Fighting Fraud and Corruption at the World Bank: A Critical Analysis of the Sanctions System

This book describes the World Bank’s debarment regime, a new type of sanctioning system developed at the international level in order to impose sanctions on entities that are involved in projects financed by the institution. Though a similar regime has been developed by the other main multilateral development banks, the World Bank’s legal framework appears to be the most comprehensive one.

The book provides an accurate and critical analysis of the most significant legal questions that the use of the debarment procedure poses. Specifically, it focuses on the lack of legal guarantees that currently characterizes this system, evaluating the level of due process applied to respondents. It investigates substantive and critical aspects such as the right to a hearing, the right to evidence disclosure, the time limit regime; the standard of proof and shift of the burden of proof, the evidential value of a party’s silence and the applicable rule of law.

In the first part, the book offers a comprehensive description of the World Bank’s debarment system and examines the most relevant issues that have arisen during its first years in place. In particular, the book presents an in-depth analysis of all the phases of the blacklisting procedure, illustrating the most recent reforms adopted by the multilateral development bank. In turn, the second part critically analyses the most relevant decisions taken by the Sanctions Board, providing the first-ever commentary on the World Bank’s case law. The two parts of the book are closely intertwined, offering readers an integrated work through a combined examination of the legal issues involved and the Sanctions Board’s judgments.