interim president of the university of nebraska-lincoln, part of c-span bus's big ten college tour. we kick that off this week and we will continue next week, a month-long series here on "washington journal" talking to university presidents about higher education issues. want to get your thoughts, as well. so we've divided the lines by students, parents, education -- educators, excuse me, and nebraska residents. there they are on your screen. students 202-585-3880. parents 202-585-3881. and educators 202-585-3882. and nebraska residents as well we'll hear from you 202-585-3 883. also send us an e-mail journal @c-span.org. the interim president dr. james linder is aboard our c-span bus in lincoln, nebraska, to talk

about his university and issues of higher education. we'll begin with michael who is in new jersey. michael are you aa former student at the university of nebraska? >> caller: unfortunately, i wasn't, i was a student in new jersey. >> okay. >> caller: but if i may, i just wanted to comment on the kind of culture around career resources and providing things for students. a lot of students in my experience in the past felt as if their career service officers didn't offer them that much. and you couple that with the fact that they may not wholly be aware of all the resources, in addition of the fact that a lot of students really lack a lot of confidence in knowing themselves and how they long in the workforce. so i think a lot of it has to do with career resources, and juggling part-time jobs after college, and thing factor in the fact that searching for jobs in a career is a part-time job. with that said, it's a about management of time, and management of really understanding themselves and

having confidence in themselves afterwards. >> i agree with you completely. it's a process as one goes from being an entering student to graduating and it can be very enlightening for students to have the opportunity to either individually or as a group walk into a workplace and feel the excitement of a team, say they're trying to bring a new product to market. it can open their eyes to what the world will be after they graduate. we try to provide that experience to our students. >> dr. linder, we want our viewers to call in and we've divided the lines by students, parents, educators, nebraska residents. nebraska residents, talk about your outreach to the state of nebraska, and how much support resources the university of nebraska gets from the state.

>> so, the university of nebraska has always felt we have a strong mission to educate the next generation of nebraska. our state is geographically very long, 500 miles. we often talk about a 500 mile campus. we have resources in every county in the state through our extension services and through tele-health, through tele-education, and a variety of programs that try and bring the university to every community. and we're very proud of that. we're humbled by actually the opportunity to shape our future in the state. >> you have an annual budget at the university of nebraska-lincoln of $1.2 billion. endowment of $1.3 billion, and alumni contributing a little over $188,000. can you talk about those numbers and what is the cost? how is the money spent? >> the budget at the university

of nebraska-lincoln is, as you say, $1.2 billion. of that money, it is spent principally on instruction. there's there's also a strong outreach program in our service activities through the state through extension. and of course the research budget is substantial approaching $300 million in itself. we've been very fortunate in the state of nebraska to enjoy solid support from our state legislature, which has helped us keep tuition rates low. we've also had a very successful campaign through university of nebraska foundation to raise funds for student scholarships, campaign that just end created more than 1,000 different scholarship funds as well as building the infrastructure that supports the university. so really you see a broad gamut

of people in the state of nebraska working together to support higher education. >> next in castle wood. parent. go ahe, aggie. >> caller: i'm a parent. and a student too. i went back to school after i got laid off from work and got a degree, associate's degree in engineering. and half of my classes were classes i didn't need for that degree like history, music, p.e. i want to go back and get a degree in engineering technologies. the first two classes i have to take, u.s. history 1 and 2. i think that's a big problem. i have looked at all colleges. they all have classes in the degree programs that you don't need to do that job. and i think we want well-rounded students out of high school but when we go to college, we want well-trained students in that profession. i think it would drive the college cost down if they would get classes you don't need out

of degree programs and colleges don't want to admit that. that was half the cost of my associate's degree was classes that i didn't need for the degree. you could get the degrees in half the time. >> all right, dr. linder. >> the caller makes several good points. first of all, if you can get a lot of courses in high school, you can shorten your college experience. here in nebraska we offer what's called the university of nebraska high school. this provides university level courses to students throughout the state that are basically dual credit. they are satisfying some of their college requirements while they are in high school. the other important point you make is the issue of transferability. once you've had certain courses in one educational experience, you should have systems that allow those courses to transfer into your next degree.

