Due Process vs. Sovereign Immunity: The Impact of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision in World Bank v. Wallace on Global Anti-Corruption Efforts

On April 29, 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rendered a decision in World Bank Group v. Wallace that may have a significant impact on the way international organizations like the World Bank gather and present evidence of foreign corruption to domestic law enforcement agencies in the future. The case pitted the Canadian defendants’ right to have all evidence of their alleged crime brought to light and scrutinized before the court against the World Bank’s statutory right to sovereign immunity with respect to its personnel and its archives. In the end, the Court sided with the Bank, holding that both the Bank’s personnel and the documents it accumulated over the course of its investigation were immune from suit and thus unavailable to the defendants and their attorneys.