This and the following chapter look at how infusing corruption into areas of human-rights related practice could make a difference. Here I consider transitions from dictatorship or internal armed conflict, and in particular how transitional justice has dealt with corruption. I focus on 3 emblematic transitions from different recent time periods: South Africa, Tunisia and Colombia, and add in some lessons from prior discussion of Guatemala. I find that failure to vet and control military intelligence officers, economic privatization and decentralization, and lack of attention to judicial selection and to auditing, tax and other controls contribute to the emergence of powerful alliances of corrupt officials, organized crime and predatory elites.

The relevant international treaty-based law on corruption, human rights and the environment, with a focus on the convergence of these areas of law. Anti-corruption treaties, especially UNCAC, and human rights treaties are both moving towards recognition of the commonalities. Traces 3 approaches to convergence: corruption as background/context, a human-rights based approach, and a human right to be free of corruption.

Conclusions: I summarize some of the shortcomings of current international legal regimes for dealing adequately with grand corruption, summarize some promising avenues for doing so; evaluate the proposal to create an International Anti-Corruption Court, tackle some of the admitted shortcomings of my approach and note the convergence of current anti-corruption struggles with other social movements.

Considers the international law and practice around asset recovery. Starts with UNCAC Chapter 5 and its genesis, and covers what human rights bodies have said on asset recovery and return. Summarizes the national law of major asset-holding states on recovery and return, and looks at four different models for returning assets to states where they were stolen while avoiding those same assets being re-stolen. Considers some of the complications of asset return where the same networks responsible for stealing them are still in power.

This second chapter on transnational approaches to grand corruption looks at other ways to pressure corrupt governments when internal controls like the judiciary or auditors don’t work. It looks at individual or “smart” sanctions for human rights violations or grand corruption in the US, EU, UK, Canada and elsewhere. It then considers cases based on extraterritorial jurisdiction, private standards and certifications, and conditions placed by international development banks and agencies as sources of pressure and redress.

This chapter considers access to courts for victims of grand corruption, especially in Latin America. It explains the origins and meaning of victim compensation in the UNCAC, how “victim” is defined in human rights law, and uses the Honduran Gualcarque River case to introduce how courts are beginning to apply concepts from human rights law to cases involving victims of grand corruption. It divides these cases into “direct harm” suffered by individual or group victims, and cases involving broad or diffuse harm where victims as a class are represented by civil society organizations. It looks briefly at which civil society organizations should be able to represent victims in proceedings.

Introductory chapter. Why I wrote the book, background, definitions of grand corruption, state capture, kleptocracy, criminal governance and other explanations of the new scope and virulence of systemic corruption; Latin American precursors and experience; organization of chapters.

Reparations for grand corruption: applies a human rights framework based on the UN Basic Principles on Remedy and Reparations to thinking about reparations for grand corruption on a national level. Under restitution, covers social reuse of confiscated property, and land restitution. Compensation is broken down into categories of damages arising from different corrupt acts, with a focus on loss of opportunity damages. The chapter also considers satisfaction, measures of non-repetition, diffuse harms and issues of causation.