 Kristen Rizela is the magic name for the moment. Kristen Rizela is part of Project Expedite Justice. I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. We're doing global connections. Kristen is in Singapore and we're talking to her about a very special project, a set of cases that Project Expedite Justice has been doing. Welcome to the show, Kristen. Thank you, Jay. It's really nice to be here. It's great what you're doing. You're doing war crimes and I must say that it's wonderful to spend some time with anybody like Cynthia Tai, the founder of Project Expedite Justice, who has the vision, the horizon, the global view to attend to this. So you were an ordinary lawyer working for firms and then you decided you wanted to go into war crimes. Can you talk about the transition? Sure. Yes. Out of law school I went to a big firm in Chicago because I went to law school at Chicago Kent and then I realized that I wanted to change. So I moved to New York and switched firms. Always I was in litigation, so I was always doing complex and corporate litigations, which I did enjoy the work. But I realized at some point that I wanted to do something more and that I wasn't feeling completely fulfilled. So I made a big jump in my fifth year out of law school and just stopped completely, which I don't recommend to any young lawyers because that type of transition is very difficult if you do that way. But yeah, I made the jump. I switched. I quit a big firm and then I looked for what was next. I took a few months to think about what I was passionate about. I started working and volunteering for a women's rights organization in New York and slowly I found my way back to law, back into litigation, which it turns out I love. And I found international criminal law and international human rights law and moved to an organization called International Justice Project working with victims from the Darfur genocide and helping them to apply for civil party status before the International Criminal Court. Wow. You know what a journey and it really sounds like you can't go back. You've decided not to go back. You're going forward. This is what you've got to do in life, no? Yep, this is true. There's no going back at this point. But I have to say I do appreciate those years that I did at the firms. It gave me a different perspective. It made me sure that I wanted to take this path and it also it gave me skills that I still use today. So that's great. Well, you know, we admire you. I speak for a lot of people when I say that. And we also we support you. We're with you. We want you to do this. You do it for not only yourself, not only Project Expedite Justice, not only the movement that seeks justice, international justice, but a lot of people out there who are happy that you're doing it because you're making the world a better place and hopefully you can succeed over the long term more and more. But let's talk about the Project Expedite Justice that you're working on right now. You have two pieces of litigation we should talk about. The first one in the United States and the second one in France. Can you talk about the first one first? Yeah, sure, because it's the beginning of the story. It's also the beginning of Project Expedite Justice and it's when Cynthia and I first met and decided to partner up. It was about 2014, 2015, when the Southern District of New York, the AUSA, the Assistant Attorney General, they were investigating and prosecuting BMP Paraba for violating sanctions, U.S. sanctions, in Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. And Cynthia had been contacted by some organizations and NGOs and communities to represent survivors from the conflict in making applications to the Department of Justice for potential reparations and restitution in the case. And I was contacted by another NGO and put in touch with Cynthia, thankfully, because it led to all of Project Expedite Justice and a wonderful partnership. But I was put in touch with Cynthia to work on those applications and filing a brief to the Department of Justice for mechanisms to provide the reparations to the survivors. So what had happened is that in 2014, 2015, the prosecution did not go to trial, but the bank pled guilty. And when it pled guilty, it forfeited about $9 billion worth of funds for violating the sanctions in the three countries. And the Department of Justice had tried to do the right thing and set up funds to ensure that some of this forfeited money went to the survivors from the conflicts. Unfortunately, the reason I say tried to do is because, unfortunately, in the end, Congress enacted legislation that sent the money elsewhere to the 9-11 fund. But that's that's how we originally started. BNP, BNP is Banco Nacional de Paris, Paris-BNPP. They operated out of Paris, their headquarters is in Paris, but they are a global company, a global bank. They are one of the biggest banks in the world. They are certainly the biggest bank out of France. Yes. And they for many years, several years, they owned a first line bank right here in Honolulu and throughout the state of Hawaii. The other thing is, I'd like you to describe the theory of the case. How does a bank, this is a bank now, how do they get responsible for atrocities? So the original case was not for atrocities. It was for violating sanctions. But the sanctions had been put in place by President Clinton and President Bush because of the human