The judge who exposed the “Whitey” Bulger scandal has told The Daily Beast that a “perceived threat” from the FBI against his family during the high-profile case has helped to spur on his campaign to create an International Anti-Corruption Court.
Senior District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf said he never felt threatened in years on the bench—despite handling numerous organized crime cases—until he was on the verge of exposing corruption inside the FBI.
Wolf presided over a 1998 hearing into why the FBI had failed to tell prosecutors that James “Whitey” Bulger had been a high-level informant for 15 years. He discovered that the FBI had protected Bulger and his colleague Stephen “the Rifleman” Flemmi from a host of criminal allegations—including murder—so that they could continue to act as Mafia informants. Bulger was even tipped off by his FBI handler ahead of a planned arrest, allowing him to go on the run for 16 years.
“I’ve had many big Mafia cases, and I’ve never been threatened by the Mafia but did have security at certain times when I was doing that case,” Wolf told The Daily Beast.
“There’s two ways you can respond when you’re under that kind of pressure you can relent and say I don’t want to suffer this. I don’t want to put my family in peril. There were what were perceived as threats to my family related to my son’s high school… My wife was beside herself. And I said, ‘They’re not gonna do anything. If they were gonna do something they would do it. They’re trying to send me a message, not to do what they think I’m doing.’ What I was doing was writing a 660-page decision that exposed a lot of corruption.”
Wolf’s courageous ruling reportedly led to the government paying out more than $100 million to families of people murdered by informants who were being shielded by the FBI. He has never previously disclosed the perceived threats to his family.
Wolf, who once led the public corruption unit inside Boston’s U.S. attorney’s office, has been exposing corruption in the U.S. for decades and is now working on a proposal that would help to crack down on grand corruption all over the world. He is the driving force behind a campaign to set up an International Anti-Corruption Court, which would bring kleptocrats, oligarchs and corrupt politicians to justice when their home countries were either unwilling or unable to bring prosecutions against them.
The global body would help to relieve the intolerable pressures placed on judicial systems that try to go after corrupt officials or politicians who have great power in their jurisdictions.
Scores of past and present world leaders have voiced their support for the establishment of the court—with the Canadians and Dutch currently leading the way—but not every government is keen on the idea.
Turkey used its veto to stop Wolf’s Integrity Initiatives International (III), the NGO working on the anti-corruption court, from participating at the last meeting of the United Nations Convention against Corruption’s Conference of States Parties in Egypt in 2021. They did the same thing again for this week’s conference which was held in Atlanta.
On Monday, Turkey finally removed their veto under pressure from the U.S. government, but it was too late for Wolf and his colleagues from III (which is pronounced ‘triple I’) to attend. “I assume that the Egyptian ambassador told them that we weren't going to be there. So, they succeeded. They didn't need the objection,” the Senior United States District Judge said. “They sort of chickened out, but they achieved their purpose. And the way I read their letter; they reserve the right to object next time.”
The Erdogan government is making a concerted effort to block the establishment of the corruption court.
Ian Lynch, Managing Director of III, said that while regimes from Saudi Arabia to Russia might be against the court, “Turkey is the only one that’s taking any action against our organization.”
“Overtly,” Wolf added. “I mean, who knows covertly?”
Turkey’s attempts to bully Wolf and III include targeting him and his colleagues in their professional lives. “They’ve written to every judge of my court saying honorable Mark Wolf's not honorable. From a New York, small Turkish social organization, they wrote to all my directors, they wrote to the employers of another director,” he said. “There’s a certain validation to it.”
Wolf compares the efforts of a corrupt government to shut his campaign down to the pressures he felt on the Bulger case.
“It’s not like somebody wrote a letter and said, ‘We’re gonna kill your son, or break your leg.’ But you know, it’s more subtle than that but it was taken very seriously by the U.S. Marshals,” Wolf said. “It was a series of very odd, related coincidences; unlikely things that caused the apprehension… I was confident that nothing was going to happen to my son because I told my wife but it’s intended to influence conduct. It’s the same thing here. The minor version, the veto, is intended to influence conduct. Stop criticizing us for locking up the judges. Stop talking about Turkey. It’s an example of why we need an International Anti-Corruption Court.”
High Stakes
Judge Wolf is no stranger to standing up to autocrats. He recalled the day he once confronted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, over human rights abuses. He was in St. Petersburg for an international legal forum—as a guest of the Russians—but refused to go along politely while Moscow’s so-called anti-corruption fighters shared their platitudes.
Judge Mark L. Wolf gave evidence in the U.S. Senate this year.
“I had lunch with Medvedev, where I mentioned Navalny and Magnitsky… he really let me have it in Russian,” Wolf said. “Medvedev went out at dessert with the Minister of Justice, and then came back and spoke to me in English and thanked me for helping with the forum. But then they told me the next year, ‘We’re so sorry, we ran out of money to bring you here.’
“I’m passionate about Ukraine and persona non grata in Russia,” he explained.
If the International Anti-Corruption Court is established, President Vladimir Putin would be one of the prime targets—even though it’s virtually guaranteed that Russia would not be a signatory.
