the structure and the way people are located means they are at the table. >> time of the gentleman is expired. chair recognizes gentleman from pennsylvania. thank you, chairman. i have a question for dr. levt or perhaps witnesses about the mobile refineries. what do they look like? more importantly, where are they coming from? who is manufacturing them and how are they delivered to the regions where the oilfields exist? >> i would love to know that, too. i'm not an oil expert so i can't answer this in detail. it is quite clear these were there already. it is not something imported into iraq. apparently they are relatively low tech. it is a small refinery you put in the back of a truck. >> do you believe they are manufactured in that region or being imported from somewhere else? >> my understanding is this is

something that is slapped together. so it's being put together by people right there. i don't get the sense that this is being imported. to the extent that i'm wrong that this is something more sophisticated my sense is this has happened some time ago. >> once the oil is refined you have testified that the assad regime is purchasing some of the oil. some of it is being smuggled into the southern regions of turkey where you said the price of gasoline is higher than we would expect here. if you are purchasing barrels of oil at $30 or so a barrel you have reason to know this may be illicit oil. are we doing enough as treasury of the united states to determine who the middle men are that are purchasing oil at $30 a barrel and make sure we are following that money into what

accounts? >> that is exactly what they are doing, identifying the middle men. that is what i discussed more explicitly in my testimony. there is also a significant more diplomatic push to get the turks to do more in southern turkey. people know this is illicit oil. they really don't care. oil costs so much there. people have been putting basically garden hoses across the river and just air pumping oil from the syrian side to the turkey side. there are lots of ways the isis bei --that this is being moved. >> the banks that are helping move the process if in fact isis is making between $1 to $2 million a day that money is not being transported in shoe boxes and placed under a mattress. that money has to be entering the financial system at some

point. the department of justice needs to intensify efforts to identify the financial institutions that are knowingly receiving and transferring isis related funds. >> where are the gaps in the system then? >> one of the gaps can be the fact that some of that money may be going to iraqi banks, foreign banks. the u.s.'s lack of control over foreign banks. banks in qatar and kuwait and iraq. if those banks have u.s. branches in the united states we have control over those. there would be an opportunity where we could exert greater leverage with respect to the u.s. branches to ensure foreign banks aren't being used to move isis oil money. >> nothing further. thank you. >> the last member to be

recognized would be the gentleman from north carolina. >> thank you, mr. chairman. in your testimony you stated that there are only two banks who had violated our bank secrecy act, arab bank in jordan and the arab bank in new york. that's just over the last ten years. is that as a result of our lack of capacity to track these folks? or are there others who are complicit that we haven't been successful at tracking in. >> that's the question. the question is why is it that -- a fairly good job in terms of sanctioning banks that do not have compliant money laundering rejegimregimes.

with respect to financing it doesn't seem to be a priority. is that because of a lack of resources. maybe there is just not enough bodies to be engaged in oversight with respect to whether the banks pose a high risk for terrorist financing or perhaps the weak spot may be with the other federal regulators. the other federal regulators aren't focusing and emphasizing on whether or not the banks are in compliance with the regulations under the bsa. it seems to me that it is unacceptable that we can have only two banks where if you look at the actual orders issued, the only banks where i can find references to threats regarding terrorist financing. >> in that light as we look at our partners throughout the world we have relationships with

them, many of whom we give tens and hundreds of millions of dollars it is always of concern to me of how we are not honored by our relationships with our partners. in particularly in this situation that's so critical for our national security and for theirs, as well. to what extent, what would you advise us as a congress in going forward in how we can put greater pressure on these respective countries and their banks to be in compliance with our bsa requirements? >> one point that i haven't made in my testimony today has to do with the antiterrorism act. it does have a civil provision that authorizes private litigants to bring a civil tort actions against individuals that commit acts of international

terrorism. i think that that statute could be enhanced through amendment to make it a more effective remedy for victims of terrorism including people, entities that aid and abet terrorists, for example banks that knowingly provide financial services and transfer money to suspected terrorists. there are several problems with current legislation as it stands. it doesn't call aiding and abetting. they are left with the dilemma of proving the bank is primarily responsible through secondary action by being an aider or abettor with respect to the acts of terrorism. i think in that way we can unleash plaintiff, unleash an army of litigants to go after banks and charities and other entities that are facilitating

the financing of terrorism. again, i think from an equitable standpoint these are victims. >> thank you. i yield back. gentleman yields back. i want to thank our witnesses for their testimony today. with that all will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions to the chair forwarded to the witnesses for response. there will be five legislative days to submit to the chair for inclusion in the record. this hearing stands adjourned.

coming up live at 1:00 eastern criminal lawyers. we will hear more about findings from former deputy attorney general 1:00 eastern here on c-span 3. later this afternoon discussion about a national sales tax with chair of the republican study committee live at 3:30 eastern. thanks for your comments about our programming. here are a few we received about washington journal. >> i must say washington journal first thing in the morning absolutely wonderful. very informative. i really appreciate you guys letting people such as myself actually call in and sometimes

even talk to people who are running our country and our world. >> i would like to make a suggestion that instead of dividing the country between democrats, republicans, independents c-span should ask the question and have callers either call and agree or disagree. this would save a lot of partisanship. let the ideas get out there and not the political divisions. >> thank you, thank you, thank you. this morning, today what we need. please have more shows like the one today. having a democrat and a republican on there so people can ask them questions about what they are going to do. this was a great show. we need to have them explain what the policies are and how

they differ. they gave their reasons and their reasons were just like mine. we need to know how they think, how they vote and how we should vote and have them on every day with ideas, policies and what they plan to do for the people and have us call in and question them. thank you so much. >> and continue to let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments@c-span.org or send us a sweet. join the conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. next, efforts to return stolen assets from the middle east and north africa. action by the international community.

i know some of our panelists this is their inaugural visit. after the session we will have a reception. we hope you can stick around and mingle with each other and the panelists and me. we are being joined via live stream on internet as well as c-span. you are on tv as well as we are. behave. we are very excited to not only

be hosting this panel entitled returning stolen assets i could not imagine a better set of experts. we gathered about two years ago actually valentin, jay and i to talk about these very issues in the wake of the arab spring with much hope as to what was to come not just in return of assets from the states of north africa but what was happened around the world in terms of dealing with high end corruption and mechanics of asset recovery.

