TRANSCRIPT: BRIEFING BY U.S. OFFICIAL ON TRANSNATIONAL CRIME
(Winer: globalization demands new prevention measures)
Birmingham -- Leaders of the seven major industrial countries plus Russia say they need new tools and greater international cooperation to tackle rising transnational crime issues.
The leaders, in a statement issued May 16, outlined "a series of actions to create the ability for governments to transcend borders to fight crime, through coming up with common approaches, common rules, common standards to create law enforcement systems that will be more nearly interoperable with one another than they ever have been in the past," said Jonathan Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international crime, narcotics and law enforcement.
Winer briefed reporters on the Group of Eight crime statement issued on the second day of the May 15-17 ministerial meeting of the heads of state or government of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia.
He said that the leaders' statement stressed the following points:
-- Governments need to have the technical capabilities to respond to transnational high-tech crime.
-- Domestic legislation must constantly be updated to address issues of money laundering and financial crime.
-- International efforts are needed to develop strategies to counter corruption.
-- Increased cooperation and definitive international standards are required to address the smuggling of firearms and human beings by criminal organization.
-- A United Nations convention against transnational organized crime should be completed by the year 2000.
Following is the transcript of Winer's briefing:
(begin transcript)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Birmingham, England)
May 16, 1998
PRESS BRIEFING BY JONATHAN WINER,
DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR INTERNATIONAL CRIME, NARCOTICS, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT
Metropole Hotel
Birmingham, England
DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY WINER: Thank you very much, Sandy. Historically, governments have not crossed borders, at least not in times of peace. Criminals, of course, as a result of globalization, are crossing borders all the time. What began to happen in the Lyon Summit and what is being essentially fulfilled in this summit is the eight setting up a series of actions to create the ability for governments to transcend borders to fight crime, through coming up with common approaches, common rules, common standards to create law enforcement systems that will be more nearly interoperable with one another than they ever have been in the past.
Now, this morning the heads identified as the principal threats posed by the globalization of crime the following: First, the threat posed by crime to worldwide computer systems and telecommunication systems; secondly, the threat posted by money laundering and financial crime to financial and political systems; third, the threat posed by corruption to rule of law and governance; fourth, the impact of firearms trafficking and trafficking in human beings on societies. There was consensus that all of these problems needed to be addressed by continued joint efforts by the eight. I would emphasize continued, because there has been a series of actions that have been undertaken over the last several years already.
Among the points made by the heads were the following: First, governments need to have the technical capabilities to respond to transnational high-tech crime. And such capabilities need to be as universal as the criminal's ability to use high-tech to commit crimes. Being able to collect evidence of high-tech crimes and to share that evidence with one another, regardless of where the evidence happens to be located, and regardless of where the crime has taken place, and regardless of where the victims are, is going to be essential. And this has to be done in balance with respecting personal privacy.
Second, on the issue of money laundering, money laundering and financial crime the heads said requires constant updating of domestic legislation. It also requires combatting it -- international standards and approaches, because of the trans border and global nature of money laundering and financial crime. This is especially true in the area and the growing potential threat posed by off-shore financial centers. International cooperation against transborder financial crime, asset forfeiture of the proceeds of criminal activity, and a focus on eliminating safe havens are all critical elements of a response.
On the issue of corruption, the heads noted that criminals have the resources to corrupt law enforcement officials in many countries. Too often, the bribes they offer dwarf the official salaries of officials. Further international efforts to develop regimes and implementation of strategies to combat corruption are urgently needed.
Fourth, the smuggling of firearms and human beings by criminal organizations has become an increased problem, requiring increased cooperation and definitive international standards.
Finally, on the issue of crime, the U.N. convention under negotiation within the U.N. system with a goal of completion by the year 2000 can provide an effective means of combatting many of these problems. This convention will criminalize many of these offenses and provide universal norms for cooperating against them through agreed-upon tools. It potentially has a value and impact of the 1988 convention against psychotropic drugs that was negotiated in Vienna, which since has become a universal standard for combatting narcotics.
