U.S.
Lawyer Talks Corruption
Outlines tools for combating crime
By Sopho Gorgodze - The Messenger
Corruption is a problem in the United States as well as in Georgia,
says Peter Strasser, a former federal prosecutor in the city of
New Orleans and key speaker at a recent Transnational Crime and
Corruption Center (TRACC) roundtable at the American Center in Tbilisi.
Strasser says that the United States there has a very aggressive
program for fighting corruption, but "this program does not
stop it." To prove himself, Strasser, a legal advisor at the
U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, presented three articles he found online
in a New Orleans newspaper on individuals recently convicted of
corruption.
"Just in one week, in New Orleans - a city of about 2 million
people - I came upon three articles on individuals who had been
convicted of corruption. Multiply this out and then you can see
that we have a corruption problem in the United States just as you
have a corruption problem here in Georgia."
The disease itself is not the only thing in common. According to
Strasser, the two countries share similar reactions to corruption.
One common problem for both Georgia and the United States is "sticking
their head in the sand with regard to fighting corruption,"
he said.
If anything, Strasser says, one can make life tougher for those
who want to engage in any kind of organized criminal activity, since
organized criminal activity is exactly what leads to corruption.
In his speech at the TRACC roundtable, Strasser focused on ways
authorities can infiltrate organized crime and the ways used by
U.S. law enforcers to fight corruption.
For a prosecutor and FBI agent, he presented five methods used
to fight corruption in the United States.
The number one thing you need, he says, is to find a confidential
informant, somebody who can talk about the criminal activity.
The second thing is to have the ability to record conversations
that the criminals have.
Number three is that it is always nice if you can put an undercover
government FBI agent to act as a criminal in the criminal organization
so he can see things with his own eyes and report it later to the
court.
The fourth important thing you do, according to Strasser, is convince
individuals who are a part of a criminal activity to agree to plead
guilty to a lesser crime and then cooperate by giving testimony
against those higher up on the chain of command.
The last thing is that you must have is the legal ability to prosecute
all members of a criminal organization in one case no matter how
high or low their level of involvement is.
Because informants are criminals too, and liars, the jury does
not trust them and the information provided by confidential informants
should be double-checked by the prosecutor, he advises.
The best way to do this is technical surveillance, which is to
use tape recorders to capture the facts.
The way you initially start this out is to put a body wire on the
confidential informant.
It can also be put on a coffee cup. When it's ready, you have them
engage in conversation.
According to the federal law in the United States, if one person
knows that the conversation is being recorded, it's OK, but if both
parties have no idea that the conversation is being recorded, you
have to get permission from a judge.
Undercover operations are the next point they use in the States,
but undercover investigations can be very sensitive depending on
who they target. An FBI agent should be careful not to entrap, meaning
give impetus to someone to commit a crime he otherwise would not
have committed.
There should also exist an ability to flip witnesses or get them
to plead guilty and testify against a criminal organization. As
he explains, many of the recorded conversations are in coded language
and must be deciphered. For example, he pointed to a case in which
a person said "I am gonna take 1000 cows to the pasture,"
to mean "I am gonna take 1000 dollars to the bank," said
Strasser. So when you have a witness saying in court that he meant
money when talking about cows, it's a big plus for the investigation.
Strasser also listed Federal laws defending witnesses and recalled
many cases of defendants on trial who had been convicted even before
the trial for interfering in some manner with potential witnesses.
Also, in the United States there is a witness protection program
in which witnesses who testify at trial are given a new identity.
This program has existed for 30 years, but actually relatively few
witnesses go trough this program - 232 a year approximately.
However, Strasser pointed out that such a program would not be
effective in such a small country as Georgia.
|
