The Law of Algorithms--SEC Proposes Rules on "Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker- Dealers and Investment Advisers" (2023)

 

Pix Credit here

 The Securities and Exchange Commission has distributed notice of proposed rulemaking-- Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers (2023)

 The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission” or “SEC”) is proposing new rules (“proposed conflicts rules”) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (“Advisers Act”) to eliminate, or neutralize the effect of, certain conflicts of interest associated with broker-dealers’ or investment advisers’  interactions with investors through these firms’ use of technologies that optimize for, predict, guide, forecast, or direct investment-related behaviors or outcomes. The Commission is also proposing amendments to rules under the Exchange Act and Advisers Act that would require firms to make and maintain certain records in accordance with the proposed conflicts rules. (SEC, Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers (2023).

 Comments may be received by 10 October 2023. Electronic Comments: Use the Commission’s internet comment form (https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml); or  Send an email to rule-comments@sec.gov. Please include File Number S7-12-23 on the subject line. Paper Comments: Send paper comments to Vanessa A. Countryman, Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549-1090.

The SEC Press Release follows below. For commentary see here, here, here, here, and here.

Detaching US-China Financial Markets: The SEC Disclosure Guidance for Chinese IPOs

 

 

Both the United States and China have recently moved more vigorously in developing borders that effectively make access to each others' financial markets more difficult.   This is part of a broader and longer term effort to undo the work of integration at the heart of US globalization and Chinese Reform and Opening Up, as that era disappears into history.  Now with New Era and America First ideologies at the forefront, the need for the reconstruction of stronger and less porous borders between the US and China becomes  more important as both economies reconstitute themselves as both global, but as separate.  Both states are becoming much more protective of their economies and their global extension through the control of global production chains  that lead back either to apex entities in their respective home territories. 

This is particularly important in the context of the operation of financial markets.  The reason is indirect but straightforward.  Financial markets have been the principal vehicle through which states developed their models of compliance-accountability in the management of their macro economic policies.  It is also the principal means of acquiring information about entities and of using such information not just for accountability (e.g.. the Modern Slavery reporting laws) but also to nudge entities into particular forms of behavior. Inc. It is no surprise, then, that both China and US have become increasingly wary of their economic "hostages" in each other's jurisdiction luring by the prospect of profit. 

As a consequence both states have now sought to restrain such cross border access to capital. The motivations of each state, of course, are different at the micro level, and each reflects both short term and longer term objectives.  The result, however, is that the process of integration is being reversed in increasingly obvious ways. 

Reporting by Echo Wang for Reuters today provides a another window on the process: "EXCLUSIVE SEC gives Chinese companies new requirements for U.S. IPO disclosures" (Reuters 23 August 2021). What makes this interesting is the way that the SEC is using its oversight powers to reach into the listing operations of the NYSE without the need for the more cumbersome process of formal regulatory interventions.  The reporting follows below along with its source, the 30 July 2021 "Statement on Investor Protection Related to Recent Developments in China" of SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

ASIL International Legal Theory Interest Group Symposium: "When Corporate and International Law Meet: Corporate Agency in a Global Context"

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018)

It was my great delight to attend a recently concluded ASIL International Legal Theory Interest Group (ILTIG) Symposium,  When Corporate and International Law Meet: Corporate Agency in a Global Context. It was co-organized by Durham University's Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law (ICCL) and by the Jilin University School of Law.

Conference participants considered aspects of the following problem:  "Among the most significant challenges for governments and international organisations is to develop institutions for economic globalisation to promote economic growth but which also comply with moral demands that we can reasonably agree apply to these institutions. This symposium brings together legal scholars, social scientists, and philosophers to address these challenges."

The Symposium statement and a partially annotated Symposium Program follow below. 

Upcoming Conference at Vanderbilt: Sovereign Conduct on the Margins of the Law, a Symposium

Issues surrounding sovereignty have received increasing attention over the last few years, most recently in Congress’s decision regarding Saudi Arabian immunity. The Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law is hosting four panels that will explore the various facets of these issues, such as: the involvement of sovereigns in cyber-crime; terrorism financing, the immunity aspects of state owned enterprises; and the problems surrounding sovereign debt crises. Participants in these panels will include practitioners and academics with expertise in each of these topics. This symposium will be held at the Vanderbilt Law School on Friday February 17, 2017 with CLE registration starting at 7:30.