On the issue of drugs, the heads took up the issue of decriminalization and expressed their strong views against moves towards decriminalization, their opposition to decriminalization, and their desire to oppose that, if it is raised in the context of the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on drugs next month. They endorsed the notion of shared responsibility for combatting narcotics, of the need for a global strategy, and cooperative efforts focused on both eradication and demand reduction.
That essentially summarizes the discussion that they had this morning.
Now, within the communique itself, there are half a dozen -- eight or nine different points which track more or less the discussion they had this morning. And let me summarize them for you, if I might.
The first agreement that they reached is to fully support efforts to negotiate within the next two years an effective U.N. convention against transnational organized crime that will provide law enforcement authorities with the additional tools they need. Again, I would compare this to the effort that took place a decade ago, vis-a-vis drugs, which essentially established for the first time a comprehensive international regime involving all nations to begin to take a series of steps to combat drugs.
The second thing they agreed to was to implement rapidly the 10 principles and 10-point action plan agreed by our Ministers in December -- justice and interior ministers in Washington on high-tech crime. One very important aspect of this is they call for close cooperation with industry to reach agreement on a legal framework for obtaining, presenting, and preserving electronic data as evidence, while maintaining appropriate privacy protection; and agreements on sharing evidence of those crimes with international partners. Essentially what is contemplated is global agreement on standards for capturing information, retaining information, and sharing information to deal with transnational high-tech crime.
These principles, the heads will state in the communique, will help us combat a wide range of crime, including abuse of the Internet and other new techniques.
In the money laundering area, the communique will welcome the decision by the financial action task force based in Paris to continue and enlarge its work to combat money laundering in partnership with regional groupings. We will consider high-level meetings to discuss further efforts to combat transnational crime with special emphasis on money laundering and financial crime.
The communique also agrees on further principles and actions to facilitate asset confiscation as a means of transferring funds from the criminals to governments, disrupting their criminal enterprises and increasing the resources of those who are seeking to combat their illicit activities.
On the issue of trafficking in human beings, the communique specifies the particular importance of combatting trafficking in women and children, including the requirement that the eight get together to develope a program to prevent trafficking in women and children, to protect victims, and to prosecute traffickers.
The eight, will, as a result, be developing a multidisciplinary and comprehensive strategy to deal with increasing global problems. This will include principles and an action plan for future cooperation, not only among the eight, but involving third countries, including countries of origin, transit, and destination. The U.N. Convention on Transnational Organized Crime will be one of the mechanisms by which this is accomplished.
The communique endorses -- further endorses some joint law enforcement activities that are already taking place among the eight, which are focused on particular kinds of groups and criminal targets and which we expect will show results in the days, months, and years to come.
They also are endorsing the elaboration of a binding international legal instrument in the context of the U.N. International Organized Crime Convention to combat illegal manufacturing and trafficking of firearms -- a binding international instrument to deal with illicit smuggling of firearms.
They welcomed the work of the environmental ministers to combat environmental crime, and on drugs, essentially emphasized the link between drugs, international crime and domestic crime; welcomed the U.N. General Assembly special session on drugs, and sought reinforced cooperation to curb trafficking in drugs, chemical precursors, action to reduce demand, and support for a global approach to eradicating illicit drugs.
That is essentially what is in the communique language.
Q: With regard to the crime part of the communique, there was supposed to be a 24-hour hotline linking the law enforcement agencies of the eight. Is that in part of this mix?
WINER: It was endorsed by the ministers as being implemented already. There are points of contact that have been established among the eight and exchanged among the eight. Essentially, the commitment is to have somebody available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to be able to respond to a case of high-tech crime.
So if you're in the United States or Russia or the United Kingdom or Japan, you've got one number, you know who to call; that person is available no matter what the time of day is, with a beeper or something and can respond. That way each of the countries will have in place the ability to immediately push for the freezing of information, so the information does not get destroyed. Or if there's money involved, the holding of assets before they can be transferred from one country to another.
An important case on this was the Citibank case several years ago, when a fellow named Vladimir Levin in St. Petersburg, Russia, essentially got involved in moving millions of dollars of Citibank's money around. Now, as a result of cooperation between the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom, among other countries, he was arrested, indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and all but $400,000 of the money was grabbed. But what's interesting is, is to this day, all those governments involved, $400,000 of that money remains missing. It moved so quickly that it was not, in fact, traceable. And that reflects the fact that there have been gaps which still need to be filled, and we are in the process of doing that through this mechanism.
