.png)
CORPORATE CRIME OBSERVATORY
Tax Evasion, Corruption and the Distortion of Justice
The Corporate Crime Observatory (CCO) is partnering with Boston College Law School, Manchester Law School, and the University of Roehampton to organize an International Colloquium focused on the articles recently published in the Special Issue entitled "Tax Evasion, Corruption and the Distortion of Justice" of Duke University's journal Law and Contemporary Problems, which was edited by Prof. Diane Ring (Boston College Law School), Dr. Costantino Grasso (Manchester Law School), Dr. Lorenzo Pasculli (UCL Dawes Centre for Future Crime). This event is organized with the cooperation of the Italian Judicial College (Scuola Superiore della Magistratura – Sede Decentrata di Napoli). The purpose of the event is to disseminate the publications and discuss them with top-level experts and relevant stakeholders to establish a fruitful knowledge-exchange process.
The articles published in the Special Issue analyze how corruption and tax crime adversely affect society by adopting a broad conception of justice in a liberal society. To address the subject's complexity, the Symposium approaches research questions from various lenses of legality, such as criminal law, criminal justice, tax law, and business law. Researchers with different backgrounds and expertise have contributed to more comprehensively encapsulating and contextualizing these dynamic and sweeping issues. The Symposium integrates legal perspectives with socio-economic, criminological, ethical, and political ones, offering innovative research findings and stimulating further discussion. Given the scope and scale of the interconnections between corruption and tax evasion, the articles in the Symposium draw on global, regional, and national case studies, collectively generating observations and approaches that can resonate across legal regimes. The articles of the Special Issue have been inspired by the findings of VIRTEU (Vat fraud: Interdisciplinary Research on Tax crimes in the European Union), which was a high-profile legal research project funded by the European Union under the HERCULE III program (Grant Agreement no: 878619) and coordinated by Dr. Costantino Grasso.
This CCO event is co-organized by Prof. Diane Ring, who serves as a Professor in Law at Boston College Law School, Dr. Costantino Grasso, who serves as an Associate Professor of Law at Manchester Law School, and Dr. Donato Vozza, who serves as a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Roehampton.
TAX EVASION, CORRUPTION, AND THE DISTORTION OF JUSTICE - SESSION I
This first session, which was held on Zoom on the 19th of May 2023 from 3:30 pm BST (10:30 am EDT), was followed by a total of 104 active participants throughout the four sessions with a global audience from 42 countries including Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, and Zambia. The overwhelming attendance, with an audience that included also more than 30 distinguished Italian judges and prosecutors, is a testament to the significance of these topics in our society.
Tax Evasion, Corruption, and the Distortion of Justice - Session I
-
3:30 pm - 3:35 pm BST
Chair – Introduction
Prof. Francis Davis (Birmingham and Roehampton Universities)
-
3:35 pm – 4:15 pm BST
Discussant: Prof. Rita de la Feria (University of Leeds)
Beyond Bribery: Exploring the Intimate Interconnections Between Corruption and Tax Crimes
Prof. Diane Ring (Boston College Law School), Dr. Costantino Grasso (Manchester Law School)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/2/
-
4:20 pm – 5:00 pm BST
Discussant: Prof. John Cioffi (University of California, Riverside)
Endogenous Tax Law: Regulatory Capture and the Ethics of Political Obligation
Prof. Daniel Ostas (University of Oklahoma)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/3/
-
5:05 pm – 5:45 pm BST
Discussant: Prof. María Amparo Grau Ruiz (University Complutense of Madrid)
Corruption, Tax Evasion, and the Distortion of Justice: Global Challenges and International Responses
Prof. Lorena Bachmaier Winter (University Complutense of Madrid), Dr. Donato Vozza (Roehampton Law School)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/4/
-
5:50 pm – 6:20 pm BST
Discussant: Giovanni Tartaglia Polcini (Public Prosecutor, Ministry of Italian Foreign Affairs)
Developing a Working Model to Fight Fiscal Corruption: The Nexus at Which Tax Crimes and Corruption Meet
Dr. Pietro Sorbello (Guardia di Finanza, University of Teramo), Stephen Holden (Manchester Law School)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/8/
-
6:20 pm – 6:30 pm BST
Chair – Conclusions
Prof. Francis Davis (Birmingham and Roehampton Universities)
Chair: Francis Davis
Francis is Professor of Civic Leadership and International Studies at the University of Roehampton Business School, Political Science at the University of Birmingham, and special advisor to the international outreach programme - Global Works - of the Thames Estuary Growth Board. Zambian born he has previously led initiatives for two City Mayors been a ministerial advisor under three UK governments and has served on private, public and third sector boards internationally.