these issues are not new, of course. from the days of ferdinand marcos, to others, these are issues and regimes and themes that are with us and will be with us for a number of years. but what we wanted to do today is to talk about where we are as an international community in the u.s. on dealing with asset recovery. in particular, in the wake of the arab spring and some of the disappointments, in the wake of the tumult and politics and transition in ukraine, and in light of some of the recent cases, in particular brought here in the u.s. and certainly 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 cleptocracy 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'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 worked on all the cases you mentioned. all the cases can you mentioned were swiss cases. we 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 two years ago. 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 tunisia, for example. 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 excellent cooperation with nigeria in that case. now in tunisia we solved the case within three years, and i think that in part is also due to an excellent international cooperation. we could solve the case because we have close cooperation with tunisia but also because we worked with other jurisdictions. and in order to collect all the information you need, 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 thematic shift that you've seen. >> to some ex tent. it's interesting. talking about the north-south issue. we do know in the context of the arab spring, there are huge sums in financial centers. our partners in tunisia tell us in the cooperation with the north is much better than with some of the southern financial centers. that is something that we certainly will have to work on because we will have to create the level playing field. i don't think there will be great use in the big financial centers like the u.s. uk also switched its policieses. uk is much more proactive than they used to be due to a bbc

program they aired in 2012 that severely criticized the uk government. they have really come around. they're very active today but i don't think that's enough. we have a close cooperation. we should extend that cooperation to southern financial centers. >> jay, can you speak just a little bit about sort of the shift in the u.s. approach even over the last couple of years, and maybe take us through this latest case which has gotten so much attention with the seizure of the malibu mansion and the michael jackson statute and the rest. >> sure. i think it is important to recognize that there has been a shift but 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 u.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. connection is either as a legal matter or as a practical matter in terms of extradition, et cetera. so we really focus on the use of civil forfeiture, aware what we have to do is tie the assets to a crime. you don't have to prove that somebody did the crime but you do have to tie the asset to the crime. that requires sophisticated financial investigations where we can trace money that emanated from a corrupt act to the asset. proving that case takes specific evidence and that's really where the game is. can we collect evidence that evidence is located i internationally. the crime scene, if you will, is the country in which it occurred. if that country is cooperating, that may help but the events may have happened a long time ago. the countries not cooperating, that layer has an additional

layer of complexity so you may have to get witnesses who are located in third party countries who might be willing to talk. you then have to get financial records. and cooperation i think has improved tremendously over the past few years but we still have issues in terms of sharing financial records, getting financial records that can then be admitted in court. i think with the rise of some of the data privacy laws that we've seen around the globe, that's 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 have to play. so right now the department has devoted ten prosecutors to this unit within my section who work exclusively on these cases. in addition, the attorney general just announced in february the ukraine asset recovery forum the creation of a specific fbi squad that will focus on these cases and especially in cases that are occurring in real time, as you mentioned. what has changed is we can now respond to events that happened on the ground as opposed to going back 15, 20 years trying to piece together the puzzle. that makes a huge difference. i think 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 tenets of fairness, due process, et cetera. it takes time. i can tell you this from the perspective of a prosecutor but i also appreciate there is then public 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 chapter 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 to the financial centers will return the proceeds of the corruption back to the countries that have suffered from corruption. and we do thereat in a number of ways. we started on the more policy level trying to put asset

recovery on the map. trying to make the pit falls involved that jay just spoke about in an asset recovery, trying to do a bit of advocacy, as well. what are the barriers? what are legal barriers? what should countries be doing to cement those barriers and break through and trying on the topic of trying to push the envelope on their official ownership and make countries aware of the misuse being made. again, that is not a new issue but deserves highlighting of the mysteries to be made of shell companies in on shore and offshore jurisdiction. we tried to push policymakers. i think through the wake and our screaming after the events in

ukraine we have become more focused, also, on really 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 league of assistance. basic step by step stuff but also and the arab asset recovery, one of the examples of that trying to provide a bit of venue where requesting state can meet and discuss the issue of trust is very fundamental, i this can, to successful asset recovery. if you looked at the experiences just after the arab spring there

was a perception if these financial centers were happy taking the proceeds of our -- why should we trust them now? why would they help us? trying to on both sides act as an honest broker i think is an increasing part of the asset recovery initiative and so it's with that perspective when you asked me to highlight some of the issues. if you look at the landscape there is asset recovery, it is through that lens that we look at it. first point to ambassador's point, absolutely. attention given to asset recovery is various factors.

the united nations against corruption and entry into force. i think the financial crisis has helped zero in on abusive shell companies for all sorts of purposes.

that mr. zel weger referred to earlier. in the uk funded by the department for international development which i think is a very interesting funding where you have a number of dedicated police officers specifically focusing on the proceeds of foreign corruption in the london financial system. those sorts of things and the formal asset recovery units and sometimes about breaking down boundaries between parts of government that used to maybe work too much in silo, the financial intelligent unit maybe wasn't connected to the anticorruption unit which might have not been to what the regulators were doing. breaking down boundaries between different parts of government is very much something we have seen and translated into legislative

action, as well. you talk about the sanctions regulations, asset freezing legislation that many countries have adopted. so holding measure. switzerland has done that. arab spring. just a list of these persons freeze their assets now. it's not a judicial freeze in the context of judicial actions, giving the countries time to prepare their judicial action. i think that innovative legislation is happening. civil forfeiture legislation that i think has been around for a long time. you see that i wouldn't say proliferating but you see countries taking up those sorts of legislations, what we call

nonconviction based legislation where you connect the asset to a crime,typically on the balance of probabilities. anyway, looking at legislative action to make it easier for a country to get to stone. the proceeds of cooperation. i think those are all very positive -- positive developments. of course, there are still challenges. if we look as the asset recovery issue, we have a database, the recovery watch, where we try and track international asset recovery efforts. and i think at this stage, i looked at it yesterday, i think actual returns so far we're at 4.9 billion. i think we're at 2.7 billion in frozen assets.

