The corruption case against Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor accused of corruption by Manhattan’s district attorney in 2007, has spawned a shameless slogan among his supporters. “Rouba mas faz”, it runs, or: “he steals, but he gets things done”.

The corruption case against Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor accused of corruption by Manhattan’s district attorney in 2007, has spawned a shameless slogan among his supporters. “Rouba mas faz”, it runs, or: “he steals, but he gets things done”.

Given the level of hubris over the alleged graft – which Mr Maluf has always denied – it is perhaps no surprise to find he is the target of an international attempt by the Brazilian authorities to recover money from him.

The corruption case against Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor accused of corruption by Manhattan’s district attorney in 2007, has spawned a shameless slogan among his supporters. “Rouba mas faz”, it runs, or: “he steals, but he gets things done”.

The corruption case against Paulo Maluf, the former São Paulo mayor accused of corruption by Manhattan’s district attorney in 2007, has spawned a shameless slogan among his supporters. “Rouba mas faz”, it runs, or: “he steals, but he gets things done”.

Given the level of hubris over the alleged graft – which Mr Maluf has always denied – it is perhaps no surprise to find he is the target of an international attempt by the Brazilian authorities to recover money from him.

The effort – led by LG, the London-based law firm – highlights how solicitors are exploiting the changing global landscape on fraud to take on cases in new areas.

Financial crime has become a specialised – at times “boutique” – area of expertise, whose leading practitioners extend well beyond the largest law firms that traditionally dominate the profession.

The Maluf case is one of several in the past year in which a firm has used the courts to try to recover alleged proceeds of fraud and corruption. LG, which is acting for the São Paulo municipality and the Brazilian government, has launched a claim in the Channel Island of Jersey to recover an undisclosed sum – reported to be as high as $200m (€140m) – allegedly taken as kickbacks by Mr Maluf. The case is being contested, and Mr Maluf says all the corruption allegations against him are politically motivated.

||Andrew Witts||, LG’s head of dispute resolution, says the case is a milestone in attempts by ||Brazil||, one of the world’s leading emerging economies, to tackle corruption. “While they are used to running criminal proceedings in their own country, what they have never really done is initiate civil claims outside Brazil to repatriate cash,” Mr Witts says.

The Brazilian government was also the client in Clifford Chance’s action to prosecute Swiss bankers in their home country over a case in which they were accused of conspiring with Brazilian tax officials to launder dirty money. The firm says the case – which involved alleged fraud and bribes running into tens of millions of dollars – was the first prosecution of bank managers in ||Switzerland|| for helping senior foreign civil servants salt the proceeds of crime.

Clifford Chance says its work ranged from co-operating closely with the Swiss criminal prosecutor to helping co-ordinate efforts by ||Brazil|| to persuade ||Switzerland|| to return the alleged proceeds of bribery.

Another case that centred on asset recovery was a landmark Irish commercial court lawsuit to chase down money allegedly obtained illegally by an employee of Schneider Electric, the French electrical equipment maker. The staff member was accused of operating an Irish company that secretly sold overpriced goods to Schneider’s US operation.

The work by Arthur Cox, the Dublin-based law firm, led to the recovery in a settlement of several million euros. It involved the groundbreaking use of a so-called “Anton Piller order”, to allow the claimant to conduct a private search of property linked to the defendant.

Many firms have also been involved in remedial work, either to help multinational clients comply with new laws, or to assist them in extricating themselves from legally sticky situations.

Madrid-based Uría Menéndez produced a settlement between its client Santander, the Spanish financial services group, and investors who had lost money through the bank’s relationship with Bernard Madoff’s corrupt financial empire. In May, Santander agreed to pay $235m to the US trustee seeking to recover money for Mr Madoff’s victims, thus resolving civil claims against two of the bank’s hedge funds managed by its Optimal investment arm.

Uría Menéndez says its work was aimed at a clean and quick solution to what might otherwise have been a long-running fallout from the fraud.

Another law firm that helped a giant of corporate Europe out of trouble was Oppenhoff & Partner of Cologne, which grappled with the fallout over alleged snooping at Deutsche Telekom – one of a series of scandals over suspected spying involving leading German companies. The former state telephone company faced a torrid time last year, after it admitted it misused call records to try to check up on possible leaks of sensitive information.

Oppenhoff says it proposed a series of remedial measures – later accepted by the Deutsche Telekom board – ranging from organisational changes to improvements in information security.

Two other firms set up projects to help companies deal with shifts in laws and practices on combating fraud.

Norton Rose launched a business ethics and anti-corruption initiative, setting up a cross-border group of lawyers to advise clients on all matters relating to business ethics, bribery and corruption; it has also developed online resources for companies.

Allen & Overy, meanwhile, has used techniques from clinical psychology and political interviewing to refine approaches to fraud investigation. It now runs educational programmes with a range of institutions, showing how both investigating authorities and their targets are anxious to up their game in the world of financial crime.

Click here to view original article from the FT.