White House wants trial kickbacks ended: UN attorneys share fees with clients

[Ivo Skoric]

This is fantastic. I don't really remember that we in former 
Yugoslavia expected our attorneys to share their salary with us. 
But it is definitely an original idea. I guess, O.J. Simpson missed 
that one.

However, it is nauseating to hear that even one person suspected 
of being responsible for tortures and massacres is actually being 
paid for standing the trial: even building a house with the money he 
receives for being tried for burning the houses of hundreds of others.

While that may explain the sudden burst of volunterism among the 
suspected war criminals in the post-Yugoslav societies, it is an 
abomination of justice to have them profit from the gruesome deeds 
they are suspected of committing. It is an insult to the victims. It is 
a sarcastic testimony to the ineffectiveness of international 
community in bringing perpetrators to justice.

And now, it seems, it serves this White House as a convenient 
vehicle to embarass ICTY and provide logical grounds for the U.S. 
opposition to the ICC.

It proves what I thought for over ten years: in Yugoslavia at the end 
of eighties it paid to pick a side and immerse yourself in the living 
hate to avoid being a victim, or leave.

ivo

Date sent:      	Thu, 30 May 2002 18:12:12 -0400
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From:           	Andras Riedlmayer <riedlmay at FAS.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject:        	White House wants trial kickbacks ended: UN attorneys share fees
             	with clients
To:             	JUSTWATCH-L at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

(cross-posting of comments only permitted)

Reports of fee splitting at the ICTR and ICTY may be old news, but the
U.S. administration is asking for further steps at the U.N. tribunals to
suppress this "illicit welfare system" for lawyers, war crimes defendants,
and their relatives and friends back home.

Andras Riedlmayer
=====================================================================
The Washington Times
May 30, 2002, Thursday

White House wants trial kickbacks ended
U.N. attorneys share fees with clients

By David R. Sands, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

 The Bush administration said yesterday that it is urging the United
Nations to crack down harder on kickbacks paid to war-crimes suspects
by their U.N.-financed defense lawyers at international tribunals for
the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

 The Washington Times reported Tuesday that the practice was widespread
at the U.N.-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia in The Hague, where defendants routinely ask for as much as
30 percent of the fees of their court-appointed attorneys and threaten
to dismiss lawyers who refuse to cooperate.

 An internal U.N. investigation in March said the tribunals have
tried to curb so-called "fee-splitting," but tribunal officials
conceded that the arrangement "is not an easy practice to eradicate."

 A State Department official, speaking on background, said yesterday
that the U.S. government has urged the Rwanda and Yugoslavia panels
to beef up the number of auditors and to strengthen the code of conduct
for defense attorneys. "We urge both tribunals to implement these steps
as soon as possible, including the adoption of sanctions that may be
applied to those who engage in fee-splitting, and to undertake more
vigorous efforts to identify and bar lawyers engaged in fee-splitting,"
the official said.

 The State Department official said the U.S. government, which pays
23 percent of the regular U.N. budget, "strongly" supported internal
U.N. efforts to clean house.

 The Washington Times reported that the Hague tribunal has become
a kind of illicit welfare system for lawyers, defendants, and their
relatives and friends back home.

 In all but a few cases - former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
is defending himself - the tribunals pay the defendants' lawyers a
tax-exempt salary of up to $200,000 a year.  Defense lawyers report
that their clients threaten to dismiss them if they do not share
some of the fee.

 In one case, the lawyer defending Zoran Zigic, a Serb accused of
war crimes at the notorious Omarska detention camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
said Mr. Zigic is building a house with the money he extorted from two
of his court-appointed lawyers.

 Zika Rakonjac, author of a forthcoming book on the shady financial
practices at the Hague tribunal, said in an interview that some
1,000 people, including family members of those on trial, have
benefited from the money.

 The author said the usual arrangement in Yugoslavia calls for
defense lawyers to kick back 10 percent to 15 percent of their
annual salary to their clients, as much as $30,000 a year, and
sometimes the contribution is even higher.

 "Everyone wants their cut - Serbs, Croats and Muslims alike,"
Mr. Rakonjac said in an interview.

 Defense attorneys at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, receive up to $110 an hour and
can bill up to 175 hours a month. Defendants are allowed a team of
three defense attorneys, selected from a pool of 200 lawyers kept
by the tribunal.

 As in Yugoslavia, the majority of defendants in Rwanda plead poverty
and have their legal expenses paid by the court. Investigators found
that many defendants in Rwanda were choosing only counsel who agreed
beforehand to kick back some of their pay.

 Some of the defense lawyers practicing at the Hague have said the
charges are overblown.

 They say they have occasionally financed family visits or other
small favors for their clients but have never been asked to make
any cash payout.  The Netherlands has exempted the defense fees
from local taxation.

 The United Nations declined to comment yesterday on the latest
charges but referred a reporter to two internal studies, one issued
in February 2001 and one in March, that found financial abuses
continue to plague both the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals.

 In February, lawyers working for Joseph Nzirorera, a former Rwandan
politician accused of participating in the 1994 ethnic genocide,
were fired after investigators uncovered evidence of fee-splitting
with their client.

 The March report, issued by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight
Services, found that both tribunals had taken "proactive steps"
since the first report issued 13 months earlier.  Among them:
tighter screening of the pool of defense lawyers; changes to the
code of conduct; and new limits on the number and value of gifts
detainees can accept at the U.N. holding facilities.

 Although the Bush administration has refused to sign on to the
International Criminal Court, the United States remains a strong supporter
of the more limited panels looking into Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

 Pierre-Richard Prosper, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for
war-crimes issues, told a House hearing in February that the United States
continued to support the panels while acknowledging that "there have been
problems that challenge the integrity of the process."

 Mr. Prosper said the United States was pushing for the two tribunals to
finish their work by 2008 at the latest.

 *Special correspondent Milorad Ivanovic contributed to this report from
Belgrade, Yugoslavia.