rights violations that were occurring in Sudan at the time. So in the case, the prosecutor in the US had looked at what the bank was, the business that the bank was doing in Sudan from at least 2002 until 2008. And in this prosecution, they did not necessarily look at the atrocities directly, but rather as sort of an underlying crime. But what they were focused on was the violation of the sanctions. And that's how everything came to light for us because obviously we're not financial crime lawyers, but we are human rights lawyers and international criminal law lawyers. And so when we were looking at what's called the statement of facts that was part of the plea agreement, we then realized the extent to which the bank had done business in Sudan. And the key years that they had done business in Sudan were the years of the Darfur genocide. And that's when we, that's what caught our attention. And that's when we began to dig deeper. The Department of Justice found that the bank had done something wrong leading to the sanctions. What did they think the bank had done wrong? What did they think the connection between the bank and the atrocities were? So they, actually the bank pled guilty. So they admitted to a conspiracy between the French headquarters, so the Paris headquarters, its Swiss subsidiary and a correspondent New York bank that was also owned by BNP. And the conspiracy was that they were covering up the transactions that were on behalf of the government of Sudan for, or on behalf of sanctioned entities, those entities that had been specifically sanctioned by the U.S. and others for being involved in human rights violations in Darfur Sudan, which is the western side of the country of Sudan, which Sudan is in East Africa just to give some perspective. And what everyone said that I'd like to explore is you said that there was money that was forfeited. And I recall reading about this, that there was something in the order of $9 billion. How did that money get to a place where it could be forfeited to the United States? So when the plea happened, the plea agreement included the forfeiture of the funds. So the prosecutor knew and had access to lots of information about the business that the bank had been doing with the government of Sudan and on behalf of the government of Sudan. And I really believe the Department of Justice at the time in New York was trying to do the right thing. So they saw these connections to the atrocities and the level to which the bank was conducting business. And therefore, when they were, I mean, I'm speculating here because I obviously was not with, I can't speak for the AUSA in New York, but that they were trying to ensure that some funds were available for the survivors of the conflict. But they also, you know, a lot of the $9 billion, it also went to the U.S. government, which is a normal path for forfeited funds. But the Department of Justice tried to set aside about $3 billion after all, you know, the state of New York and the federal government took their share. They tried to set aside $3 billion that was going to be used for the survivors for restitution. But that never happened. Were people who had been in Sudan and who had been injured or killed because of things that the Sudan government did. The Sudan government was an outlaw government and it had done all kinds of, or criminal kinds of things. And I guess the bank, in this case, was somehow complicit because it was supporting the Sudan government and funding them and doing business with them. Is that how it all started? So in the beginning, it was just a violation of U.S. sanctions, so an embargo. The Department of Justice just said, okay, you violated a U.S. embargo, you know, you have to, you know, you have to pay for those violations or will continue the prosecution. But exactly what you said, that's what we recognized. And so when the money was legislated, when the legislation was enacted by Congress and the money was sent elsewhere, Cynthia and I began looking at other avenues of justice specifically to expose the potential and alleged complicity of the bank in the atrocities because we believe that the amount of business that was being done, for example, let me give you some examples of what the bank was doing. And this is public because it's part of the statement of facts that was attached to the plea agreement in their original prosecution. So the bank was facilitating transactions with the three entities. It's Swiss entity, New York entity, and with knowledge of headquarters. So that was the alleged conspiracy in the criminal sanctions case where the bank pled guilty to these transactions. So they facilitated transactions intentionally omitting any reference to Sudan or the sanctioned entities that were already on, let's say, a blacklist by the U.S. They did that knowing about the atrocities that were going on in Sudan at the time. So the government of Sudan had been bombing civilians in the Janjuwit. I don't know if you remember the Janjuwit J, but the Janjuwit was very active in Sudan in attacking and burning villages in Darfur, looting, you know, there was sexual violence and other types of extreme and mass, you know, mass murder, mass rape, mass violence. And so the bank was acting in the criminal sanctions prosecution. The most money that was transacted was on behalf of the government of Sudan. So $6 billion from at least 2002 to 2008. And when you look at the