“185 U.N. member states are parties to the U.N. Convention against Corruption. Russia is one of them. And they are all required to have laws—Russia does have laws—criminalizing five types of corrupt conduct; bribery; embezzlement; misappropriation of national resources; money laundering; and obstruction of justice. The problem is that in countries ruled by kleptocrats like Putin, those laws are not enforced against the nation’s corrupt leaders, because they control the police, the prosecutors and the courts,” Wolf said.
The court would operate in a similar fashion to the International Criminal Court. It would be a court of last resort open to prosecute individuals if their own country was unwilling or unable to do so themselves, or if a crime was committed in another country which did not want to draw the political heat of attempting to prosecute a powerful foreign figure.
“Russia epitomizes a country that is unwilling,” Wolf said. “The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in the Panama Papers provided overwhelming evidence that Putin has laundered hundreds of millions and more into and through Switzerland.”
“Let’s assume hypothetically some of that laundered money has ended up in London because Putin figures if he ever needs to leave, he’d like to live in London. In that scenario, Putin has committed the crime of money laundering in Switzerland and also in the U.K. And let’s say the U.K. joins the International Anti-Corruption Court… So, Russia is unwilling. The U.K. might be possible, but they prefer not to. They defer to the IACC and then Putin could be prosecuted, even though Russia didn’t join the court.”
Bill Browder, one of the world’s leading anti-corruption campaigners, told The Daily Beast that such a court was essential: “Kleptocrats and money launderers are so sophisticated they have proven that national governments don’t have the necessary reach to stop and prosecute international corruption. It’s clear that we need an international body to go after these people and create consequences since everything else has failed so far.”
Or, in the words of Wolf: “I don’t want to live in a world where the kleptocrats like Putin don’t have to sweat.”
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
Making corrupt officials sweat has been Wolf’s specialty for more than 40 years. In 1981, he was appointed chief of the public corruption unit in Massachusetts and secured over 40 consecutive convictions in three years. President Reagan soon appointed him to the U.S. District Court at the age of just 38.
From left to right: Federal Judge Mark Wolf is introduced by newly sworn in U.S. Attorney Wayne Budd, to his wife Jacqueline and mother Octavia Budd, far right. Ceremonies were held at U.S. Court. (Photo by John Blanding/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
He had learned the ropes in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in under President Nixon. “When I was 28/29 years old, I was an assistant to the Attorney General in the United States after Watergate,” Wolf said. “So, I got introduced to the issues: How do you hold the highest officials in democracy accountable?”
After turning 77 this month, he admits he should probably be enjoying a “tranquil retirement,” but his appetite remains undimmed. He is still working as a federal judge, as well as leading the IACC campaign. Earlier this year, he appeared before the U.S. Senate where he received a fiery welcome from Republicans after raising concerns over alleged ethics violations by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The crowning achievement to a remarkable career would be the establishment of an International Anti-Corruption Court, and there are signs that that could soon become a reality.
The tipping point could come in London where the Labour Party is expected to replace the Conservatives in the next 12 months. David Lammy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, announced that Labour would back the establishment of the court in a speech this summer. “Labour is determined to clean up the London laundromat at home and defeat kleptocracy around the world,” he said.
The U.K. would be joining the likes of Canada, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Moldova, and Nigeria in backing the court. But London would immediately become arguably its most important supporter due to the U.K.’s key position in the global financial system and its role as a favored haven for illicit funds stolen by kleptocrats all over the world.
“We really think it will snowball [if the U.K. signs on],” said Wolf. “Countries don't want to be out on a limb on their own, they want to know who else is supporting it. It would be huge. And we're preparing for that day.”
One notable absentee from the growing list of supporters of the court is the U.S. The State Department has indicated that the U.S. would not sign up to the court.
“The U.S. is vexing,” Wolf said. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction. They conflate the International Anti-Corruption Court with the International Criminal Court, which I regret we’re not part of.”
On the bright side, American reluctance has not derailed the ICC. Washington’s refusal to endorse Wolf’s campaign makes it difficult to claim that the court is a U.S. plot to undermine rulers like Putin and Erdogan.
“It can’t be, it shouldn’t be, exclusively the global north making rules for others,” said Wolf, who is particularly proud of the interest in Africa where countries are hoping for support in clamping down on domestic corruption.
Bianca Jagger, the renowned human rights advocate, said corrupt officials and politicians would be terrified of the court.
“It’s the same as the Criminal court. Were people afraid? Were governments afraid? Of course, why is it that the U.S. is not a signatory to the court? Why did Daniel Ortega not sign up? Because they don’t want to be accountable to international law,” she told The Daily Beast. “I believe that the International Anti-Corruption Court is a critical tool and will be as crucial as the International Criminal Court. Mark Wolf deserves all the support for this project.”
Like Jagger, Wolf has spent decades campaigning. “The U.N. Convention against Corruption is 20 years old. And as I go around the world, I frequently ask who thinks there’s less grand corruption—abuse in public office for private gain by a nation’s leaders—now than there was 20 years ago, I’ve yet to see anybody raise his or her hand.”
At long last, that may be about to change.
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