Anti-Corruption Laws and Practices

Anti-Corruption Laws and Practices

The course will familiarize participants with the current state of global anti-corruption laws and enforcement  practices with a particular focus on Africa..Among topics to be discussed are  various international and intergovernmental agreements designed to address corruption, including the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, (2005), Principle 10 of the UN Global Compact 2004 (Anti-Corruption), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions,and The African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption. Also, to be discussed are the U.K. Anti-Bribery Law and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, both of which have extraterritorial reach.

A central focus of the course will be on exploring the various forms of government and company corruption that arise, such as:

• Conflict of interest
• Bribery
• Bank fraud (e.g., manipulation of currency and inter-bank lending and currency exchange rates)
• Money laundering (including examining links with organized crime and terrorism)
• Ponzi schemes
• Insider trading  
• Accounting fraud

The course will also examine:

• The various forces that work against the effective implementation of anti-corruption laws
•  Non-law methods that can be used to reduce corruption
•  The work of compliance officers in helping to ensure company compliance with anti-corruption laws and regulations will be examined

Case studies of corporate and government corruption - from African and other jurisdictions – will be a central teaching and learning tool for the course. These cases will expose students to real life situations, putting the student in the role of problem-solver. 

Course Duration and Cost 

1 week:   $2,245

2 weeks: $4,200

Additional Inclusions:

• Course materials, including a resource booklet
• Lunch and refreshments provided daily
• Access to post-course online resources and alumni network

Dates

Week 1: March 4 - 8, 2024

Week 2: March 11 - 15, 2024

Location

Online/In-person

Course Advisor's 

Chandra Mohan, Adjunct Professor of Law, Singapore Management University

Chandra Mohan graduated from the law faculty of the then University of Singapore (NUS) in 1967. In his third year at the University, he was co-winner of the Higgins Book Prize for the best undergraduate contribution to a legal journal. Upon graduation, he joined the Singapore Legal Service where he held a number of senior posts including that of a senior Judge of the District Court, Director of Legal Aid, Official Assignee/Official Receiver, Public Trustee and Director of Legal Policy (Ministry of Law). He has served on numerous public service committees. In 2004 he became a consultant with a law firm and joined the Singapore Management University law school faculty in June 2007.

Whilst in the judiciary, Chandra heard a number of high-profile criminal trials. His proposals that arrest cases be classified as DAC, MAC and JAC and draft orders and summonses in respect of the protection of spouses and children against domestic violence, are still in use. He has attended a training course on the administration of justice, on a Colombo Plan award, at the UN institute in Tokyo, received training at the US National College of the State Judiciary and in 1983, and studied the UK criminal justice system on a UN Human Rights Fellowship. During his term as Official Receiver, Chandra was a member of the United Nations Working Group which drafted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency in 1997. He also served as Singapore’s representative on the UNCITRAL Working Group on Insolvency Law in New York. For outstanding work in bankruptcy administration and for initiating major reforms in insolvency law, he was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Gold) at the National Day Honours in 1999. Under his leadership, in 2003, the Law Ministry’s Legal Policy Division won the United Nations Public Service award for the creation of the “Polygon of Good Laws”, a method devised to determine good legislation.

Since graduation, Chandra has had a keen interest in learning and teaching law. In 1972 he obtained an LLM from the University of Singapore and in 1988 was awarded a PhD by the University of London for his dissertation on “The Control of Corruption in Singapore”. He taught continuously at the NUS law faculty as an adjunct from 1971 to 1981 and from 2003 to 2007 and at the Postgraduate Practical Law Course from 1972 to 1999. He was a Visiting Fellow at UNAFEI in Tokyo in 1996 and 2001 and is an Academic Counsellor with the Asian Crime Prevention Foundation. Chandra has written widely on criminal law and procedure, evidence, family law and insolvency law and practice.

David N. Smith, former Vice-Dean, Harvard Law School 

David Smith served as Assistant Dean for International Legal Studies and then Vice-Dean at Harvard Law School for over 30 years. At Harvard he taught courses on Law and Social Change in Africa, Law and Economic Change in Africa, Foreign Investment in Natural Resources, and Transnational Corporations. He has served as an advisor on foreign investment, legal education and natural resource policy to many governments in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, as well as Native American groups in North America.

Some of this advisory work was under the auspices of the Harvard Institute for International Development, the United Nations and the World Bank.  Early in his career Dean Smith worked with the Ministry of Justice in Northern Nigeria on issues of judicial and criminal law reform and as an Assistant Attorney-General In New York State. In recent years he served as Acting Dean of the School of Law and Acting Director of the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong and Professor of Law at Singapore Management University, where he taught courses on ethics and social responsibility.

Dean Smith was admitted to the New York State bar in 1961 and holds a B.A. degree from Harvard College and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. He is the author of two novels set in Africa: The Leo Conversion and Timbuktu. He has written widely on natural resource policy and negotiation of natural resource contracts between host country governments and foreign investors. His recent publications have dealt with finance ethics, ethics and technology and ethics and social responsibility in international business.