The description of Conference panels and panelists follows. In a later post I will provide a summary of the proceedings.

Announcing Publication of "Research Handbook on Sovereign Wealth Funds and International Investment Law" Edited by Fabio Bassan

Happy to report the publication of Research Handbook on Sovereign Wealth Funds and International Investment Law (Edward Elgar Publishers; ISBN 978-78195-519-2 ), edited by Fabio Bassan, Professor, International Economic Law and European Law, Roma Tre University, Italy and Founding Director, Sovereign Wealth Funds Law Centre. Here is the official description:

Research on the role of sovereign investments in a time of crisis is still unsatisfactory. This Research Handbook illustrates the state of the art of the legal investigation on sovereign investments, filling necessary gaps in previous research. Current focus is based on investment flows and trends, grounded in economic scenarios and objectives. Conversely, investigations from a legal standpoint are still few, namely disregarding the host states’ concerns about sovereign investments goals and tools. Hence, most of the many relevant drivers that affect current sovereign investments, be they FDI or portfolio investments, remain unexplained. This book investigates the juridical foundation of sovereign investments and extends our frontier of understanding.

Contributors include: Giovanna Adinolfi, Fabio Bassan, Massimilliano Castelli, Larry Catà Backer, Anna De Luca, Salar Ghahramani, Kathryn Gordon, Locknie Hsu, Angela Lee, Francesco Munari, Joachim Pohl, Benjamin J. Richardson, Paul Rose, Fabio Scacciavillani, Michele Vellano, Annamaria Viterbo, Todd J. Weiler, Elizabeth Whitsitt. My contribution is found as chapter 3 "SWFs in Five Continents and Three Narratives: Similarities and Differences".

A summary of the chapters follow, along with the table of contents.   Also included is the abstract of my chapter with links to text of the chapter.

Plugging Holes in Whistle Blowing Regimes--The SEC Moves to Protect its Own Turf

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

I have been considering whistle blower statutes and the cultures they give rise to within structures of economic regulation in the United States. Several years ago I noted that "the most profound movement, at least in terms of the management of the culturally encouraged behavior norms among the "masses" within economic society, has been the move toward an informant culture. In terms of behavior expectations, governments have for some time been first been making a space for and now are encouraging employees to observe their colleagues and report bad behavior to superiors. Whistle blowing, at least in the economic sphere is viewed as relevant to the preservation and maintenance of the culture of the market. However, the approach to whistle blowing at the federal level has been somewhat tentative." (Are We Now a Nation of Informants? Deepening the Culture of Whistle-Blowing Through the Federal Securities Laws).

And not just at the federal level. For example, the Pennsylvania Whistleblower Law (43 P.S. Sec. 1421 to 28) protects employees against retaliation for good faith (understood as reasonable cause) reporting of waste or wrongdoing, but defines wrongdoing narrowly to include only violation of law designed to protect the public interest and not merely technical or minimal in nature. They offer less than perfect protection. See, Scott James Preston, Whistleblowing in Intercollegate Athletics, University Business, March 28, 2012, (discussing Glenn Hedden v. Kean University, Case No. L 002278-11 (N.J. Super. Ct., complaint filed June 13, 2011). Indeed, the tentativeness produces a regime in which whistle blower provisions assume the character of gesture more than of substantive protection. Thus, in the case of the transposition of federal whistle blower models to universities, the scope of such protection is deceptive for employees of universities who work on a federal grant, subgrant or subcontract, building traps for people who mistakenly believe they "whistleblow" under its protection. This suggests that while this provision serves as a lovely gesture, it provides substantially less robust protection for employees seeking to use its provisions. (On the Limited Promise of Whistle Blower Protection Statutes for University Employees--Narrow Scope and Traps for the Unwary).