Discussant: Rita de la Feria
Rita is a Professor of Tax Law at the University of Leeds and an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxations. Rita is an acclaimed tax law and policy expert specializing in the intersection of tax law and EU law, public economics, and criminology. She has published 4 books and over 50 articles, speaks at conferences globally, trains tax administration bodies, and serves on the Editorial Board of leading tax law journals. Rita also represents the UK on the Academic Committee of the European Association of Tax Law Professors.
Author: Diane Ring
Diane is a Professor of Law and the Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law. She researches and writes primarily in the field of international taxation, corporate taxation, and ethical issues in tax practice. Her recent work addresses issues including information exchange, tax leaks, international tax relations, sharing economy and human equity transactions, and ethics in international tax. Diane was a consultant for the United Nation’s 2014 project on tax base protection for developing countries, and the U.N.'s 2013 project on treaty administration for developing countries.
Author: Costantino Grasso
Costantino is an Associate Professor in Business and Law at Manchester Law School, Founder and
Editor in Chief of the Corporate Crime Observatory and the Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Blog. He specializes in corporate and economic crime, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and whistleblowing. He serves as an international expert on corruption and good governance for the Council of Europe and has acted as a Principal Investigator for both EU-funded and NATO-funded international research projects. Costantino is a qualified solicitor in the UK and a lawyer in Italy, and he worked as part of the prosecuting team in the anti-bribery division of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Second Session
Endogenous Tax Law: Regulatory Capture and the Ethics of Political Obligation
Daniel Ostas, ‘Endogenous Tax Law: Regulatory Capture and the Ethics of Political Obligation’, 85(4) Law and Contemporary Problems 2023, 49-73.
Discussant: John Cioffi
John is an Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside. His research focuses on comparative law and regulation, with a focus on corporate governance, financial regulation, and labor relations. He has published articles and book chapters in various journals and is the author of Public Law and Private Power, which analyzes the politics and legal frameworks shaping corporate governance reforms in the US and Western Europe. His current research investigates conflicts of interest as products of complex legal, political, and institutional processes that pose a persistent insidious threat to democracy and the rule of law.
Author: Daniel Ostas
Daniel holds the James G. Harlow, Jr. Chair in Business Ethics at the University of Oklahoma. He has taught business economics, business law, and business ethics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and has received more than twenty teaching awards. His research addresses the economics of marketplace ethics and the ethics of corporate legal strategy. An author of more than seventy scholarly works, including three books, Ostas has received more than a dozen international research awards. His co-authored book, Corporate Taxation and Social Responsibility was recently published by Wolters Kluwer International.
Third Session
Corruption, Tax Evasion, and the Distortion of Justice: Global Challenges and International Responses
Lorena Bachmaier Winter and Donato Vozza, ‘Corruption, Tax Evasion, and the Distortion of Justice: Global Challenges and International Responses’, 85(4) Law and Contemporary Problems 2023, 75-100.
Discussant: María Amparo Grau Ruiz
María Amparo is a Professor of Tax Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, and Visiting Professor of Transnational Taxation at Northwestern University. She is also Director of the Research Group “Law for Sustainable Development: socially responsible tax, labor and administrative measures,” and Principal Investigator of the AudIT-S project, on "Legal and financial significance of sustainability audit schemes through smart data management”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation.
Author: Lorena Bachmaier Winter
Lorena is a Professor at Complutense University with a specialization in comparative criminal justice systems and procedures. She was a visiting scholar at the Universities of Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. In addition to her doctorate, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by San Pedro University, Perú, in 2015. The Council of Europe appointed her as an international expert for numerous legal reforms in several Est-European countries. She is a member of many international scientific organizations and editorial and advisory boards of law journals.
Author: Donato Vozza
Donato Vozza is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Business and Law of the University of Roehampton in London. His research is currently focused on corporate crime and economic crime. He participated in several international research projects including the EU Horizon 2020 Project PROTAX as well as the EU-funded project VIRTEU and NATO-funded project Whistling at the Fake. He recently co-edited the open-access volume "Tax Crimes and Enforcement in the European Union" published by Oxford University Press.