and so, let's say, we're in total at maybe $8 billion. if you look at the whole landscape of asset -- of corruption, $8 billion is maybe not a whole lot. but ambassador made a very good point. maybe we're -- 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, as jay just said, after all, a judicial process. so, you shouldn't overburden it and put all your hopes in that we can do it that way. maybe there are other things that should be looked at as well. one of the challenges that comes up, and it slightly relates to the point of civil asset recovery that jay made earlier, precisely this point of linking an asset in the financial center to a particular crime in a

corrupt or autocratic state. certainly, if you've 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 bribe. that's extraordinary -- that's an extraordinarily high level f of -- you know, that's a very high burden you're 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 equivalent value confiscation. that is to say, i can prove 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 -- even if that asset, i cannot prove the criminal or gibb, 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 asset recovery. i think there are certain subtleties which in a couple of corruption, such as existed in, for instance, tunisia, and there's a very interesting bank published a couple of months ago called "all in the family" and it talks about the way in which the ben ali family had a finger in every pie in the country. and so when you talk about a foreign investor in tunisia, he

doesn't have to be told in so many ways, you have to pay the son of the president or son-in-law of so and so so much money. there is a subtle way of suggesting, that would be a good idea if you took him on your supervisory board. and so there are lots of instances like that where you really have state capture, which, you know, maybe we shouldn't be looking to the asset recovery system to solve those issues, because that is -- you know, there's not a clear intent you can say, that's where -- that's where the corruption took place. so, those are the sort of issues. or other things like parliament really rubber stamping legislation for the ruling family so that it was -- -- completely legal if a minister simply awarded a contract to the president's firm, because under the law, he would be allowed to

do that because the parliament had given him the discretion to do that. sorry. >> before i forget, i was going to raise a point on that. there's a paradox in bringing these cases, which is that the more dictorial the country is, the more case the case is, to prove for precisely that reason. because it may be legally to have conflicts of interest or overt appropriation. in 16th century france if you're lou is xviii, what's the corruption if you give it to somebody you know. paradoxically, some of our bigger successes come in questions where it's an issue of corruption and not cleptocracy, meaning where a family or a 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 an instance where the u.n. convention on corruption would help you you? because it does set the standard applicable to all the countries, because the ratification is pretty universal. i think that should give you a -- >> absolutely. i think it's -- in a sense every country wants to appear legitimate. just by signing onto it, you have hooks to -- >> exactly. >> -- to do it. the question becomes, can you prove to a judge's satisfaction that is the law of the land. absolutely, those are the arguments we make. i just wanted to point out a paradox that existed in our enforcement regime. >> there is a point there about dual criminality, which is really what you're talking about. and to what extent you would be able to, for instance, fall back on more general civil service ethics where you can say a minister should acted in the public interest and clearly,

here, that was of the case. it becomes much more difficult from a purely legal point of view to make the case that was, you know, a condition of international cooperation is mutual -- is dual criminality. it has to be a crime in your country and in that other country. and that's why it's so difficult. >> go ahead. >> but just a few more points on what i think the challenges are. whoa talked earlier about the preventive system and the extent to which, yes, it's very good if we can be successful in our asset recovery efforts but that's all ex post factor but it would be better if we could make sure that money didn't end up in the financial center anyway. that's where due diligence by banks are very important and

squh i think things are changing in the culture of banks. there was some disturbing things reported by the fca, the extent to which banks in those countries had or not implemented due diligence obligations for so-called politically exposed presence. certainly the english report is very hard-hitting and actually very unbureaucrattic in its language. a number of banks were deliberately miscategorizing where they had enough to suggest the opposite was the case. on the preventive side we have work to do. also focusing on the enablers, the lawyers, the accountants, the trust and company service providers who tend to set up these constructs of shell

corporations. and if you talk to many financial centers, and particularly to the investigators in those countries, they'll -- they often say the same thing. they say, it's actually quite a small defined group of the same lawyers and the same accountants, the same trust companies we see in many cases. it's -- but it's very hard to get them on the hook for the crime. ed 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 resources to go after those enablers. because in the big picture, they are the small fish. but actually, in the big, big picture, there is such a small category of those, maybe it is worth focusing more on that. so i think those sort of challenges still remain. i don't want to end on a

neglect five note, by any way. i think really we have come a long way. and if you've worked on something as obscure as beneficial ownership for a long time and then 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 ministries. suddenly to become this big issue is extraordinary. as is the fact that there are so many people here today. this debate is clearly generating some interest, so i think those are some hopeful signs. i'll leave it there. >> wonderful points. i do want to come back at some point to this notion of thinking about changes and how we address these challenges of modes of different corruptions in

cleptocracy, especially with family-runned, state-owned enterprises. it then 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 paradigm 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. but just to sort of give the audience a sense of, you know, what these kinds of cases look like, valentin, i was wondering if, especially given your historical view, your role in switzerland, can you give us a sense of the kinds of cases that are still under way now and that you see as still prominent in

the swiss financial and legal context? just give us 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 marcos was toppled. the case is still not really finalized. we sent back $680 million in 2002, but the philippines then had to enact a law that would allow the victims, the human rights violations of the presidency of mr. marcos, to be -- you know, to have a right to have access to these funds. and the political problem the filipinos 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 increasing 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 zair, 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 case because the congolese institutions were weakened to a point where we could no longer cooperate with them so we had to release the funds. as you said, and i think jay made a very convincing case, we have to go through judicial procedures. we cannot rely on congolese courts. 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. without any and in the end it went to the mabutu family. that led switzerland to enact a statue 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 last september. september of 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. but that is always a challenge because we -- you know, by being active on asset recovery of the restitutional funds, there is also some kind of an expectation in our countries that we're not just writing a check, putting it to the mail office and send the money back. to just see how it evaporates again. so we have to find ways how we can ensure that it will be spent in an accountable manner. so, these are just two cases. you have all the ongoing cases in the wake of the arab spring. >> i'll come back to you. i want to ask you the question of what are some of the modalities of the return of assets to get at precisely 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 as well. >> we have many investigations going on all over the globe. i think reich the ukraine and the effort to do it. i can't speak to specifics about pending investigations because i wouldn't want the money to go fleeing somewhere else. >> can you give -- >> what i do want to do is talk a little about what we've been able to do since bringing our resources together. you know, we've had a wide variety of cases that have become public over the past few years. we've had cases against the former president of taiwan, chen. former -- last dictator of south korea. abaca, which i know is longer in the tooth, and i think that's an example of how quickly things can go.

