Prof. Mohammad Habhab
Professor of Criminal Law
Faculty of Law, Political and Administrative
Sciences, Lebanese University

Abstract:

Corruption crimes of all kinds pose a threat to the public interest in the economic dimension because of the damage it causes to the national economy, resources and wealth, as it can sometimes lead the state to the brink of bankruptcy, as is the case in Lebanon, for example. Lebanese legislations contain many legal texts that criminalize acts of corruption by defining their elements either through the Penal Code or through special laws.
Therefore, in principle, there is no problem with the criminalization of illegal acts related to corruption, but the legal problems lie, on the one hand, in the difficulties that law-enforcement authorities face when they seek access to evidence related to these crimes, especially that the perpetrators are often able to conceal their actions by using certain fraudulent means, either through the establishment of fictitious companies, for example, or through several other technical means that have been developed as a result of the technological revolution such as smuggling the proceeds of this crime outside the country’s borders, thus making it impossible to detect these proceeds without being able to go into the country that hosted them.
Accordingly, the importance of this research lies in shedding light on the sources of corruption in Lebanon and the reasons for not fighting it as well as the existing international cooperation mechanisms used to detect the proceeds of corruption crimes, and finding ways to return them to their source, especially since this procedure is faced with many obstacles, starting from the need to prove that these proceeds are the result of a crime related to corruption and does not end at the obstacle of banking-secrecy laws in some countries called “safe-haven countries”, a thing that prevents the disclosure of the funds claimed to be recovered.
In this study, I will rely on the Anti-Corruption Convention announced by the United Nations in 2003, where many related problems were noted in this context. Therefore, we will use in this study the analytical approach to determine the effectiveness of the above-mentioned convention and the extent to which countries rely on it in achieving the objectives of international cooperation to curb corruption crimes and preserve the wealth of countries from being lost, highlighting the Lebanese experience in this context.

Key words: corruption, fighting corruption, extradition for offence, lack of transparency, illicit enrichment, confiscation without a verdict of conviction, civil society.

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