JURIST - Paper Chase: Sunday, September 2, 2012

[JURIST] The Embassy of the US Guatemala on Thursday praised the decision of the Guatemala Constitutional Court [official websites] allowing former president Alfonso Portillo [CIDOB profile, in Spanish] to be extradited to the US on charges of embezzling foreign donations. Upon extradition Portillo will stand trial in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] on charges of laundering US$1.5 million [AP report] in Taiwanese foreign donations, which were supposed to be used to buy schoolbooks for Guatemalan children. Instead Portillo allegedly deposited the funds in various banks for his personal use. Portillo was president from 2000 to 2004 and was tried last year in Guatemala on charges of embezzlement [JURIST report] under which he allegedly diverted approximately USD $15 million in funds from the Ministry of Defense. His extradition to the US was approved [JURIST report] by a Guatemalan criminal court in March 2010.

In November then-president Alvaro Colom announced that he would allow Portillo to be extradited to the US [JURIST report] to stand trial. Colom has also faced recent legal trouble of his own. In August the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled that former first lady Sandra Torres is ineligible to run for the office of president [JURIST report] because of her relationship to Colom, her ex-husband. Torres and Colom divorced last year [BBC report] after Torres announced her plans to represent the ruling National Unity for Hope party in upcoming elections. The Guatemalan Constitution [text, PDF] bans relatives of the president from running for the office. Court President Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre held that because Torres was Colom's wife for most of the term, Torres would be in violation of the Constitution if she were to run for office. Otto Perez Molina, Torres' main opposition and current president, accused the two of fraud [BBC report] for divorcing in an effort to circumvent the constitutional ban.

[JURIST] Croatian prosecutors announced Saturday that they have charged former prime minister Ivo Sanader [JURIST news archive] with embezzlement relating to a real estate deal that took place during his time in office. Sanader is accused of using government funds to purchase a building in the capital city of Zagreb at an inflated price and stealing the surplus. Sanader and three associates, including former Farming Minister Petar Cobankovic, allegedly embezzled the funds [RFE/RL report] in excess of the state-owned building's market value, with Sanader himself pocketing approximately €2.3 million (USD $2.8 million). Cobankovic has reportedly admitted his guilt in a plea bargain [Voice of Russia report] with prosecutors. Elected to parliament after he stepped down from the prime minister position in 2009, Sanader was indicted in September as part of an anti-corruption campaign launched by his hand-picked successor Jadranka Kosor [official profile]. This most recent indictment marks the fifth corruption charge against Sanader, whom prosecutors say gained more than USD $15 million through corrupt business transactions during his time as prime minister from 2003 to 2009. He is also facing charges of corruption, abuse of power and fraud for taking nearly €4 million [JURIST report] from public firms and state institutions in the 1990s. Sanader has denied all the charges against him.

Croatia is close to achieving membership in the EU, and Kosor hopes Sanader's trial will help ease pressure from Brussels for Croatia to sort out corruption and speed investigations. Sanader's trial is the first criminal proceeding prompted by EU pressure for Croatia to crack down on corruption. The trial was postponed [JURIST report] in October for health reasons. In November Sanader pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to taking bribes worth €10 million from Hungarian energy group MOL in exchange for allowing MOL a dominant position in Croatia's oil and gas group INA [corporate websites]. He also pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] a week earlier to charges that he accepted a bribe in 1995, claiming he was only an agent for the foreign ministry during talks with Hypo Bank. Croatia's Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) arrested Sanader in 2010 [JURIST report] alleging that he received a pay-off of more than 3.6 million kuna (nearly USD $695,000) from Austria's Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank in exchange for the country entering into a loan agreement to receive 140 million Austrian Schillings (USD $14.7 million) in order to place the bank in the Croatian market.

[JURIST] Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu [backgrounder] on Sunday called [Observer op-ed] for former US president George W. Bush and former UK prime minister Tony Blair [JURIST news archives] to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] for their roles in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Tutu argues that

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history. Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart.

The ICC has jurisdiction to hear cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it does not currently have the power to prosecute crimes of aggression.

In November the Malaysian Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) [official website] found Bush and Blair guilty of war crimes after a symbolic trial [JURIST reports]. In October the attorney general for British Columbia blocked a lawsuit [JURIST report] filed by the Canadian Centre for International Justice [advocacy website] against Bush on torture allegations. Earlier in October Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International [advocacy websites] urged the Canadian government to investigate and arrest [JURIST report] Bush for his role in torture. In February 2011 the Center for Constitutional Rights and the European Center for Human Rights [advocacy websites] urged the signatory states of the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) [text] to pursue criminal charges [JURIST report] against Bush. Other calls to investigate the criminal culpability of Bush and officials in his administration have been rejected consistently by US officials [JURIST report]. In 2010 a former UN official strongly suggested [JURIST report] a war crimes investigation of actions by both sides in the Afghanistan war. In 2009 the UK High Court criticized [JURIST report] its own Ministry of Defense for failure to investigate or release documents regarding a claim of war crimes against UK soldiers in Iraq.

[JURIST] Mexican President Felipe Calderon [official website, in Spanish] on Saturday introduced a draft bill aimed at liberalizing the country's labor laws. The bill was introduced [Reuters report] in the Congress of Mexico by Interior Minister Alejandro Poire, and it seeks to improve the transparency of Mexico's trade unions and make labor regulations more flexible. Lawmakers from both the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the National Action Party [party websites, in Spanish] have shown support for the legislation. Incoming president Enrique Pena Nieto [campaign website] of the Institutional Revolutionary Party has pledged to back the legislation. Calderon is seeking to fast track the legislation before he leaves office in November.

Calderon has also recently implemented environmental law reform in Mexico. In June Calderon signed [JURIST report] a climate change bill that introduces sweeping environmental reform. The bill requires the country to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2020, requires that 35 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2024, requires mandatory emissions reporting, establishes a carbon-trading market and creates a commission to oversee implementation of the changes. The Mexican legislature passed the bill [JURIST report] in April with a vote of 128-10 in the Chamber of Deputies and a unanimous vote in the Senate [official websites, in Spanish].