and we have such programs here in nebraska between our different campuses, between the community colleges and our state and university, and we actually have a unique program where we are piloting reverse transfer of credit back to community colleges so someone who did not complete their associate's degree can actually use some of their university courses for that purpose. the more dialogue there is between educational institutions, the more efficient it is and more cost is reduced as you point out. >> dr. linder, you said earlier, $300 million for research at the university of nebraska lincoln. what is the university researching? what are the different areas? what's its main focus? >> well, obviously there are a variety of areas but being that we're in an agricultural state, some of our focuses are on how you properly use water resources and how you grow food with less

water. we face a population crisis in this world where you'll have more and more mouths that need to be fed to ensure political stability in the world. we have a strong initiative with the water for food program and we have a nebraska innovation campus focused on food and water and this is a handful of programs faculty are working on but key ones given our agricultural roots. >> medically at the university of nebraska, lincoln, you're a professor of pathology and microbiology there. this is a headline in the "washington post" this morning. u.s. lacks personnel trained to fight ebola. shortage will hamper the military's efforts against the disease. that's the headline in the "washington post." there is also a recent reuters story that says the third medical missionary to become

infected with the ebola virus was wheeled from a gurnee in the center in omaha for treatment. why the nebraska university hospital? >> yeah, just so for clarity here, we have four campuses and the university of nebraska medical center is based in omaha, not at the university of nebraska lincoln. we have in recent years worked hard at the medical center in omaha to address some of the threats posed by infectious agents. and so many years ago when there was the sars outbreak, we developed a very comprehensive biocontainment unit to provide care for patients who might be affected by infectious agents. and the u.s. state department recognized that capacity at the university of nebraska medical center and asked if we would provide care for this physician. now, that has been an important learning experience for our

staff at the medical center. and they are currently discussing with government officials cdc and others how we can take what we've learned in caring for this patient in our biocontainment unit and provide educational programs for health care providers throughout the country so they are better prepared to deal with this type of infection. it's a critical issue right now. >> dr. linder, another issue for many universities is their athletic program. roger green on twitter wants to know, how do you feel about college athletes forming a union and being compensated for generating millions for the universities? >> well, the university of nebraska, lincoln, has had very successful athletic programs. i believe we have 23 different sports represented both women and men. over 620 athletes. the athletic department is

entirely self-sufficient from the revenue that it generates. the question about student unionization and how money is spent in athletics is in the headlines. we try and focus on student athletes first being students, and as students we'd like to see that they are fairly comprehend sated with full scholarships and support of their expenses. we think that some of the dialogue happening now to better support those students is very important. but in terms of actually compensating students as if they were employees and unionization, that carries many downsides for the student experience. >> dr. linder, jody on twitter quotes, a strong mission to educate, is that why the football coach makes more than the top three teachers at every big university in the united states? >> well, i think that compensation of football coaches is very high.

and each university exists in a marketplace, unfortunately. having a cap on football coaches' salaries would be an interesting national discussion, but it's not one i want to participate in. >> why not? you sound reluctant. explain that. >> i think that the question about capping any profession's salary, whether it's a coach, an entertainer, a ceo is a more complex discussion than we could take on this morning. but we do live in a marketplace. if you're trying to attract top-tier coaches at any school, you're competing with those coaches for the employment of those coaches with other schools.

and so i think that's what's driven these salaries to a level where they are. >> dr. linder at the university of nebraska, lincoln, what is the state of tenured professors? how many do you have? how does the process work? >> at the university of nebraska, lincoln, the tenure density is around 60%. and the process at the university of nebraska lincoln is a faculty may enter a tenure track and after several years of service develop a portfolio that would be assessed to determine whether the faculty would be tenured or not. there are different systems used throughout the country. at our medical center for example, in omaha, faculty -- all faculty enter on what's called a health professions track and sometime during their career, it could be three years or ten years, may opt for a consideration for tenure. but it isn't the classic upper out situation you see in some tenured programs.

>> back to calls, we'll go to brian, texas. william is watching us there. go ahead, william. >> yes. i would like to ask mr. linder how the philosophy of the mentality that would establish several in the early -- 100 years ago has changed. it was originally organized to support the agricultural area or the agrarian society. how has that changed and is the change in the right direction? >> well, the university of nebraska was established in 1869 and i think by all measures we still function as a land grant institution, and i think by all measures we still function as land grant institution to provide substantial support for the agriculture efforts in nebraska. we have the institute for ag and natural resources that has many facuwo