And this is not the only mechanism -- we're cooperating with the Council of Europe which is trying to also develop some standard rules. But the notion here is we have to push very rapidly now to create an international network for governments to be able to respond to high-tech crime that's as comprehensive as the Net is and our international financial systems are themselves.
We're making a lot of progress in that area. To get all the way is going to be absolutely essential to have cooperation with industry. And the communique language explicitly calls for that. We've begun some of that already informally; that's going to intensify rapidly over the next year.
Q: Where does it leave Interpol?
WINER: We're working and talking with Interpol. Interpol is a means of getting information in real time on particular criminals. When you're trying to track down a criminal or get information that is in somebody's law enforcement database, that's what Interpol is used for. Now, we're not necessarily talking here about a law enforcement database, we're talking about the need to find information that's located somewhere in a server in somebody's national territory.
Q: You're talking about back-door to encryption then?
WINER: No, we are not. We certainly are not. What we are talking about is the ability to trap and trace information, not to be able to read the information without permission. We're talking about developing a universal system where when a crime has taken place, a government can ask another government for cooperation and industries have agreed to retain information for a certain amount of time.
In the same way that today, if you were committing a crime in the United States, you would be able to freeze that information and get a search warrant and be able to go after it. We're talking about trying to create an international system that allows for legal searches in a reasonable way to preserve evidence of a crime.
Q: Could you actually talk us through the conversations they had today, particularly around crime? What were they actually talking about? Were they just talking about mechanisms and "we endorse this," "we endorse that," "organize this," "organize that"?
WINER: They literally talked through the six points that I went through a little bit earlier. That is, they themselves focused on the need for governments to be able to have trans-border capabilities to deal with high-tech crime, the need to push through with the development of common standards to combat high-tech crime common mechanisms, and the need to get the private sector to work out with governments ways to get information retained, and so on.
In the area of money laundering and financial crime, they themselves literally talked about the importance of dealing with off-shore havens, making sure that there was no place that was capable of holding on to the proceeds of illicit activity in a nontransparent way that couldn't be reached, and of the need to have some common approaches to it.
On corruption, they talked at some length about the problem of the disparity between the resources available to criminals and the salaries paid officials in a number of countries, and the need to think further about particular steps to take.
Indeed, earlier this week, in the President's international crime strategy, he announced, among other things, a conference within six months headed up by Vice President Gore on precisely this point. But there were a number of other heads who raised this issue and thought that it's a very important issue for further work to be done.
On smuggling of firearms, they specifically agreed there has to be a binding international instrument to deal with the smuggling of firearms. That means obligations of all states to one another, of steps to take against firearms trafficking. Now, this happened last October in the Americas, when the countries who are members of the Organization of American States agreed that no one would export weapons, import weapons, or let weapons transit through their countries unless it was with the permission of all countries involved.
The countries also agreed that they would mark all firearms at import and at manufacture in order that weapons could better be traced. They also agreed to cooperation with one another on tracing firearms. So that kind of system, which literally did not exist anywhere, it has been our domestic law for some time, but didn't exist anywhere -- was endorsed by the OAS and signed by President Zedillo and President Clinton among others, last October is now effectively in the process of being globalized as a result of the action of the eight today.
The communique language basically articulates specific steps that are going to be taken. One of the most important steps that will be taken is the negotiation of a convention against transnational organized crime within the U.N. system in which a number of things that we're doing in our country already, a number of tools that we use to fight organized crime will become universalized.
For example, very few countries have racketeering influenced corrupt organizations laws or conspiracy laws directed against organized crime. Over the past year the European Union has said that EU members must have that. The U.N. instrument to fight organized crime will very likely, certainly, contain the same kind of a requirement for criminalization.
In the area of high-tech, the commitment to work together with the private sector to develop universal rules for retaining information and for being sure that information can be accessed in cases of crime is very important new work.
(end transcript)