we instituted a forfeiture action for funds located abroad. this was jurisdiction we had over money not located in the united states, but various jurisdictions including the uk and elsewhere. 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. but we were able to do that quickly. and are now in the process of enforcing those judgments in foreign courts. and i think what the oben 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 these cases for 20 years until 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 country and people effected. i think in that case we took what i think would be a fairly aggressive posture against a sitting official, or i should say became a sitting official, but who was very well connected and litigated it. 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 then transferred into the title of the state of equatorial guinea, so it posed the problem of if any government would assist us in seizing that asset, even though we would have legal arguments as to why it wasn't a valdz transfer. assets located in he can w equa guinea. the entire value of our assets that we had a realistic possibility of getting our hands 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's sets. and i think those are, quite frankly, the kind of judgments we'll 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, other things. to changes can happen but they're a little longer. in the meantime, i think we have to be a prosecutor and litigator. i try to be on the grounds and practical. i think we need to figure out how we get within the tools that we have the money into our possession legitimately and then try to work on repatriating it. >> real quickly, for folks who aren't familiar with the obian case, what was actually for fitted? >> in the end we were able to forfeit the malibu mansion, which is -- i'm not even sure, experts have to remind me what the actual -- it was an enormous mansion in malibu. we were able to forfeit the value of the property that was located in equatorial guinea with respect to the michael

jackson paraphernalia, so -- paraphernalia he purchased with corrupt funds. >> including life-size statues. >> including life-size statues. 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 happen to travel to paris you'll notice there's a mansion that's an entire city block in a very nice part of paris. there are still ongoing cases. and nothing that we did affects or immunizes others. doesn't affect other jurisdictions that might want to go after assets. 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 systems -- system of law to acquire things of value and then go to the next step. >> let me ask you one question before we get to the question of recovery and models for recovery. how do you see sort of the ukraine situation going from your perspective? and are there other cases, either bubbling 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 response to the 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 jump to and say, okay, we're going to check to see what we have here. i think another thing that is very interesting is the roll of civil society in actually digging up the evidence and going through those bits of

paper that had been thrown in the palms and other places around the mansion and trying to piece that together played such an important role in preserving valuable evidence for -- for others to work with. i think those are some of the things that really stand out. other things are more, let's 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 one example, and valentin, please correct me because you've been much more closely involved in that than i have, but in the context of kazakhstan, the

monies located in switzerland, pursuant to an action by the u.s., i think $60 million, more or less. and the question -- this was a while 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 that was found was to set up a foundation, the voda foundation in which u.s., 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 we have been given indications and there have been stories in the press as well, will happen with money that was recently returned by lick tin stein in the abachi case again after 14 years of litigation to nigeria. finally, through all the processes of first appeal, appeals of the europe court of human rights. eventually, case closed, $230 million returned a few months ago. and there again, the minister of finance of nigeria, who by the way 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, foundation or an 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 of assets and ensuring the transparency of use of those assets. >> 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. >> yep.

let's address the arab forum on asset recovery. again, that's a venture we do in close cooperation with the world bank and 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 and 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 cooperation. we have had great successes and, again, i think tunisia is a very encouraging example. in the tunisia case there will probably be a soon return of the other funds. probably not compared if you look at the global sums that were involved, but it will be a very important restitution. it's more -- a bit more difficult in the case of egypt, given the country's development.

again, also in egypt, there are very encouraging signs of an increased cooperation and we could then also go into a restitution mode soon. i think that will be the topic at the conference. as for switzerland's role, we have received a mandate, so to speak, in the last of this u.n. conference against corruption because i think all of us slowly come to realize that if you have now this great instrument that is the u.n. convention against corruption, but it's not sufficient just to put it in the u.n. statute books. i give you an example. if you have an international obligation to engage in mutual legal assistance, there's so many ways you can do that. if we receive, for example, a request from country "x" and we look at the request and we can say, well, sorry, that request

is not sufficient. we return it to the center. 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. theets the decisive factor. do you cooperate? is it a sign of cooperation or do you just apply your statue books? it's like we come into new die mention. we have now the right, i think, rules on our statute books but now we have to breathe life into them. we got a mandate by assembly state parties to now look, what are the lessons learned? our past practice? we have organized a conference in switzerland with a group of countries that are experts and have been actively involved in

these cases to see what has worked. and i think, jay, you mentioned the importance of trust. trust is absolutely essential. in resolving these cases. highway do you establish that? i remember when i first traveled to tunisia in 2011 they told me exactly at emile indicated, why should i trust you? why should i believe you? you took our money in the first place and now you tell us you're going to help us. i have to explain, i'm a government official. i'm not a banking official. the banks took, the government never agreed to that. we're fighting corrupt money in switzerland. have you to establish trust. then you have all these issues, for example, in some countries you're able to build relationship but in the post-revolutionary society you often have subsequent changes of government. you take the living case which is very familiar to you. i don't know how many

governments they had since the down fall of mr. gadhafi. every time you have to establish a new relationship, what we wanted to do, which is what we did in this conference of switzerland, look into the practices. what are then also important lessons? i just give you another example. the timing of mutual 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 we will send next year to the conference, i hope with all the countries involved, especially the world bank, it's a bit like asset recovery 2.0. what is the next die mention? 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. we have to get better because it does fay too much time. >> you introduced this thing, 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 branks in preventive context to know their customer, engage in heightened due diligence for politically exposed persons, known as p.e.p.s in the field. is there resistance from the bank to say, it's not our job? certainly, i heard this in the wake of the arab spring, the bank saying, look, on one day these are good guys and countries we're supposed to be doing business with and the next day they're toppled regimes and we're supposed to be hunting their assets? aren't we, the backs, getting

caught in the political winds here in an unfair way. have you felt resistance on what are fairly aggressive steps on your part? >> the world are changing and even the banks are changing. we felt it. 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 european union came and 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 invitation. so, have you to be quick. the swiss government was quick but it got criticized by the bank. what happened in between -- which is interesting because we're now preparing a statue because the swiss government has always acted on kind of an emergency power given to it in the swiss constitution.