The federal government has in place a host of whistle blowing provisions more of less drawn along similar lines. The whistle blowing provisions of federal securities laws, augmented with the passage of the Sabanes Oxly Act, provides a model of both its benefits and its substantial weaknesses and traps for the unwary. (Backer, Larry Catá, "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Federalizing Norms for Officer, Lawyer and Accountant Behavior." St. Johns Law Review 76:897-952 (2002) at 936, 939-40). But those provisions have proven to be as tricky as those developed for states and universities. (See here, here here and here). One of the most interesting set of traps of those that exist at the margins of the legal requirements and constraints written into the Whistle Blower provisions.

The SEC has begun to tackle some of the more obvious issues recently, the use of employee confidentiality agreements to chill the ability of employees to exercise whistle blowing powers. This post considers recent action by the SEC.

Daniel Ivo Odon on the Human Rights Jus Comune in South America (O jus commune dos Direitos Humanos na América do Sul)

Daniel Ivo Odon, my SJD student at Penn State Law and the winner of the inaugural Mauricio Correa Human Rights Award from the Brazilian Bar Association, has written a short essay, Human Rights Jus Comune in South America. The essay describes an important development among the judiciaries of important South American states, the move toward a coordination of approaches to core issues of human rights. That coordination continues a generation long process of networked intermeshing among judiciaries that may go a long way toward the harmonization of approaches to issues toucvhing on human rights within the sometimes quite distinctive domestic legal orders of states. To that end, the OAS system appears to be playing an increasingly important role as coordinator, as source of technical assistance, and as a nexus point for the development of consensus approaches to issues among participating OAS states.  The essay is also important for an important judiciary noticeable by its absence--that of the United States.  Increasingly isolated, the U.S. courts continue to look inward for the development of a jurisprudence with transnational significance increasingly disconnected from the developments of other judiciaries.

The essay appears below in both English and Portuguese.

From the U.S. Conference Board: "Proxy Voting Factsheet (July 2014)"; A Useful Data Snapshot

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Our friends at the Conference Board have just released some useful reporting on proxy voting in the United States: Melissa Aguilar,  "Proxy Voting Factsheet (July 2014)".  This  data and analysis provides a window not merely on the usual stuff of corporate governance but also some suggestion of the trends in the use of the corporate machinery for shareholder activism, including activism to further a global business and human rights agenda.

Disclosure Systems and Securities Exchanges--On the World Federation of Exchanges Creation of a Sustainability Working Group and the Proposal to Require Extra Financial Disclosure

 

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

I have been considering the power of disclosure as a tool to socialize business entities and others into compliance with emerging social norms (that is to behavior rules that are not transposed into the laws of nation-states necessarily but which have binding effect within social, economic and other communities) (e.g., Backer, Larry Catá, From Moral Obligation to International Law: Disclosure Systems, Markets and the Regulation of Multinational Corporations. Georgetown Journal of International Law, Vol. 39:591-653 (2008)).

To that end, it is well known that both state and non-state regulatory systems play an essential role.  (e.g., On the Problem of the State in the State Duty to Protect Human Rights--Fostering National Action Plans as a Means of Refocusing the State Duty on the Business of the State Itself, May 10, 2014).  Among the most important players in the context of structuring markets and business behavior expectations are the securities exchanges vital to the operation of global investment.  The community of exchanges structures its operations and disciplines its members through an organization fo exchanges, the World Federation of Exchanges.  It is self described as "the trade association for the operators of regulated financial exchanges. With more than 60 members from around the globe, the WFE develops and promotes standards in markets, supporting reform in the regulation of OTC derivatives markets, international cooperation and coordination among regulators. WFE exchanges are home to more than 45,000 listed companies."  (WFE, WFE Appoints Nandini Sukumar as New Chief Administrative Officer, May 30, 2014). It thus operates both in the social sphere (as a source of cultural norms) and regulatory sphere (as the source of governance norms and structures) that can substantially affect the way in which enterprises operate and understand themselves. "The WFE is a central reference point for the securities industry, and for exchanges themselves. We offer member guidance in their business strategies, and in the improvement and harmonization of their management practices." (WFE, About Us, What We Do).

