Publication Date

2023

Abstract

Who is the victim of systemic corruption? The traditional answer in law is everyone and no one, or public administration itself. When state funds are misused or go missing, at the most the State is the victim. Therefore, only the State has standing to sue for, or receive restitution of, the stolen assets. But that long-held consensus is changing. Activists and lawyers have begun to argue that under systematic corruption it’s not just states, but individuals and communities as well as society as a whole that suffer losses and need to be both represented and repaired. Courts are beginning to agree, based on human rights law developed in large part in the context of atrocity crimes and now translated to the sphere of anti-kleptocracy. Prior research has focused on asset recovery in capital exporting states, and how it should be returned to the people of the looted country. This article brings together for the first time the background law and systematizes the cases in the courts of the looted country, focusing on Latin American states because they generally both suffer from top-down, systemic corruption and have been at the vanguard in marrying international human rights law, victim participation in criminal proceedings, and international anti-corruption law. It posits that victims want to participate in corruption trials not just to get reparations, but also to access the case files in order to seek information for further investigations and to monitor the diligence and strategic choices of prosecutors. Finally, it also highlights the sometimes indirect ways in which international law becomes effective in national courts, here involving not only vertical moves from international bodies to national courts, but horizontal shifts from one subject area to another.

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Connecticut Journal of International Law

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