the deal was, the parliament accepted what the government did but it said you have to submit a statue -- a draft statute to have a whole range of government activities in this field, debated by parliament. we're now in the process of doing this in parliament. so we drafted a statute that really is a comprehensive like how to do manual of everything we did so far. the interesting thing is that the banks are fully behind it. this is what has changed, the reputation for banks is just too high. to come to the ukraine, when the swiss government froze, that is also a progress, for the first time we froze on the same day as other sanctions, that would have been absolutely impossible two years ago. this time we coordinated among some centers and the european union came just a few days

later. but when some of the banks contacted me, some of the big banks in switzerland said, we have no problem with that because we went out of the ukrainian business a while ago. it's too hot. i think that's an indication that the reputational risks are recognized by the banks. i'm sure this applies to other countries. let me make a last point. i think we shouldn't underestimate a huge change that has taken place over the years. if you look back 20 years ago, corruption was accepted as a fact of life. well n some countries have you to deal with it. it'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 not possible but an offense to bribe in other countries. that means corruption today is seen as a phenomenon we can fight. we just have to keep on fighting

it and hopefully we'll be able to one day erase it. this brings me to the last point, i promise. i think we should stress prevention. asset recovery is like the firemen. 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 monies in the first place. >> i just want to build on something alton said and that's the attitude of the financial institutions. another part of what my section does is we bring actions against financial institutions for violations. and you do hear sometimes from financial institutions where we're being whip-sided by the political lens but ma they're focuses on are the o-fact but

the p.e.p. regulations are completely separate and 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 and also on trying to figure out if there is a business model out there that allows 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 relationship with your customers and maybe marketing to a global audience. i think what needs to change is it needs to become part of the dna of the 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 compliance person telling the business person, you know, you need to follow this

rule. they'll find a way to check the box and circumvent it. when a business person with a client, are they asking a right question to know what their business is, to know who these people are when a transaction happens, do they understand the source of that income, et cetera? that really does have to work its way into the very business model of the bank before we don't see these major actions and other things against them. 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 without and something they need to do as part of their daily operations. >> before we open up to audience, i have one more question, and maybe emile and jay can answer quickly. are we see new methodologies for regimes or cleptocrats to move

money and art world, performing high-end art, in the islamic state you've seen articles and op-eds about the use of antic wew -- antic wes. are we seeing any more in the space that are of interest? >> as you mentioned, you might see new classes of assets. if i think of my good friend bob mazer who was an investigation guy in customs and he went undercover in the cali cartel in the '90s. and did extraordinary work gathering information undercover for two years and wrote a book about that called "the infiltrate are" which is currently being turned into a film. and he is -- he did, obviously, a lot of work then as a customs agent and still now 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 is it -- why it is magnificent is because it is exactly the same. the modalities are exactly the same. so, yes, the class of asset might have changed and now there are other things they can lay their hands on, but the way the money is being moved actually -- and, you know, every now and then new shell companies and new types of companies are involved, okay, because legislation has changed. okay, so there's some tweaking there. but the underlying is pretty much the same. and the separation of money in different jurisdictions and making sure that there is huge legal distance, i would say, between an asset and the ultimate beneficial. and 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. >> jay? >> i would say the same thing. i think that money launderers today are very much like portfolio managers. there's an entire illicit world that services organized crime, cleptocrats, various sources and there's a next us between organized crime and cleptocrats 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. and i think we in law enforcement sometimes tend to -- when a case arises we say, ah, that's a new mode of doing things. 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 a sophistication on the legitimate side. these are people who are trying

to make their transactions look like legitimate transactions, so they can place cash in the system, they can layer it and distance themselves from the illegal conduct and ultimately integrate it into the economy. and that's the reality. and i think that's right. a less colorful example is, you know, before a talk i gave a little while ago, i read the 2005 treasury risk assessment. and i was shocked. because the seven things they identified there are the exact seven things that 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 that we failed in fighting crime. crime exists because it's something that emerges 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 the legitimate person will manage his assets or her assets. that's all that's happening. they're using different modalities to move things around. we just need to be careful shifting all of our resources to horses baz we found out that the mexican car sels are now using horses to launder their money or, you know, to par bonds because abacho was using them. we just need to be limber and realize we need to know -- to understand the financial system the way it actually works and distinguish legitimate conduct from illegitimate conduct. >> wonderful. let's now open it up for questions. we're going to have a microphone. i believe we've got microphones. yes. so wait for the microphone, identify yourself, please, and then ask us a single question. we want to get as many people as possible. i want to thank the swiss embassy for their support. they brought valentin here. valentin has been the cat last

for these events for us. i want to thank him for spurring us to do these and with the support of the swiss embassy. thank you very much. >> would you like me to stand? >> yes, please. >> my name is sand sirk, i'm a lawyer in washington and i have a question for mr. ramaswamy and also others. before i ask the question, i need to disclose that i'm serving as a voluntary pro bono counsel for two ngos that have filed comments in regard to their 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 transparency of international in berlin. the u.s. civil forfeiture statute requires the justice department to cooperate fully, although that may not be the statutory language, with the state department in making decisions on the method of

repatriation. i wonder if you could elaborate a bit on that and particularly identify who some of the players are at the state department that you would work with, in a case such as abache. secondly, if you could elaborate a bit on there are any opportunities for a more fulsome 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, and i think it's shared by everybody i work with, we're public servants, of course we accept comments and suggestions from the public. that's what we do and that's what we should do as good stewards of the public trust. having said that, we are also --

we work within the confines of statutes that govern what forfeiture -- forfeited assets can be used for. we do work very closely with the state department and the list is too long. don't think i could give you a laundry list of who we work with. there are many people over there. there are people in the budget. there are people in the more programatic areas we work with. and one of the challenges that we have is how do we use the authorities that are given to us in the forfeiture statutes to fund certain specific categories of things? and how do we work with the state department to identified, one, recipients who can receive the funds and who we are authorized to give the funds to and, two, who will exercise a degree of oversight to make sure that the funds don't get recycled back into 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 i'm not sure that one model is going to work in every days. in the case of the boda foundation, the funds were in switzerland, they were legal realities and so a foundation was created in that instance. and i think everybody will agree was very effective way of getting money back in a responsible way. and the tag line that i like to use, i'm actually borrowing it from the actual supervisor who leads the group, but reresponsible repatriation is what we want to focus on. in obiang, there are a number of different mechanic nichls we'll have to use. part of the money was forfeited. part of the moeb will be going to an as of 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 to do the best we can within the legal confines of what we're given. >> right here, mr. kumer. >> many thanks to the panelists for an excellent presentation. i have basically two questions. i'm ahmed kumar. 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 rlt 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 two emile and to jay is to, what extent are -- is the recovery of terrorist assets in