Just Released: The Corporate Social Responsibility Podcast--A Conversation With David Yosifon on CSR and the Business and Human Rights Project

It was my great pleasure to participate in a podcast interview with David Yosifon, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara Law, who researches and teaches courses on business law, legal ethics, and legal theory.   Professor Yosifon has organized an excellent podcast series--"The Corporate Social Responsibility Podcast."

My discussion centered on issues of human rights and the corporation, assessing the issue from an international or transnational perspective.   It may be accessed (audio only) buy clicking on the link below and may be accessed as well in iTunes. My thanks to Professor Yosifon for organizing an excellent series and for his deft interview style.

  

9. Human Rights and Corporations - Larry Catá Backer

Released May 14, 2014
Interview with Larry Catá Backer on the responsibilities of corporations regarding human rights.

Part 16 Brazil Sovereign Wealth Fund--Reimaging the State in the Global Sphere: An Inventory of Sovereign Wealth Funds as Regulator and Participant in Global Markets

(Pix (C) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

This Blog Essay site devotes every February to a series of integrated but short essays on a single theme. For 2014 this site introduces a new theme:  Reimaging the State in the Global Sphere: An Inventory of Sovereign Wealth Fund as Regulator and Participant in Global Markets.

There have been a number of studies that have sought to provide an overarching structure for understanding SWFs. The easiest way to to this is to find the largest and most influential funds and then extrapolate universal behaviors or characteristics from them.  This is a useful enterprise, it may erase substantial nuance that itself might provide the basis for a deeper understanding of SWFs within globalization and in the context of a state system in which not all states are created equal.  In this sense, while the large SWFs are better known, they do not define the entire field of emerging SWF activity. This study provides a brief critical inventory of the emerging communities of sovereign wealth funds. Each post will consider a different and less well known SWF.  Taken together, these brief studies might suggest the character and nature of the emerging universe of SWFs, and their possible rationalization.

This Post considers the Fundo Soberano do Brasil (Brazil Sovereign Wealth Fund).

Part 15 Qatar Investment Authority--Reimaging the State in the Global Sphere: An Inventory of Sovereign Wealth Funds as Regulator and Participant in Global Markets

(Pix (C) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

This Blog Essay site devotes every February to a series of integrated but short essays on a single theme. For 2014 this site introduces a new theme:  Reimaging the State in the Global Sphere: An Inventory of Sovereign Wealth Fund as Regulator and Participant in Global Markets.

There have been a number of studies that have sought to provide an overarching structure for understanding SWFs. The easiest way to to this is to find the largest and most influential funds and then extrapolate universal behaviors or characteristics from them.  This is a useful enterprise, it may erase substantial nuance that itself might provide the basis for a deeper understanding of SWFs within globalization and in the context of a state system in which not all states are created equal.  In this sense, while the large SWFs are better known, they do not define the entire field of emerging SWF activity. This study provides a brief critical inventory of the emerging communities of sovereign wealth funds. Each post will consider a different and less well known SWF.  Taken together, these brief studies might suggest the character and nature of the emerging universe of SWFs, and their possible rationalization.

This Post considers the Qatar Investment Authority.

Report on the Workshop: "Business and Human Rights - Networks of Transnational Governance” Hebrew University, Israel

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem hosted the recently concluded International Workshop--"Business and Human Rights - Networks of Transnational Governance” 19-20 February 2014.  It was organized by Dr. Guy Harpaz (Hebrew University), Prof. Sascha-Dominik Bachmann (Bournemouth), and Pini Miretski (Hebrew University), with the financial and logistical support of The Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations.  For the Call for Papers, see Call For Papers: "Workshop on Business and Human Rights – Networks of Transnational Governance" at Hebrew University.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

The workshop brought together scholars and practitioners, to examine the various interfaces among networks of transnational regulation designed to regulate the respect of businesses for human rights. One object was to understand the interfaces and linkages between the various regulative initiatives in this developing field.  Questions were considered touching on whether emerging networks are replacing the roles previously taken by the state, whether the privatization of regulation  is supplied by transnational networks and orchestrated by states, or whether an evolution of polycentric governance is complementing an entrapped and perhaps less centrally relevant international legal order. 

