When a public official in America is convicted of taking bribes, emoluments, etc. or some kind of corruption involving large amounts of money, what happens to the money? I understand that merely receiving a monetary “gift” may or may not be a crime in and of itself (as opposed to whatever is given in exchange like favorable legislation or whatever); but still it doesn’t seem right that they should walk away with a fortune like they were walking off a game show set.
Because what would stop an extremely cynical politician (of which we have many) from taking office for the express purpose on personal enrichment? They seldom if ever do prison time for that stuff, so even if they get caught, they’re still filthy rich.
Short version? There is no short version. Public Corruption
i) Is a multi-faceted monsters which defies easy solutions and
ii) Rarely occurs the way popular imagination presents it.
So for that reason there will be a multitude of answers depending on the specific circumstances.
In the SKOR example, the allegation was that one of the President’s friends sold access to her for influential persons; there is to my knowledge no evidence that the President herself benefited in anyway; her friend did.
In cases such as this, typically what happens is that the Government will then try to cancel contracts made; this will often lead to multifacted, very expensive and lenghty litigation which pays for lawyers children’s college and a vacation home and no the exchequer does not get its money back; quite the opposite.
As far as the US is concerned, the First Amendment might make a prosecution for selling access impossible, but a US Lawyer can answer better.
When Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell died (Powell’s motto was, “There’s only one thing worse than a defeated politician and that’s a broke politician”) they found $800,000 in cash.
Not too bad, but Powell left his girlfriend $600,000 in stock.
Rita Crundwell, who embezzled $53 million from her small town, had $10 million in assets seized. That was pretty much everything Crundwell had left, but the town also sued its auditing firm, and got $40 million from them.
Crundwell went to prison. It may be unusual in other parts of the U.S., but crooked Illinois politicians do often serve prison time.
In 2011 one of the city commissioners praised Crundwell for her stewardship of city finances, saying “she looks after every tax dollar as if it were her own.”
The article on Paul Powell was interesting. I can see where the IRS wanted money, as it was unreported income; but I wonder what the couple hundred thousand for the State of Illinois was? State income taxes maybe?
Still, it sounds like a pretty lucrative (potentially) undertaking. He only got caught when he was dead.
The suitcase full of cash is the older form of corruption. It has overwhelmingly switched to contributions to political campaigns, promise of a future job as a high paid lobbyist, jobs for relatives, etc.
I’m involved with the historical society whose building is the beneficiary of Paul Powell’s estate (copy of will here, see page 5) and yes, in many ways, he got to keep the money. In fact, after probate was sorted out, there was such an enormous pile of money - $1,629,096.64 in 1974 dollars, over $8,000,000 in 2017 dollars - that the cy pres doctrine was applied, since it would be more than would ever be required to maintain an old frame house in southern Illinois. (see 1974 order here)The scope of the bequest was expanded to include the Illinois State Historical Society and the Illinois State Museum Society. The Trust still pays for the upkeep of the house/museum used by the Johnson County Genealogical & Historical Society today.
The upshot is - it’s hard to recover money if you don’t really know that they got it the wrong way. Some of Powell’s money came from investments that were legal yet ethically questionable, some of it came from perfectly respectable sources, and a lot of it, they don’t know where the hell it came from! To get back to the OP - if the public official isn’t convicted of a crime, it kind of limits the options for recovery.