terms of their legal and judicial challenges different from recovery of assets belonging to p.e.p.s? thanks. >> sure. why don't we answer this. >> the answer is very simple. there's no banking secrecy if we're talking about illegal acts. so, if we get a request from a prosecutor in another country, there's no banking secrecy. we have very stringent know your customer rules so we're quick in being able to give the information. we do have, as you say, we have long -- we have had long discussions with the indian government. but that is for tax evasion. and tax evasion used not to be a criminal offense under swiss law. that is changing. we are now adapting to international standards. but that is at the heart of the dispute. and there is a disagreement with the indian government as to what

exactly will have to be disclosed. and as you just indicated, there is a new indian government and we now hope that we will be able to resolve the case much quicker than we could do so in the past. >> jay, emile, on the question of terrorist assets versus p.e.p. 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. 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 evidence. 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 permission from the foreign government to declassify that information so that it can be used. there might be a concern over what we call gray mail, which is a tactic that is sometimes used to try to force the government to disclose information 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 a classified information procedures act, which requires the government to turn over and declassify any exkulpaer to 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 these situations. on the civil side there's no

analogous structural side so it's a little more free-flowing. sometimes we make the arguments that cipa should apply, you know, has sort of criminal component. we sometimes make arguments of state secret which are much harder to make. but those are the constellations of challenges that ultimately emerge. that's it. but the structure's the same. we go after those assets and i think there are some notable cases where we've succeeded in doing so. >> yeah. emile, very quickly, please. >> yeah, that would be the same for most -- i mean, those rules apply internationally, i.e., terrorism is considered to be a predicate for money laundering just like 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 -- that's where a lot of debates surrounding the legitimacy of that, the designation process itself, whether it's in conformity with due process and 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 then held on for 10, 20 years, doesn't it become very close to, in fact, de facto confiscation? >> gentleman in the back. >> steven donahue. thank you, juan, very much for hosting this. any time that a ruler steals money, he's taking away from schools and hospitals and infrastructure of his own people. a question for jay. 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 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 decision of whether to bring a case are tactical decisions, are prosecutorial decisions. even in those instances and we do have the obiang case being one, certainly we want to make sure that there is information to the extent we're not precluded of sharing that information because of investigative necessity or grand jury secrecy. 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 somehow 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 succomb to pressure and i can proudly say we haven't faced in pressure. >> this is a fundamental question when we talk about prevention and how to deal with sitting rulers or regimes. i'm very interested to hear from the swiss perspective. the swiss are known for their diplomacy and neutrality. how do you think about dealing with this issue in an ongoing context, not a historical case? >> well, happy to hear we're known for our diplomacy.

i didn't know that. >> well, we certainly rely upon it. >> i would say exactly the same. as jay 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 had a prosecution against the daughter of the uzbek. you can imagine this was highly sensitive. so, we did not interfere. we declared her a per son nongrat that, which is a serious step you take. you made an extremely important point. sometimes have you to cooperate because there are security issues. if we were surprised by a prosecutorial actions of our colleagues in the justice ministry, without being, you

know, aware of it, i think in some casings they could be at risk for our missions in countries. we had that in the context of libya. you remember 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 citizens as hostages. it blocked swiss politics for almost two years. it was only resolved when gadhafi had to leave the country. just to come back, our thanks for applauding swiss diplomacy, but in this case diplomacy doesn't play any role at all. we have a strict separation of powers. if prosecutors decide to go against anybody, we will just have to accept it. we do accept it. >> yes, sir, right here in the middle.

>> peter harpry, i'm an intelligence analyst. i'm wondering when all else fails, if the white hat hackers might not be able to resolve these situations at an infinitely cheaper cost? i'm wonder who might authorize that, what element of the national command authority or could it be done by the worker bees? i'm wondering the next us between the treasury and white hat hackers might be? i'm wondering how the banks might respond when a decrepit asset suddenly disappears off their accounts? do they look the other way or do they make a stink? >> the issue of covert and cyber capabilities. someone to want take that? >> i used to be a cyber prosecutor so i have some appreciation for what you're talking about. luckily 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. so, i'm in the fortunate position of not having to deal with it. >> you talked about the role of civil society. you certainly have experience with private sector side of asset recovery. what is the role of the private sector, either to gather evidence, to be sort of catalysts in other ways? emile, what's your sense? maybe not in cyber. >> i think we've seen increased participation by an interest by the private sector. i think it's been always focused as i said in my introductory, it's been 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, lawyers, accountants, those advisers, who in some countries and in the european union are subject to anti-money laundering obligations and have to report transactions. but in other countries, are absolutely not. u.s. being one of them. as far as i understand, jay, you correct me if i'm wrong, it's unthinkable here that the lawyers would be regulated for anti-money laundering purposes. i think there is quite a bit of divide between europe and america on the other side. >> one last question. want to be respective of the time. sir, the very back there. very back. >> thanks for this forum. i direct the question to the doj

official. >> your name, sir. >> my name is kenneth. i'm an attorney here in washington. i just wanted to get your thoughts on a senate report a while back about atique from nigeria who is now probably going to contest in the next election for president about money laundering. sounds like a the abache stuff. i'm wondering why no action has been taken against him, him being atiqu. >> 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 we have limited resources. and so we essentially pursue cases that we have -- can develop evidence of. i don't know the specks of that

investigation or not investigation or what you're referring to. but if we had evidence, we would be investigating it and pursuing it but i don't have anything specific. >> i'm sorry. there was a senate report that the resources that came in were actually -- 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 and evidence that's in the senate report and what's admissible evidence in a court of law. and so i can't comment on anything specific. that's going on, but that's where when you asked, why is nothing done, it could be because gathering admissible evidence takes a longer time than collecting information of other sorts. there could be a whole host of

explanations but i don't know specifically what the situation is there. >> 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. please join me in thanking our panelists and thank you all. >> we are having a little reception out here. you're welcome to join us. on behalf of csis, thank you for coming.