I have included here the program and program participants, and a short description of each paper. Please contact the authors for their papers.

Publication of the Papers from the 2013 Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

The proceedings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy’s 23rd Annual Meeting entitled “Reforming Cuba?” (August 1–3, 2013) is now available. The presentations have now been published by ASCE HERE.

The proceedings papers are listed below with links to their sources in the ASCE Web Site.

For the 2013 ASCE program, click here »
For the detailed proceedings of the annual meeting, click here »
To see the video of ASCE President Ted Henken opening remarks, please click here »
To see the video of Prof. Borjas' keynote address, please click here »

Call for Papers for the Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network (Berlin 2014)

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

 

I have been following recent discussion about law and ethics with some interest. At Penn State Law, for example, there are those who insist that ethics has little role to play in law or in the instruction of lawyers beyond an education in the rules of professional conduct.  There are others who view ethics as the essence of the social norm system underlying all systems of law, and therefore worthy of study as a branch of moral philosophy. Many of us, like most of us in the American legal academy, understand that the critical importance of the ethical dimension of law and lawyering is built into the structures of our substantive and process systems and bound up in the essence of the professionalism and fidelity to the rule of law that mark our system (e.g., efforts like Ethics Across the Curricula). And, indeed, in Europe, the connection is both vibrant and well understood as something well beyond either the narrow legalism of the lawyer's rules of professional responsibility or the amorphous focus on theory within philosophy. This is especially the case in business. 

 

In that regard, I include here a call for papers the Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network (Berlin 2014) along with a notice of the CFP for the special track on Law and Business Ethics forwarded to me by my colleague Karin Buhmann.  These might be of interest to those of you who might find this work connected with your own.

SEC Announces Rule Proposal on Regulation A+

This from the California Corporations Section e-Bulletin (Dec. 19, 2013):

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

 SEC Announces Rule Proposal on Regulation A+

At today’s Open Meeting, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted to propose rules intended to increase access to capital for smaller companies. Because these rules build upon Regulation A, the exemption created by the new rules is commonly known as “Regulation A+”. The proposed rule amendments would create two tiers of offerings:
--Tier 1 – offerings of up to $5 million in a 12-month period, including up to $1.5 million for the account of selling security-holders (already covered by Regulation A);
--Tier 2 – offerings of up to $50 million in a 12-month period, including up to $15 million for the account of selling security-holders.

Companies who elect to proceed under either Tier 1 or Tier 2 would be subject to basic eligibility and disclosure requirements similar to the existing provisions of Regulation A. Additionally, the proposed rules would implement certain other recent securities laws updates, including permitting companies to submit draft offering statements for nonpublic SEC review prior to filing, permitting companies to use “testing the waters” solicitation materials and requiring electronic filing of offering materials.

The SEC’s press release and fact sheet on the proposal can be found here and below.  The proposed rule can be found here. A 60-day comment period will commence upon publication in the Federal Register.  While the sentiment is certainly worthy, it may appear to those with more than a passing interest that this opening up  may be, in functional terms, less than it appears.  The problem remains--how does one bend the now complex architecture of disclosure for the protection of securities markets to the public policy of reducing the resulting costs of capital to enterprises that might have little access to it.  The more difficult question, and one that continues to evade exposure, is whether that architecture itself might benefit from rethinking.

 

 

Conference: "Business and Human Rights: Moving Forward, Looking Back"

On September 23-24, 2013, the University of West Virgina College of Law hosts a marvelous conference, "Business and Human Rights: Moving Forward, Looking Back."

The conference will examine the United Nations’ recent work on business and human rights issues, an area that has grown substantially in the last ten years. Highlights of the subject’s growth include the United Nations’ establishment of a Working Group on Business and Human Rights and its adoption of the Guiding Principles for business and human rights. Participants will use these two major events as a focal point for discussing the roles that corporations, civil society, and states can all play in advancing the cause of human rights. (Conference website)

The conference is supported by the U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights (letter of support HERE).  This post includes the conference agenda, participants, and panelists and topics, and a Business and Human Rights Survey.  