Fourth Session
Developing a Working Model to Fight Fiscal Corruption: The Nexus at Which Tax Crimes and Corruption Meet
Pietro Sorbello and Stephen Holden, ‘Developing a Working Model to Fight Fiscal Corruption: The Nexus at Which Tax Crimes and Corruption Meet’, 85(4) Law and Contemporary Problems 2023, 185-211.
Discussant: Giovanni Tartaglia Polcini
Since October 2014, Giovanni has been a Legal Counsel for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, where he coordinates international efforts to combat corruption and provides technical assistance in matters of justice and security. He served as a prosecutor in the Court of Appeals District of Naples for almost 20 years, starting in 1996. He was the President of the G20 Anti-Corruption in 2021 and has been an anti-corruption delegate to the OECD thematic working group since 2015 and a UNCAC delegate since 2016. Since 2017 he has been designated coordinator of the Penitentiary Systems of El PAcCTO, the European program for the fight against organized crime in Europe and Latin American Region. He is currently co-chair of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG) and Chair of the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA).
Author: Pietro Sorbello
Pietro Sorbello is a Colonel of Guardia di Finanza, the Italian military Police Force with fights against economic and financial. He holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Law from the University of Bologna, with a thesis focused on the abuse of law in criminal matters. He is an Adjunct Professor in Criminal Law at Teramo University and a member of the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP). His research focuses on economic criminal law.
Author: Stephen Holden
Stephen is currently a Ph.D. Candidate and Associate Lecturer at Manchester Law School. The primary focus of his research and thesis is the intersection of whistleblowing and the exercise of state secrecy. In addition, Stephen has participated as a Research Assistant in the VIRTEU project examining tax crimes and corruption, and as a Senior Research Assistant on the Whistling at the Fake research project which considered the role of whistleblowers in combating instances of mal-information. Stephen is an Assistant Editor and regular contributor to the Corporate Crime Observatory where authors articles with a particular focus on protected disclosures in corporate environments.
TAX EVASION, CORRUPTION, AND THE DISTORTION OF JUSTICE - SESSION II
This second session, which was held on Zoom on the 21st of June 2023 from 3:20 pm BST (10:20 am EDT), was followed by a total of 69 active participants throughout the four sessions with a global audience from 30 countries including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Union of the Comoros, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Lithuania, Malawi, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela. The audience included also more than 30 distinguished Italian judges, prosecutors, and judicial trainees.
Tax Evasion, Corruption, and the Distortion of Justice - Session II
-
3:20 pm - 3:35 pm BST
Preliminary Remarks: Diane Ring (Boston College Law School)
Brief welcome: Barbara Grasso (Italian School of the Judiciary – Naples) and Giulio Vanacore (Office of the Public Prosecutor – Naples)
Introduction and Moderation: Richard Weber (Winston & Strawn LLP)
-
3:35 pm – 4:15 pm BST
Discussant: Khrista McCarden (Tulane University)
Co-Discussant: Margherita Smarra (Università degli Studi del Molise)
Encouraging Ethical Tax Compliance Behavior: The Role of the Tax Practitioner in Enhancing Tax Justice
Author: Elaine Doyle (University of Limerick)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/6/
-
4:20 pm – 5:00 pm BST
Discussant: Simon York (Royal United Services Institute)
Co-Discussant: Victoria Gronwald (London School of Economics)
Corrupt Corporations and the Facilitation of Tax Crimes: A Review of the United Kingdom’s Enforcement Mechanisms
Author: Nicholas Ryder (University of Cardiff)
Non-presenting Author: Sam Bourton (University of the West of England Bristol)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/9/
-
5:05 pm – 5:45 pm BST
Discussant: Elizabeth David-Barrett (University of Sussex)
Co-Discussant: Li Huang (University of California, Irvine)
Policing Fiscal Corruption: Tax Crime and Legally Corrupt Institutions in the United Kingdom
Author: Branislav Hock (University of Portsmouth)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/7/
-
5:50 pm – 6:20 pm BST
Discussant: Leopoldo Parada (University of Leeds)
Co-Discussant: Pietro Maria Sabella (Luiss University - Rome)
“The Producers” of Tax Abuse: The Corrupting Effects of Tax Law and Tax Reliefs in the UK Film Industry
Author: Lorenzo Pasculli (UCL Dawes Centre for Future Crime)
Author: Stuart MacLennan (Coventry University)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol85/iss4/5/
-
6:20 pm – 6:30 pm BST
Chair – Conclusions
Richard Weber (Winston & Strawn LLP)
Chair: Richard Weber
Richard Weber is a partner at Winston & Strawn LLP in the US. He has an extensive background in law enforcement and financial crime prevention. Previously, he served as the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division at the IRS, part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Additionally, he has held positions such as General Counsel of the NYS Department of Financial Services, Head of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section at the Department of Justice, Deputy Chief of the Investigations Division, and Chief of the Major Economic Crimes Bureau at the Manhattan DA's Office, and federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York.
