Ministry of Justice Breakfast

Last Friday was the breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel with the Ministry of Justice that I helped put together. There were about 80 people, including several senators and their assistants. The primary goal of the breakfast was to promote a bill that allowed for the more timely seizure of illicit assets. Although the Minister of Justice was officially the host, our office did most of the organizing. The three speakers were: my boss, a Columbian anti-corruption official and the head of the asset seizure unit within the Ministry of Justice. My boss, the legal expert of crime in Latin America for the UN, spoke about the general need to seize the assets of criminals to force them to cease their activities. The Colombian offical gave a parallel perspecive about what was being done in Colombia to address organized crime. The last speaker spoke about how many assets had been seized since 2001 when the original illicit asset seizure law as passed and the problems of the value of assets depreciating (like airplanes and cars loosing their value over time) in the course of lengthy litigation against the criminals. Above is a picture of me with the Minister of Justice in front of our office's anti-corruption poster.