Reward and Investigation Tips from Ireland

A few days too late for St. Patrick's Day, today's Irish Examiner has a wonderful story about catching officials involved in ethical misconduct relating to land use. It's an old story, but new to me, and probably new to you, as well. The occasion of the article is the publication of a 3,270-page report on a number of corrupt acts that occurred back in the 1990s in and around Dublin.

The first notable thing about what occurred was that the facts came out due to a reward that was offered back in 1995, a £10,000 reward offered by two environmentalists who, according to the article, "had grown increasingly frustrated at what they saw as wholesale corruption in the planning process — particularly in the Dublin area." These two men basically had a Lawrence Lessig moment, that is, they realized that their policy goals had no chance of being attained as long as the process was corrupt.

Of course, the reward was for information leading to indictment, not ethics enforcement, but that is only to be expected where there is not a good government ethics program.

One man came to them with a story and, although he never actually sought the reward, he provided the information necessary to establish the tribunal that drafted its final report 17 years later.

Although the allegations related primarily to one official, the taoiseach (the Irish prime minister), who was a close friend of this official, refused to allow a tribunal focused on him. By allowing the tribunal to have a broad scope, the taoiseach allowed the tribunal to catch the taoiseach himself.

And by insisting that the tribunal finish its work by Christmas, but not saying which Christmas, the taoiseach allowed the tribunal to dig deeper and deeper into the muck of Irish land use corruption.

The morals of the story, then, are:

1. A reward is a good way to get people to come forward (a second person came forward a couple of years later, that is, a reward's value can last for a long time).
2. Don't assume that your bluff will work, just because in the past investigations have always stalled long before conviction.
3. Make your limitations explicit.
4. Since a smarter official would not have created a tribunal or would have made his limitations on its work explicit, don't let officials have anything to do with ethics investigations.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

203-859-1959