details, that was really, let's say, really important for the Sudanese economy. The bank also admitted in the U.S. case to holding 50% of the foreign assets of the government of Sudan and to acting as the de facto central bank, essentially. So they were playing, we're not just talking one or two transactions here, we're talking mass banking facilitation, access to the U.S. market that was critical at a time when the Sudanese government wanted to purchase weapons and have access to the U.S. dollar. And everyone knew the Sudanese government was doing this. It was not a private unknown set of facts. It was in the newspapers for years. And the bank knew. And so I guess it was not hard to show that the bank had knowledge of what its client was doing in those years. That's true. You know, there were human rights reports, widespread human rights reports. There were, in 2005, the International Criminal Court in The Hague had opened an investigation into the Darfur conflict. It was widely reported on that civilians were being attacked and harmed and killed. Okay. So you were telling me that Congress enacted a bill, and I guess it became law, to take the money that was forfeited by BNP and put it in the terrorist fund instead of providing any part of it to the families and the individuals who had been harmed and killed and tortured and the like in Sudan. And that was after the money, the nine billion had been forfeited. So I mean, didn't they have rights that had ripened before that happened? Congress took away their rights to part of that money. Am I right about that? Well, so we hadn't gotten that far. So it was right before the Department of Justice was about to act, so that it was more in the planning stages. And there was, let's say, a promise, but it wasn't, it actually hadn't come to fruition yet. And so that was, that was the problem. And we did look at, you know, whether there were challenges we could make to that legislation, but it was just not a potentially successful avenue so that we had to look elsewhere. United States, although it has a policy to discourage this kind of atrocity, and although it did penalize BNP to the tune of nine billion dollars, it did not go where at least Project Expedite Justice would have liked to see it go and what, you know, a lot of people would have liked to see. So the United States then and now, then by virtue of the passage of that bill, and now is not a good venue to make these cases in favor of those who have been injured or killed or tortured. So you have to go elsewhere. Is that the idea? Well, I don't want to give up on the US yet, that it's not a good venue. So I don't want to go that far, but let's say it's become a very challenging venue and a very expensive venue to litigate human rights abuses. And I think you also spoke to my colleague Nina Mann as well about litigating human rights abuses from a tort or civil law perspective or strategy. And so there's been some jurisprudence in the US that has made from the Supreme Court, which has made it very difficult, but it's not impossible. And as human rights lawyers, we're not ready to give up on the US completely. There is a law firm and a lawyer who's very dedicated to bringing a case forward towards on behalf of the Sudanese survivors in the US. And so her litigation is happening in parallel to our litigation in France. I don't want you to give up. Nobody wants you to give up. And we would like this country to be a good venue for claimers of this nature. I mean, that is our moral structure. And that's what we need to do going forward. Hopefully we will do that going forward. So let's talk about the second case, which is the case in France. So at some point, you decided you wanted to pursue these claims or claims like this in the courts of France, as opposed to other countries. Why? Well, one obvious reason was that the bank was French. So from a jurisdictional perspective, which means the power of the court to hear the case. So France became an obvious choice. We had examined the US from a tort perspective as well, but the cost of the litigation was very high. And also it would send, although we believe 100% in civil strategies, so tort law strategies, it wouldn't have been a criminal case. And we also believed it was important. And in talking to our clients and the survivors, it was important to send a message of criminal accountability for financial institutions. And so the case in France is what is the first against a bank, a French bank and a financial institution for alleged complicity in atrocity crimes. So for torture, genocide, crimes against humanity. And also we are attached financial crimes to those claims because we believe that they're linked. You can't separate the two. Okay. And how does it work in France? Yes. Okay. So it's very different in France. This is one thing I learned in living in Cambodia, which is also a civil law system based on the French system. So in the US, we have a common law system, which is an adversarial system. In France, they have civil law system, which is an inquisitorial system, meaning that the court has a lot more power to do and conduct investigations. That's the biggest difference, I think, to me as a common law lawyer, where in the US, we as parties, prosecutor, defense or plaintiff, defense, you conduct your own investigation. In France, you can submit a complaint as a victim or a survivor. And then if your case is, if the