First Session
Encouraging Ethical Tax Compliance Behavior: The Role of the Tax Practitioner in Enhancing Tax Justice
Elaine Doyle, Encouraging Ethical Tax Compliance Behaviour: The Role of the Tax Practitioner in Enhancing Tax Justice, 85 Law and Contemporary Problems 137-157 (2023).
Discussant: Khrista McCarden
Khrista McCarden (AB '98, JD '03) serves as the Hoffman Fuller Associate Professor of Tax Law at Tulane Law School. Her articles on topics such as offshore tax evasion, cross-border charitable giving, and impact investing have been recognized internationally and in the United States, including by an Oxford University/SAID Business School study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, which named her as a top scholar. She has been featured in The New York Times for her commentary on tax evasion and art sales in both domestic and international contexts. She earned both her B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University with honors.
Co-Discussant: Margherita Smarra
Margherita Smarra is a Researcher in Accounting at the University of Molise, where she also teaches courses in accounting and auditing. In 2017, she earned a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Naples "Federico II," and, in 2012 she obtained qualifications as an Italian Certified Public Accountant and Legal Auditor. Her research work focuses on earnings management, compliance, and public accountability. She also served as a Visiting Scholar at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, Australia.
Author: Elaine Doyle
Elaine Doyle is an Associate Professor of Taxation at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax Advisor, working in PwC Dublin and EY Limerick before moving into academia. She has been awarded numerous accolades nationally and internationally for excellence in higher-level teaching and learning and has undertaken several leadership roles in academia both locally and nationally. Her research interests include, inter alia, professional ethics and risk management in tax practice, tax compliance, ethical reasoning, and ethics education. She has published prolifically in these areas and has secured national and international funding to support her research activities.
Second Session
Corrupt Corporations and the Facilitation of Tax Crimes: A Review of the United Kingdom’s Enforcement Mechanisms
Sam Bourton & Nicholas Ryder, Corrupt Corporations and the Facilitation of Tax Crimes: A Review of the United Kingdom's Enforcement Mechanisms, 85 Law and Contemporary Problems 213-246 (2023)
Discussant: Simon York
Simon York is Senior Associate Fellow at Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Most recently, he spent 7 years as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Chief Investigation Officer and Director of HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service (FIS). Simon was the first Director of FIS, building an organization able to deploy a wide range of techniques, capabilities, and powers (including criminal investigations) to tackle serious tax fraud and money laundering. Under Simon’s leadership, his teams have recovered or prevented the loss of close to £40bn in tax revenues and run criminal investigations which have led to around 4,000 convictions.
Co-Discussant: Victoria Gronwald
Victoria Gronwald is a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, researching the role of interest groups in political processes around tax and financial transparency. Victoria is also a consultant on responsible mineral supply chains, with an increasing focus on illicit financial flows. She has an LLM in Diplomacy and International Law and an MA in Sociology of Development. Victoria is an Assistant Editor of the Corporate Crime Observatory.
Author: Nicholas Ryder
Nicholas Ryder is a Professor of Law at Cardiff University. With an international reputation for excellence in policy-oriented research in financial crime, Nicholas has played advisory roles both nationally (Home Office, Law Commission, the Nationwide, Transparency International, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and internationally (NATO, United Nations, Cepol, Europol, EUROMED Police, the Dutch Police). He created, and currently edits, Routledge's Law of Financial Crime Series and is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Criminology. He has contributed to two REF Impact Case Studies in 2014 and 2021.