coming up live at 1 p.m. eastern, criminal defense lawyers and their report on how the judiciary is obstructing the disclosure of evidence in criminal cases. we'll hear more about those findings from former deputy attorney general and ninth circuit court chief judge alex kaczynski here on c-span3. later this afternoon discussion about a national sales tax with congressman rob woodall, live at 3:30 eastern. before the discussion on disclosure and criminal cases begins, a look at the week ahead in congress. from today's "washington journal." >> at the table is paul albergo of bloomberg, director of news coverage there to talk to us about the agenda. looks like a busy week or so here in congress. thank you for joining us.

>> thank you for having me. >> so, one of the headlines today says this, the keystone pipeline is heading for a showdown in the senate. we know the house passed approval last week. senate takes up a big vote tomorrow. what are they going to do? >> well, i'm not -- i can't say exactly what they're going to do. i believe, though, that it probably will come up for a vote. whether it passes or not, i don't know. but i think the last i heard, the supporters of the bill had 59 votes to be able to -- for cloak tour to actually bring it onto the floor. they were working the phones this weekend, trying very hard to get that last vote to let it go through. just because they get the votes to led it go through for discussion, doesn't necessarily mean everybody is going to vote for it. democrats very much want to give mary landrieu a chance to say, look what i did. especially since this bill in the house was sponsored by her opponent in the louisiana run-off, cassidy. they to want help her because

democrats want to preserve that seat. whether it passes is the question at the moment. >> what senators are they looking at to get over that hump, to 60? >> i think they're trying to get as many as they can. they're working any democrat they can. so, i wouldn't say there's one in particular they're putting pressure on. i think any democrat that they can get just to get them over the 60 they'll take. >> remind us of what the keystone xl pipeline is and why it's so controversial. >> well, the pipeline would connect oil tar sands in alberta with the refinery and export facilities along the gulf coast. mostly in louisiana. and it is a pipeline that will cut right down the center of the united states. one of the big issues is the section that goes through nebraska. it will go over a series of aqua fers and there are concerns among environmentalists and others that a pipeline like that is dangerous. it could lead to potential

contamination of those aquafers, other environmental issues as well. so, the primary concern is environmental. what it would do, what the supporters of it believe it would do, is that it would boost energy, both production here, help lower our energy prices, although energy prices are pretty low now, and create jobs. not only in the construction of the site but then oil jobs down on the gulf coast. >> has the president said for sure that he will veto this? >> he has not said for sure he's going to veto it. he's not come out for sure and said, i will veto it. although he's been hinting at vetoes. he's also been hinteding or dropping enough hints to indicate that there may be room for compromise here. immediately after the election, josh earnest seemed to indicate that there was the possibility of compromise in this area. beyond that, the president has been downplaying the significance of keystone both in its role in energy production

and job creation in the united states but also in its environmental impact. they've been sort of saying, we've done enough else with epa, with our rules, that we think even if keystone went through, we think the environment would be -- would bl protected. i think those are pretty clear signals that they're willing to compromise. and keystone may end up being something that the obama administration can give the republicans in order to get something somewhere else. >> just so folks are clear on the timetables here, the senate comes in today for some other business. perhaps they'll talk a little about keystone, but this more formalized debate is supposed to happen tomorrow afternoon. they have said votes for the 6:00 hour. you can watch all of that on c-span2 live. you can watch the house debate on the bill by congressman cassidy of louisiana, which happened last week in the house. you can watch that at our website c-span.org. we have phone numbers on the bottom of the screen for democrats, republicans and independents. our guest is paul albergo,

bloomberg bna's director of news coverage. all of a sudden there's a lot on the table here. there's keystone and then, of course, immigration which we've been talking a lot about this morning. immigration, not so much legislatively but over at the white house, executive action. what are you hearing about this? >> well, it doesn't matter what bill or what topic is being discussed. immigration is the shadow that's -- that's cast over it. we keep hearing from republicans that if the president takes any action on immigration, it would poison the well. it's hard to imagine how much more the well could be -- could be poisoned at this point. we're also hearing, though, that republicans recognize there are some things they have to do regardless of how they feel about immigration and about what the president's going to do. there are things they have to do, like pass a spending bill to keep the government open and funded past december 11th. possibly working to continue

the -- a series of tax breaks, extenders, research and development, things along those lines. we think there will be action, but whatever happens before they get to it, there's going to be a long discussion about immigration. and the question is when the president is going to act and what the president would do if, indeed, he does act. >> what are you hearing timetablewise? >> last week i was hearing it might be this week. last i heard, maybe not quite right because they are not quite sure they've got their is dotted and their ts crossed, so it might go a little longer. i don't know i can say to you that means something more than this is a president that wants to make sure he's got his ducks in a row as opposed to postponing it for -- for a little bit further time to negotiate with republicans. >> one of the other headlines here, this one in politico, dick durban on the democratic side said the senate is still a vote short for keystone, as our guest points out.

our guest is paul albergo, director of bloomberg bna. let's hear from tony first, new haven, connecticut, democrat. hey, tony. go ahead, tony. >> caller: yeah. i want to make a comment on the immigration bill and this pipe lion bill. i think the congress and the president and the senators start thinking about those people in this here. the pipeline's not going to help the 2.5 million kids that we have in this here country that are starving, people that are on social security, that congress at one time wanted to cut them and privatize it. we have trouble over here. the pipeline's not going to take care of these people that need, you know, -- don't have nothing. i mean, what they should be concentrating on, people that are scamming the system that are getting illegal welfare, getting illegal food stamps. you had a caller early today from illinois, the lady said she was on $32 a month food stamps.

