Eva Joly is in no doubt: "In the future, there will no longer be room for unethical companies"
Eva Joly is the young Norwegian girl who, at the age of 20, went to France as an au pair, studied law, got married, had children and became an investigating magistrate with a bulletproof office in Rue des Italiens in Paris. From here, she led some of Europe’s major investigations, the biggest of which was the Elf case, which caused enormous upheaval both in French society and far outside France’s boundaries. She now works for NORAD, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, where her main task is to help ensure that the development aid funds from the Norwegian state arrive where they are supposed to and do not end up in the pockets of criminals.
Eva Joly looks at me over her spectacles with mild eyes, but her message is crystal clear: “Companies that do not comply with the ethical rules of the game will fail.”
Accomplice in mass murder
“I’m writing a new book now,” she says. “In it, I look at the main direction things will take in the future. It’s not unthinkable that you may be tried as an accomplice in mass murder in the future if you have indirectly financed rebels by buying oil from them. It’s not enough to know what the risk is today. The world is changing more and more quickly when it comes to these things. There’s far more awareness among the general public, companies and governments today about these destructive forces. You have to be able to see and know what the future will bring. Developments will primarily take place through companies, followed by the governments,” she says, continuing: “More and more companies are seeing that they can’t take any risks with their reputation. They can no longer send polluted materials to developing countries or build companies there if they haven’t taken safety into sufficient consideration – and they must show respect for their surroundings. Thanks to strong new trends in local societies that are able to organise themselves and create resistance to infringements of rights, it’s increasingly rare for international companies to override the local communities in developing countries.
Fortunately, we’re on the right road, but we’ve a long way to go,” says Eva Joly, who was exposed to surveillance, wiretapping, smear campaigns, harassment and hidden and undisguised death threats when she worked on the Elf case. She had to have police protection 24-hours a day.
“24 of my judge colleagues have been murdered,” she states.
Warning to the finance market
In her book entitled ‘Is this the world we want to live in?’, which was published for the first time in 2003, Eva Joly gives serious warning of the dangers of a globalised finance market that is not currently under any form of effective legal order.
“Investigations are stopped with reference to national sovereignty or a duty of confidentiality – or drown in bureaucracy, formal law or unlimited opportunities to complain or appeal,” she writes.
“I can see a movement that is accelerating, and the goal is closer than it was ten years ago,” she says today. “Nonetheless, when you move boundaries, the counter forces also come into play. The resistance is like a measurement of the tender spots you have hit. The more tender spots, the more resistance. But we are also applauded and supported by some. That’s encouraging,” says Eva Joly.
Imprisonment instead of fines
She becomes really angry when talking about money laundering, a real partner to corruption: “Think about the huge European bank that laundered USD 70 billion and was fined USD 80 million by the US control authorities. That didn’t stop its CEO keeping his award as ‘man of the year’ in his native country. I also question the prosecuting authorities in his home country, which have not started any investigation into this. Senior employees are often regarded as holy cows in their own countries. In Norway, too, we’ve had cases of unethical business methods and corruption. It usually only becomes really serious when US companies come into the picture. It can often be seen that the US legal system functions very efficiently. They have a lot of resources to put into revealing economic crime. Companies listed in the US, including foreign ones, have to spend tens of millions each year to document that they run their operations in accordance with the US standard of good corporate governance and in compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In the US, prison sentences are also increasingly used to punish economic crime. I’m convinced that the more often large fines are replaced by long prison sentences of 8-10 years and more, the fewer criminals there will be. Until recently senior management has not been punished, but that will change in the future. What is lacking in most countries is the political will. A country often receives an income due to the crime, and it safeguards jobs. For many countries, that’s more important than ethical conduct.”
Paying for bodyguards
Eva Joly pulls no punches in her description of middlemen and money launderers.
Norway gives about 50 million dollars in development aid to Zambia every year. Now legal proceedings have been brought against several civil servants and two London lawyers that are accused of having embezzled these funds from the state treasury and having helped money laundering them. Norway, along with other donors, is paying for the legal fees so that Zambia can prosecute this case in England.
“We also support Zambia by paying for bodyguards for those investigating the case when that is needed,” says Eva Joly.
She was recruited to NORAD from the Norwegian Ministry of Justice in order to deal with the risk of corruption and economic crime. She is also an advisor to the Norwegian Foreign Office, which looks on money laundering and corruption as a global problem that must be fought.
Training and enhanced awareness
“An important task for me has been to arrange for training and enhanced awareness to make sure these issues are higher up on the agenda. Several countries have invited me to hold courses and give talks, including Algeria. It’s a fact that the legal systems in many developing countries are corrupt. It’s important for Norway and NORAD that our partner countries develop their law and enforcement systems. If the legal system doesn’t operate independently, there is no point in bringing any cases to court. Now we’ve seen that Nigeria has managed to sentence senior government employees. Both Kenya and Madagascar support this anti-corruption work and several positive processes are taking place. But it is very difficult, especially in Kenya. When a country or an entity builds up anti-corruption institutions and do skill them, that represents hope for the inhabitants and gives hope to the investigators,” says Eva Joly.
She often experiences that she can be a door opener and driving force with her direct access to both heads of governments and ministers of justice and that she can manage to get them talking. In one African country, she raised the prison situation with the president. Several detainees had been remanded in prejudicial custody for many years, one of these for 19 years for the theft of a cow.
“Once the president understood that it’s important to the international community to deal with this situation, a lot of different legal initiatives were taken, and several thousand prisoners were quickly released.”
For the countries, the threat is naturally that far stiffer economic sanctions than before are being implemented. If they do not manage to get rid of corruption, they risk loosing parts of the development aid funds. For companies that do not manage to comply with the provisions, the consequences may be fatal. Being blacklisted and excluded from contracts financed by the development aid banks and organisations, is just one of these.
International opinion – the new superpower
Eva Joly is certain that she has international opinion on her side, and she describes this as the new superpower. She believes market forces and international opinion are joined in the fight against corruption and money laundering. When asked what we as individuals can do to fight corruption and money laundering, she has the following recipe:
- We must as individuals be aware of our attitudes
- We must not give money to customs officers who ask for it
- We must prefer firms and banks with a good reputation
- We must remove our money from banks that launder money
- We must not invest in shares in companies that do not comply with the UN Convention.
“It’s easy to be misled into thinking that it is in the struggle to become rich you will find happiness,” says Eva Joly thoughtfully. Back in Norway, she lives a simple life. “Simplicity is the core of Norwegian culture, and I love that,” she says.
While enjoying her Norwegian lifestyle, she continues her fight against corruption and other financial crime – incessantly.