investigation is opened, an investigating judge takes over and he or she will conduct a full objective investigation, looking at both inculpatory and exculpatory evidence. So what claims did you make in that forum and how far have you gotten? So we filed a complaint last September, September, 2019, on behalf of nine Sudanese survivors and two NGOs, so two civil society organizations that have a special status in France to be civil parties. That's one other thing I should explain before the claims, is that in France, the really good thing about the system is that the victims, they get a special status in court and they're actually parties to the litigation in a way that we don't have that at all in the US. And so it enables them to participate in the proceedings and have a voice, really have a voice in the proceedings. And that is very important for these types of crimes. So that was another consideration in looking at France. Is it enabled that, giving that voice to the survivors? So looking back at the claims, the question about the claims is that we alleged complicity in torture, crimes against humanity and genocide, so that the bank was complicit in those crimes of the Sudanese government. So it's not that the bank necessarily committed crimes against humanity, genocide and torture, but that they were complicit with what the Sudanese government was doing. Go into the French courts, speak French, I'm sure they don't do it in English, and litigate, litigate very difficult claims, claims that will be opposed, I'm sure, and claims that involve a lot of damage, a lot of death, a lot of destruction. So query, you're not doing that alone. Project Expedite Justice must have organizations with which they are associated to go into the French courts and make these arguments. Am I right? Yes, you're right. And we have a great partner, FEDA, the International Federation for Human Rights, and also Ligue des Dois-de-Lômes, which is LDH. And both of those are civil society organizations that assisted and really led the charge in putting together the complaints and the strategy alongside us. And we also received support from Pro Bono Law Firm in France, as well as two Sudanese civil society organizations. So it was a group effort, as these cases have to be and should be. Yeah, it's a global issue. It's not limited to the individuals or even the country, and certainly not one bank, because other banks, invariably other banks do the same thing and this world. We have to stop them. So the question is, what's the path from here? What's the result you're seeking? When will you know whether you have achieved that result? So we just found out recently, which was very good news, that an investigation had been opened in France. And so now we'll be looking at the next steps, which will be participating in the proceedings, looking at different investigative avenues, and seeing what the judicial authorities, how they proceed. So we're still at the very early stages. But this is a big step. I mean, it took one year for the court to review the filing, which is the complaints and the attachments and the evidence that was submitted. And then, I do think also COVID delayed everything a little bit. But we're very happy that one year later, we're here and the investigation has been opened and we're proceeding forward. But this is only the beginning. There's still years to come, most likely. Evidence you submitted to the prosecutor was evidence that you Project Expedite Justice had achieved, accomplished, gathered over the course of your investigation. And I suppose that taking together with the evidence that the prosecutor himself or herself gathers now, that would all be one body of evidence presented to the court. Am I right? Yes. So we presented evidence attached to the complaint, also open source evidence, which is evidence collected online, previous civil society reports, NGO reports, you know, the complaint was filed on behalf of nine Sudanese survivors, and they provided their stories as well. And now the investigating judge will take a look at the case and that will determine the next steps in the investigation. So he or she will lead this investigation going forward. Can you say evidence? You probably are guessing you include Affidavits interviews, maybe depositions of live testimony from people who were injured or tortured. So not yes and no, the French system is a bit different than the US system. So at this stage, that has not happened yet. There's preliminary, let's say preliminary interviews and obviously our interviews with our clients, but the court will really take charge of the, let's say official interviews and the judge will interview victims, witnesses and proceed from there. You know, this must be a case that is being watched. This must be a case that is being watched in Europe. It must be a case that is being watched by NGOs and human rights organizations around the world. And I'm guessing, but I expected it would have an effect on other cases that could be brought other cases in the pipeline depending on the result you're able to achieve. Am I right on that? Yes, absolutely. And we hope so. We hope that it's being watched because we hope to send a message to financial institutions that you need to be watching where the money is going, that profiting from these atrocities is wrong and you can be held accountable. So we definitely are looking at novel legal arguments