Repatriating Canada’s Plundered Wealth
© 2008 Brad Kempo B.A. LL.B.
Barrister & Solicitor
During the early years of the new millennium the international community began realizing that something had to be done about the corrupt elites of second and third world countries who were embezzling the wealth of the nation. The genesis of these sensibilities were from the still lingering desire to track down looted riches plundered by the Nazis on their march through Europe during the Second World War. The result of deliberations was the United Nation Convention Against Corruption.
As globalization evolves and countries become richer, systemic and individual instances of corruption are predicted to get worse. In its wisdom the international community decided it was time to install a multilateral, legal and bureaucratic structure to address the growing problem and begin delivering relief to afflicted nations. Canada is one of them.
United Nations Convention against Corruption
International cooperation
Countries agreed to cooperate with one another in every aspect of the fight against corruption, including prevention, investigation, and the prosecution of offenders. Countries are bound by the Convention to render specific forms of mutual legal assistance in gathering and transferring evidence for use in court, to extradite offenders. Countries are also required to undertake measures which will support the tracing, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of corruption.
Asset recovery
In a major breakthrough, countries agreed on asset-recovery, which is stated explicitly as a fundamental principle of the Convention. This is a particularly important issue for many developing countries where high-level corruption has plundered the national wealth, and where resources are badly needed for reconstruction and the rehabilitation of societies under new governments. Reaching agreement on this chapter has involved intensive negotiations, as the needs of countries seeking the illicit assets had to be reconciled with the legal and procedural safeguards of the countries whose assistance is sought.
Several provisions specify how cooperation and assistance will be rendered. In particular, in the case of embezzlement of public funds, the confiscated property would be returned to the state requesting it ;
[…]
Effective asset-recovery provisions will support the efforts of countries to redress the worst effects of corruption while sending at the same time, a message to corrupt officials that there will be no place to hide their illicit assets. Accordingly, article 51 provides for the return of assets to countries of origin as a fundamental principle of this Convention.
Chapter I – Article 1
The purposes of this Convention are:
(a) To promote and strengthen measures to prevent and combat corruption more efficiently and effectively;
(b) To promote, facilitate and support international cooperation and technical assistance in the prevention of and fight against corruption, including in asset recovery;
(c) To promote integrity, accountability and proper management of public affairs and public property.
Source: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/index.html
Part of the country’s secret trans-generational corruption involved economy monopolization and wealth plundering. The public record indicates that some half trillion dollars left the country in the form of outward foreign direct investment over the last twenty-five years.
Extrapolated from that, and…
(i) the size of the economy – having doubled in the last twenty-five years,
(ii) inherent riches in terms of natural resources and a prolifically expanding economic activity, and
(iii) the government’s ability to conceal an entire society within a society, the Chinese, and the real nature of politics and the economy,
...and the conclusion is reached that the actual amount of wealth the rich and powerful had monopolized and plundered for their own parochial interests and China’s foreign policy is double to triple the publicly stated figures