these are programs that should be taken care of. >> anything you want to add there? >> just that i think the supporters of the keystone pipeline would it would be a chance or a way to add jobs to the economy, you know, and while it's probably not enough to really lower unemployment or to create great change, anything that adds jobs to the economy is going to help kids who are, you know, from families that are having a hard time making ends meet, add some more tax revenue into the economy, a little bit of stimulus from people working, but it's not a zero sum game. there's no reason why you can't tackle keystone, whether they pass it or not, you can't tackle that, tackle immigration, and also at the same time deal with other issues. >> one other issue is the budget. we've been talking about this temporary government funding bill that's in place now, goes until december 11th. it's called continuing resolution. how much of the government is funded through this current bill

and what are the stakes like heading into december 11th? >> well, the entire government is funded by this. this congress didn't pass any appropriation bills this year at all. so the funding for the entire government is dependent on this or the authority comes from this continuing resolution, which expires on december 11th. so if something isn't done by then, the entire government will shut down. obviously essential services continue, but most of the government, just like the last time, would shut down. mcconnell, speaker boehner, president obama, they've all said that there's -- they have no interest in shutting the government down, so the question isn't whether the government would shut down i don't think. the question is exactly what the strategy is. whether we get another continuing resolution, which is essentially a temporary spending order. they spend at the current levels. it doesn't change law. they spend at the current level

to a point likely early in the next congress or whether or not they pass some or all of the 12 spending bills. there are 12 that they would need to pass. the chairman of the senate and house appropriations committees are having their committees work as if there is going to be the 12 spending bills that would be tied together in one omnibus package, so they're moving on that strategy. house republicans are trying to decide what their strategy is going to be, what a lot of anti-immigration or folks who are very concerned about the president's action on immigration, what they're pushing for is retaining some leverage through spending over the administration. one of the ideas that we heard last week might be that the entire government gets funded except for the department of homeland securities, which is primary responsible for immigration in this country. give that just temporary spending so you still have some

leverage, and if in the new year the president has by that point taken executive action, you could use that bill to defund whatever the president did, to overturn what the president did, or let that department shut down on the thinking that one small part of the government, granted homeland security is not really a small part, but one part of the government shuts down, doesn't have the same impact as the whole government. >> next call for paul albergo. susan, edgewater, maryland, republican caller. >> caller: hi, good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: i want to say something about that keystone pipeline. if the congress passes this, i sincerely hope our president will actually veto it, and the reason why is even though i am a republican, i am very much concerned about the environmental impact. there's always a cost to all of these things, and if there is leaks like fracking where all the chemicals go into the groundwater, we as a society pay

for that because we have polluted water. i live in edgewater. my water that comes out of my well is not drinkable. i have a special filter that i have to go through in order for me to have drinkable water, and i just think that the environmental studies that are being done are run by certain individuals or groups to promote these economic policies that destroy the environment and there is a cost to that that i don't think we as a society should be paying because there's health care costs, we have cancer going rampant, we have, you know, so many problems that, yeah, the environmental destruction enhances that. thank you. >> thanks for calling, susan, republican against the pipeline for environmental reasons. >> and she just summed up the argument right there. the benefit, the economic benefits that come from an

increased energy supply, homegrown energy supply, possibly lower energy costs but also the jobs that come with a project like this versus the potential environmental impact, and, again, it's a potential environmental impact, but it's one that there are a number of people who are very concerned about. not just what the pipeline can do, but also just the whole tar sands effort, which is it's much harder to extract that oil from the ground. it requires a lot of energy to do it. there's a lot more carbon pollution that comes with it as well, and so the debate is the benefit of jobs versus the risk to the environment. >> and here is one question via twitter. j.d. redding, will keystone pipeline drop prices even lower than they are today. we know gas prices are dropping. he was thinking the other day, wat watch the pipeline pass and the prices rise. he's thinking of it the other way. >> we have between fracking, the

surge in liquefied natural gas, we've had an amazing amount of energy come online in this country, and as a result we've seen prices drop. i've seen even some studies that have been talking about how the price of oil right now is so low that it may not even make keystone financially feasible. that at some point it gets to a point where the cost of pulling this -- of pulling this stuff out of the tar sands and of pumping it down to the gulf coast might not be economically feasible because there's so much other energy there. i have not seen anything definitive, but it is certainly possible that would happen. >> tim is on the line from wilson, north carolina now. independent caller. good morning, tim. >> caller: yes, good morning. thank you for taking my call. >> sure. >> caller: yes. you know, canada don't want this stuff in their neighborhood. i don't know why they don't build it up there. it seemed that we are, first of

all, we send all this oil to the market and this oil coming down from there, most of it is not going to come to the united states. this stuff is going overseas to make these oil companies and these oil investors super rich. the oil that's here in our ground belongs to the american people. we are selling it out. i don't understand why nobody would say, why don't we use the oil that's in america for the american people? it would drive the cost of gas, they did a study, down to under $1 a gallon and take the poft ed profit edge out of it. we're selling away our kids' future. we're selling away the assets that are in the ground that they are going to need to china and all these foreign countries. >> let's hear from our guest. >> well, actually the reason the price of gas has been dropping so much recently is because there is so much of this energy that's staying here within the united states, and that as we've

increased our production, the price has gone down. it's hard to sort of say, you know, let's keep it here as opposed to going overseas because it's almost, you know, a big pool. the less we use, the more that goes somewhere else. so i'm not sure that that's a one-to-one kind of a thing. there is some debate in this country now to open up exports to allow the united states to export more liquefied natural gas to get it out to make some money off of that and to satisfy -- >> a couple minutes before we're going to start. just want to kind of get your attention because at 1:00 we're going to begin. so we have about another minute or so.

good afternoon. my name is theodore simon, i am the president of the national association of criminal defense lawyers or nacdl as we like to call ourselves. and a trustee of the foundation for criminal justice, the fcj. nacdl and the foundation for criminal justice are proud to have partnered with the var tas

initiative at the santa clara law school to produce a major research report addressing one of the major challenges facing the nation's criminal justice system, the need to ensure fair, full, and timely disclosure of information favorable to an accused in a criminal action. let me begin by welcoming all of you and expressing the heartfelt gratitude of nacdl and the foundation for criminal justice for your interest in this important issue. the right to a fair trial and due process of law is essential to the survival of a free society. no one wins when the process may contribute to the conviction of an innocent person. no one wins when the ultimate arbiter of the required standard of proof, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one's peers, are