here, legal arguments that may affect other banks and financial institutions in the way that they conduct business and we want to change the way business is being done. You know, profiting, atrocities don't happen in a vacuum. They happen together with a very large network of supporters, enablers, different motivations. And so you can't just stop the direct, let's say the direct perpetrator who's committing the crime if we continue to just focus on that direct perpetrator and not the larger network that is supporting that direct perpetrator will just keep circling and circling around trying to end atrocities. It's really that supporting network that has to be examined. And that's what Project Expedite Justice and where Cynthia's vision is excellent is that we look at a wider network. Cynthia and I understood from the beginning and I think our teams understand that this is important that looking at financial crimes alongside atrocity crimes has a lot of advantages as well because financial crimes, they have a paper trail that can corroborate victim and witness testimony. They can reveal evidence about the wider network. The paper trail can reveal evidence about the wider network. It can explain, you know, different actors and provide a different type of evidence that may otherwise not be gathered. So that's why we decided to file this case for the alleged complicity in the atrocity crimes, but also the financial crimes of money laundering and in France they call concealment. What it is money laundering nevertheless. Yeah, I just one other thing about that is that so you and Cynthia are Cynthia lives here. She's a lawyer here in the big island, a fabulous woman and you're in Singapore. How do you participate? What is your role in a proceeding which is undoubtedly a serious proceeding involving a number of, you know, judicial players in Paris? How do you, how do you participate in that? So we, we have an amazing French lawyer on our team as well, Lore-Lou Moreau and she worked extremely hard on assisting and putting the complaint together. She works for Project Expedite Justice as well and she's based in France. We also, our partners were terrific and we work very closely with them. Cynthia and I have become masters of technology as well and masters of the virtual office. So that, that works to our advantage. Tracks me that this isn't the last case you're going to do and there are other cases. Well, let me ask you, are there other cases in the pipeline that will follow? You know, we, we hope that this is not the only case that we will do and we are constantly examining and watching, you know, the news and the actions that are reported about the banks. For example, the large leak that just occurred about the FinCEN files. I don't know if you've seen that from the, I think it's called the International Consortium of Journalists and they published a leak of FinCEN which is the regulatory body in the US for, it keeps track of, you know, what's called suspicious transaction reports or suspicious action reports filed by banks. And so that was very revealing in some of the actions that banks are not, let's say, they're filing reports, but not fully taking action on certain suspicious transactions that they think maybe money laundering may be connected to other types of crimes. And so this is something that we watch closely. But as of now, we don't have anything in the pipeline yet, but we're always watching. Okay, well, we'll have to talk to you again about these things. That's very clear. Now, we have a question that I really need to put to you before we're done here. Okay. And it is this question, this came from a viewer. Has the Trump administration affected your fight for human rights in any way, the policies of the Trump administration and the various people involved in the Trump administration? I suppose I would add my own, you know, my sub questions to that is, will it be, would it be better under the Biden administration? So the Trump administration has certainly made litigating human rights and I think human rights in general, human rights work in general more difficult is also made the amount of work that we need to do has increased significantly with the Trump administration. But and we hope that with a change of administration, this would improve, you know, but the US has always been a little bit hesitant to participate fully with the international legal bodies like the International Criminal Court. They've in the past supported from afar under Trump. They support not at all. We hope under Biden that perhaps lessons learned from Trump, the administration will see an opportunity for the US to become more of a player in international human rights and international criminal law. And one of the ways that they could do that is by actually, you know, signing some of the treaties and conventions that would also make the US, you know, would provide, you know, for example, the international criminal court jurisdiction over US actions. So we would really like to see that going forward. And I hope that, you know, if there's a change of administration, we can look back and see the reasons that we need to be part of these these bodies. Yes, Kristen, a member of project justice involved in very important things and upholding standards of international morality. Thank you so much, Kristen. I hope we get a chance to talk to you again soon. Thank you, Jay. It was a pleasure. Aloha.