Open Society justice Foundation (2017) - Against the Odds. CICIG in Guatemala (original) (raw)
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CICIG: The Pattern of an External Institution Against the Impunity in Guatemala
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Costa Rica’s Anti-Corruption Trajectory: Strengths and Limitations
In spite of the economic and social policy successes of Latin America’s longest surviving democracy, corruption has become a major problem shaking Costa Ricans’ confidence in appointed and elected public officials. In response to the apparent rise in corruption since the start of the new millennium, governments have introduced new laws and created new agencies to combat corruption at all levels of society, with an emphasis on combating particularism by elected and appointed public officials. This report evaluates the apparent increase in corruption, the efforts to limit, expose, and prosecute corrupt acts, and the factors that have facilitated the rise in corrupt actions on the part of state officials and private citizens. In short, acts of corruption that may have previously gone unnoticed (at least unproven) are now exposed by a more aggressive media and prosecuted by new and/or stronger state anti-corruption agencies and laws in response to multiple major political corruption scandals of the early 2000s. State prosecutors show no deference in their investigations of corruption and/or illicit enrichment by public officials and private figures, no matter how powerful. The only limitation is the level of resources available to these agencies. The contemporary increase in the scope of corruption is not in the quotidian actions of low-level officials directly affecting the lives of ordinary citizens, but in influence trading and manipulation of formal processes. A separate, more recent and growing corruption problem comes from international drug cartels that have amplified their activities and money laundering in Costa Rica that some fear might outstrip the state’s capacity to keep corruption under control.
ICC: Case of Ann Rondeau, et. al / Drug trafficking and human rights violations in Colombia
International Criminal Court Filing, 2020
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Lava Jato beyond Borders The Uneven Performance of Anticorruption Judicial Efforts in Latin America
Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 2019
This essay uses an original database to trace the regionalization of the Lava Jato case, following revelations by judicial authorities in the United States in December 2016. It also investigates variation in the progress of national investigative efforts. Corruption investigations inevitably target powerful political and business elites. As a result, the permissiveness of the political environment is crucial to explaining why some chapters of Lava Jato have been able to make more progress than others. This essay acknowledges the relevance of such constraints, but also draws attention to the importance of judicial agency. We argue that the quality of anticorruption investigations is not entirely endogenous to the presence of a favorable political environment; certain choices and prosecutorial strategies can effectively expand narrow limits of political possibility, and help build momentum when there is none. More importantly, even when conditions allow for more independent prosecutorial efforts, judicial actors still need to be willing and able to overcome the many technical obstacles that characterize this type of inquiry. Securing high-quality evidence in information-poor environments, building relations with myriad national and international players, and leveraging media cover are all crucial to guaranteeing progress. We analyze the role of judicial agency in the cases of Ecuador and Peru, where investigators managed to secure a number of crucial victories, and in Mexico, where the investigation failed to deliver results. The essay thus contributes to the scholarly literature on the judicialization of grand corruption.
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