The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in Business Enterprises--Law, Politics and Policy in the Construction of a Global Political Economy With Chinese Characteristics

I am starting research on the role of the Chinese Communist Party within private and public companies in China, and eventually, on the role of the CCP in Chinese companies operating abroad. The object is to try to understand the way in which the separation of powers within the Chinese constitutional framework--administrative power in state organs and political authority in the CCP--may be contributing to a distinct evolution of relationships between traditionally constituted private and public power. This has implications both for the interactions between public and private regulatory systems but also to the evolution of connections between global and domestic regulatory regimes.

 

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

 This post includes a report by Shan Gao, an SJD candidate at Penn State that proposes some preliminary ideas about the connection between state, Party and business in China as a matter of law and policy. .

On the Relationship Between the Chinese Communist Party and Non-State Enterprises--Translation of CCP Central Committee Policy “Opinions on Improving and Strengthening Party Organization’s Construction in Non-SOEs (Temporary)”

The relationship between Communist Party and State has been the object of substantial work among Chinese and foreign academics.  But perhaps more interesting is the emerging relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and private enterprises operating within the parameters of Chinese socialism.  This presents not merely another facet of law with Chinese characteristics, but also another aspect of the way in which polycentricity has become more naturalized even within the domestic legal orders of strong states.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

I have posited that the old boundaries between public and private law have been giving way to new and more complex polychromatic relationships between state and other transnational enterprises, principally those operating in corporate form. (Backer, Larry Catá, "The Structure of Global Law: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity," 17(2) Tilburg Law Review 177-199 (2012). Chinese state and Communist Party authorities have begun to act on this understanding, both in the construction of internal policy and in the development of policy for the effective intervention int he construction of mulch-sourced governance frameworks.Patrick Boehler recently reported that "Beijing has for the first time established an advisory council of multinational heavyweights to help the leadership keep a finger on the pulse of major corporations in vital industries. . . .  The mechanism will gove Bejing a platform to directly lobby influential multinational leaders across different sectors in future trade disputes."  Patrick Boehler, "Beijing Sets Up Multinationals Advisory Body," South China Morning Post, June 7, 2013.

This approach stands in marked contrast to similar efforts to leverage international softy power by Norway. (Backer, Larry Catá, Sovereign Investing and Markets-Based Transnational Legislative Power: The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund in Global Markets 29 American University International Law Review – (forthcoming 2013)(November 18, 2012). Yet in both cases, the state is seeking to leverage public power through private markets.  In China, as in Norway, that leveraging involves active participation i corporate governance. While the Norwegians pursue this goal through their active shareholder policy, the CCP has deepened their policy of integrating Party work and education within corporate governance.  In this way, state and enterprise are connected seamlessly through the mediating force of the CCP, the way in which the Party stands as the nexus poiint between domestic and foreign policy. (Backer, Larry Catá and Wang, Keren, 'What is China's Dream?' Hu Angang Imagines China in 2020 as the First Internationally Embedded Superpower (February 23, 2013). Consortium for Peace & Ethics Working Paper No. 2013-2). But in the case of enterprise power within globalization, that seamlessness requires recognition of distinct governance spheres, one public and the other private.

I will be writing more about this in the context of the Chinese system in future posts.  In this introduction, I present a translation of a basic document of CCP policy--the “Opinions on Improving and Strengthening Party Organization’s Construction in Non-SOEs (Temporary)” People’s daily 2012 May 25th.

Joel Slawotsky : " Rethinking Financial Crimes and Violations of International Law"

Joel Slawotsky, lecturer at the Radzyner School of Law, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel; and the Law and Business Schools of the College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel has written an excellent essay: Rethinking Financial Crimes and Violations of International Law.

(Pix from Financial Crimes, FBI Releases Annual ‘Report to the Public’, March 7, 2007)

The essay follows below.