Book Review: Fighting Fraud and Corruption at the World Bank: A Critical Analysis of the Sanctions System
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Emmanuel Breen |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2032284419858879 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
the legitimacy of any EU measure is controversial independently from the actual substance of the
measure itself. Anyone who cares about the integration process and its legitimacy should consider
the analysis offered within this book seriously. Hopefully, just as O
¨berg has considered the judicial
scrutiny aspects related to the monitoring of EU powers, others in academia will concentrate on the
lawmaking process part.
Anyone interested in the foundations and limits of EU powers will find, in the analysis and
proposals of this book, a great deal of food for thought.
Fighting Fraud and Corruption at the World Bank: A Critical Analysis of the Sanctions System, Stefano Manacorda and
Costantino Grasso (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018), ISBN 978-3-319-73824-6, 173 pp.,
£99.99.
Reviewed by: Emmanuel Breen, Sorbonne University, France; Adelaida Rivera, International Anti-Corruption
Academy, Austria
DOI: 10.1177/2032284419858879
Comply or die? While many sanction ing regimes in the field of anti-cor ruption ground their
deterring power in multimillion dollars penalties, the World Bank wages an even more powerful
threat: the ability to debar companies from World Bank-financed projects and also, thanks to cross-
debarment agreements, from projects financed by other multilateral development banks. Mechan-
isms such as ‘conditional releases from debarment’ and ‘conditional non-debarments’ allow the
World Bank to impose – through its ‘negotiated resolution agreements’ – stringent integrity
compliance programmes, which thus makes the World Bank’s Integrity Compliance Officer one
of the driving forces behind global corporate compliance today.
Stefano Manacorda (University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’) and Costantino Grasso’s
(Coventry University) book draws attention to the essentia l role of the World Bank Integrity
Vice-Presidency in the fight against fraud and corruption, particularly in countries where
Bank-financed projects are implemented. As such, it raises crucial questions regarding the rela-
tionship between corruption, international development and humanitarian aid – an understudied
topic, if one considers the extent to which corruption undermines the international community’s
solidarity and sustainable developments policies.
The book places great importance on the need for a joint commitment between national gov-
ernments and intergovernmental organisations, with the aim of creating awareness and to promote
effective action to tackle fraud and corruption. To this end, the World Bank’s Sanctions System
constitutes a powerful tool by enhancing the enforcement efforts of national authorities. The first
two chapters provide an historical overview of the Sanctions System; the basic functioning of the
two-tiered regime is satisfactorily explained with a short overview of the most relevant aspects
behind its origins, establishment and evolution. Although certain sections of these two chapters
appear slightly repetitive, they succeed at introducing the reader to the World Bank’s Sanctions
System by explaining and critically commenting on each phase of the process as well as recently
introduced reforms.
Subsequent sections of the book seek to analyse the legal framework in which the Sanctions
System is based by looking at its legal sources and procedural phases. Described as the most
316 New Journal of European Criminal Law 10(3)
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