draining development.pdf - Khazar University

450 Draining Development?6. These sums would undoubtedly have been greater. The amount banked in Luxembourgwas US$600 million originally. The banks holding the funds seeminglyused their discretionary powers imprudently, making high-risk investments andincurring substantial losses.7. “Nigerian Dictator’s Son Wins Retrial: The Verdict Passed by a Geneva Courtagainst a Son of Former Nigerian Dictator Sani Abacha Last Summer Has BeenQuashed and a Retrial Ordered,” swissinfo.ch (March 10, 2011), http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Nigerian_dictator_s_son_wins_retrial.html?cid=29692974.8. The panel report has not been published and only redacted versions have beenpresented to foreign courts.9. The content of this and other correspondence was disclosed in affidavits swornto in the proceedings.10. This led, ultimately, to a confrontation between President Obasanjo and TonyBlair as to which country had the better claim to this money. Nigeria won.11. The notion of partie civile in the context of criminal proceedings does not existas such in common law systems, but it is an extremely useful tool in civil lawjurisdictions. The condition for being admitted as a civil party is to be able toshow, as the victim of the crime, direct loss or ownership of the assets that arethe subject of the crime. A foreign state, local entity, or public company may,acting in a private capacity, as a matter of right, be admitted as a party suing fordamages in cases of corruption or embezzlement of public funds. In most civillaw systems, the civil party, once joined, is granted the same rights as the criminalsuspect, namely, access to the examining magistrate’s file during the investigation,participation in the interrogation of suspects and witnesses, and theright to request measures to be taken by the investigating magistrate, most notablythe freezing of assets and seizure of documents at home or abroad. Although,sometimes, access to the file may have to await a certain event, such as the indictmentof a suspect, the civil party can interact on a daily basis with the investigatingmagistrate through local counsel and can thus feed the local investigatorswith additional information or evidence and can request that new measures beadopted, such as the interviewing of certain witnesses.12. Swiss Federal Court Decision (1A.215/2004/col), February 7, 2005.13. The mutual legal assistance request to Jersey resulted in the extradition ofBagudu referred to in the text.14. The Financial Services Authority issued a press release in March 2001 to theeffect that 19 City of London banks had been involved in this laundering process,of which 15 had inadequate money laundering compliance regulations inplace. These banks were “spoken to” by the Financial Services Authority, but nofurther action was taken.15. In 2010, a leading Indian businessman was convicted in Jersey of money launderingin connection with the monies he had received from Nigeria during theAbacha regime by exporting Tata trucks and tractors at five times their actual