Prosecuting grand corruption as a crime against humanity

Abstract

Corruption by people in government and administrative positions is a universal phenomenon. Generally, every kind of corruption has an adverse effect on quality of governance, but sometimes quantum of corruption is very high and it has a directly disastrous impact on the lives of people. Due to such fatal and terrible nature, these incidents of grand corruption shake the consciousness of entire world. These crimes are not only against the citizens of any one country rather these are against the entire humankind. International legal instruments to curb corruption are mainly related to corrupt practices of corporates and public officials that result in an uneven playing field in international business. Grand corruption as affecting lives of people physically and mentally is missing from the international law. There are scant examples when universal jurisdiction was applied to investigate and prosecute the crime of grand corruption. There are treaties at regional level to curb corruption but these are not supplemented with regional courts having jurisdiction over the crime of grand corruption.This paper has made an attempt to scrutinise incidents of grand corruption as an international crime, and more specifically possibilities of prosecuting the perpetrators of this crime in international criminal court under the head of crimes against humanity.