Not only in Panama is money the big persuader

 From the Sidelines

What has Dominique Strauss-Kahn  got to do with Panama? Currently very little, although the country was recently getting a lecture from his former  fiefdom on how to manage its affairs.

But while  the previously esteemed head of one of the most powerful  organizations in the world, if you leave out the drug cartels, was getting his minions to tell others about their affairs, he was doing a poor job looking after his own “affaires d’amour” if that’s what you can call non consensual sex.

But Andrew Cockburn, a British writer living in the U.S. brings another Panama connection to mind. The question of morality in the justice system.

In Panama it’s not even a question of debate that money is not one of the things that can get you a beneficial judgment in our justice system. For most it’s the only thing. Ask any lawyer.

So it’s worth perusing Cockburn’s words in the First Post, to discover that we are not totally alone, although in other jurisdictions the big guys do sometimes end up behind bars, including people like Madhof, Conrad Black  and a few major white collar criminals. Panama is still waiting.

What follows is Cockburn’s viewpoint.

It's been set up as a battle of moralities, in the simplest terms: the poor immigrant black African house-keeper versus the rich, white Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with the principals and their lawyers going mano a mano in a trial presently scheduled to begin on July 18.

This side of the Atlantic, Americans have been thumping themselves on the back for the supposedly robust ethos of one-law-for-the-rich-and-poor-alike that has seen the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr press charges of rape and kindred sexual offences against the powerful former managing director of the IMF. A New York judge set stringent and costly conditions of bail for the accused. If convicted he faces a prison term.

Meanwhile some French whine, without any convincing evidence, that DSK is the victim of conspiracy. Others say this is a wake-up call. Emboldened feminists roll out charges that rich French men regularly get away with serious unwanted sexual onslaughts, dint of money, power, cultural attitudes.

Of course money counts in the justice system, on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably more rich people end up in prison in the US than in France, but most rich crooks don't. They don't even get charged. Ask the bankers, bonds rating agencies and hedge fund operators who bankrupted America with egregious fraud in 2008.

All in all it's still surprising that the alleged assault at a fancy hotel wasn't promptly covered up, as generally happens, whether the perp is French, American, Arab or indeed African. The difference may have been a new police investigator, a new Manhattan DA, a new union rep, video cameras in the hallway, or some variable making it impossible for the hotel to hush it up.

DSK is married to a very rich woman, Anne Sinclair, granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg, Picasso's principal art dealer through the late 1920s and 1930s. Loyal to her man, vocally complaisant about his sexual activities during their marriage, she seems set to spend what it takes.

The accuser is poor, and comes from a poor family in Guinea. Her first lawyer – Jeffrey Shapiro, rather mysteriously described as a "family friend" – is now off the case. So is the well known civil rights lawyer, Norman Siegel. Neither will say why. As CounterPunch's Pam Martens reported on Monday, "Siegel, a stalwart defender of the First Amendment, was uncharacteristically sparse in his explanation by phone: 'I can only say I am not representing her'."

Enter Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who recently laid out the arguments for a deal with some verve in Newsweek: "…my sense is that the victim would like a big payday. Why does she want to make a deal now? Why not wait until the conviction, and then sue? [Because] the defendant doesn't have much money.

"All the money is his wife's money. And if you win a suit – let's assume she wins a $10 million judgment against him. She's not going to collect it. He'll go bankrupt. Whereas if she settles the case, the wife pays up.

"So the difference is between getting, say, a million right now from the wife, or $10 million from the husband which the lawyer has to spend the rest of his life chasing."

A reporter from Le Figaro asked Dershowitz "how to seal such an agreement without obstructing justice", and the professor responded: "This is possible through a parent who does not fall under the jurisdiction of New York. The family members of DSK in Paris, for example, do not. If they try to reach an agreement directly with the New York lawyer, they can be charged with obstruction. But they can negotiate directly with the family of the complainant outside the State of New York or Guinea.

"It is an extremely delicate dance to lead… [the prosecutor] cannot prevent the family from making an agreement. All he can do is threaten to open an investigation for obstruction of justice. He can say: 'If ever I hear of an explicit agreement or implicit exchange of money in order to buy the silence of the victim, you will go to jail.' Then each risk up to five years in prison.

"But it is still difficult for the prosecutor to stop the agreement… [the woman's lawyer] may want to see justice done, but ultimately, money is more important."

Dershowitz argued that when the accuser's lawyer said he was cooperating with the prosecutor, "it was just a message to the defence that said he expected an offer".

So, who has the Sofitel housekeeper now got representing her? None other than Thompson Wigdor, a New York law firm that, in Martens's words, "represents the management of large multinational companies against their employees while simultaneously representing the lone employee fighting for justice against, uh, large multinational companies – a David v. Goliath firm or Goliath v. David firm, depending on the particular day's press release."

Martens emphasises that these are aggressive, well-credentialed lawyers who have scored big wins. She knows what she's talking about. Before retirement she worked for years on Wall Street and saw close-up how the big firms used legal muscle to crush efforts to bring them to book for sexual discrimination and harassment.

In substantive terms, the prime obstruction to a deal is Cyrus Vance Jr, son of a former secretary of state and most definitely a member of the WASP legal elite. He's a favourite of upper-tier liberals. Endorsing his bid to become DA were such figures as Gloria Steinem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, Caroline Kennedy and former mayor David Dinkins.

Vance will certainly be reluctant to have his reputation tarnished in a high profile case by rolling over in some deal slathered with Mme Sinclair's cash and clearly designed to outflank the implacable march of justice and the eagerness of progressives to see DSK locked away.

We can assume that the accuser is being buffeted by advocates of possibly opposing strategies. Of course her formal attorney, Kenneth Thompson of Thompson Wigdor, has her ear. According to Martens, "there is no evidence that her colleagues at the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council union are able to stay in touch with her and provide her a support network."

The New York Times has reported that her brothers in Guinea have been unable to reach her on her cell phone. We can assume that the DA's office knows where she is, and is therefore in a position to make her aware of the legal stakes and issues involved.

There is a recent interesting semi-parallel. In February, the US government was able to spring the CIA agent Raymond Davis from a Lahore jail, after he had been charged with shooting to death two young Pakistanis on January 27 who, he claimed, were trying to kill him.

Informed sources told CounterPunch's Shauquat Qadir that a price tag of about $1.5 million per family has been paid, with US citizenship for a dozen or more members of each family, with job guarantees for those of age and education opportunities guaranteed for children – more than they could ever dream of and sufficiently tempting for them to pardon Davis.

Money in sufficient quantity rarely loses its persuasive powers.