Third Session
Policing Fiscal Corruption: Tax Crime and Legally Corrupt Institutions in the United Kingdom
Branislav Hock, Policing Fiscal Corruption: Tax Crime and Legally Corrupt Institutions in the United Kingdom, 85 Law and Contemporary Problems 159-183 (2023)
Discussant: Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett
Elizabeth Dávid-Barrett is Head of the Global Program on Measuring Corruption at the International Anti-Corruption Academy. She is on leave from the University of Sussex. Prof David-Barrett has been researching corruption for 20 years, with special interests in political corruption, public procurement, business integrity, and the role of transnational networks in countering corruption. She has advised several governments on anti-corruption policy as well as training anti-corruption professionals, working with private-sector organizations, and authoring several reports for Transparency International; she was formerly chair of Spotlight on Corruption, a UK-based anti-corruption NGO (2019-22).
Co-Discussant: Li Huang
Li Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, where her research is focused on white-collar and corporate crime, prosecution, and courtroom decision-making. Her dissertation examines corporate prosecution and punishment through the lenses of legal endogeneity and symbolic punishment to understand the underenforcement of corporate crime. Li has published articles in peer-reviewed journals in both English and Chinese. Prior to her Ph.D. program, Li received her JSM from Stanford University. She is a member of the New York Bar.
Author: Branislav Hock
Branislav Hock is an Associate Professor in Economic Crime and Compliance and Research Lead of Economic Crime Group at the University of Portsmouth. He is a passionate interdisciplinary researcher who thrives in both an academic environment and practice. With a rapidly developing international reputation for excellence in policy-oriented research, he has played advisory roles both in the UK (Home Office, FCDO, Synectic Solutions, Crowe) and internationally (EU Commission, European Court of Auditors, OECD) in projects related to money laundering, anti-corruption, tax evasion, and compliance. He is the author of Extraterritoriality and International Bribery: A Collective Action Perspective (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of Economic Crime: From Conception to Response (Routledge 2022). He serves as the Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Criminology.
Fourth Session
“The Producers” of Tax Abuse: The Corrupting Effects of Tax Law and Tax Reliefs in the UK Film Industry
Lorenzo Pasculli & Stuart MacLennan, "The Producers" of Tax Abuse: The Corrupting Effects of Tax Laws and Tax Reliefs in the U.K. Film Industry, 85 Law and Contemporary Problems 101-136 (2023)
Discussant: Leopoldo Parada
Leopoldo Parada is an Associate Professor in Tax Law at the University of Leeds. He served as Visiting Professor of International and European Tax Law at the University of Turin in Italy, held academic positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the IBFD in Amsterdam, and as a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich. He is the author of the book titled “Double Non-Taxation and the Use of Hybrid Entities” (Wolters Kluwer, 2018), and the editor of two collective volumes: “Corporate Taxation, Group Debt Funding and Base Erosion” (Eucotax Series, Kluwer Law International, 2020) and “A Research Agenda for Tax Law” (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022).
Co-Discussant: Pietro Maria Sabella
Pietro Maria Sabella is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Criminal Law at Luiss University, he holds a PhD in Law and Business, with a thesis on individual and corporate criminal liability for tax crimes. He is a member of the European Research Center on Tax Crimes and the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP). His research focuses on corporate criminal liability, tax, and financial crimes, but also cyberterrorism and hate crimes. He is admitted to practice as a Lawyer in Italy and serves as an Assistant Editor of the Corporate Crime Observatory.
Author: Lorenzo Pasculli
Lorenzo is a Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at the Department of Security and Crime Science at UCL. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Nebrija (Madrid, Spain). Prior to his appointment at UCL, Lorenzo was the Associate Head for Research at Coventry Law School, an Associate Member of the Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity (CFCI) at Coventry University, and a Sessional Lecturer in Law at Imperial College London. He previously worked as a Senior Lecturer at Kingston University London and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Padua (Italy).
Author: Stuart MacLennan
Stuart MacLennan is an Associate Professor of Law at Coventry University and an Associate Member of the Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity. Stuart completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, his LL.M. at the Glasgow Graduate School of Law, and his Ph.D. at Trinity College, University of Dublin. Stuart was previously an advisor on European Affairs in the Scottish Parliament, before going on to teach at Trinity College, University of Dublin, and the China-EU School of Law. Stuart has published extensively in the fields of taxation and European Union law – focusing, in particular, on corporate tax avoidance and evasion, and tax competition in the European Union and beyond.