Behind a new law it intends to wield like a “massive hammer,” the FBI is viewing this summer’s Tokyo Olympics as the first opportunity to expand its efforts to probe corruption in sporting events around the world. But given the reception the law received internationally when it was signed in December, the Summer Games instead might test whether U.S. investigators can expect cooperation or resistance from their global counterparts. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act gives American prosecutors the ability to pursue anyone who conspires to cheat in major sporting events. Even before the law passed, Joseph Gillespie, the FBI’s unit chief overseeing transnational threats, launched the Sport and Gaming Initiative, focusing more attention and resources on investigating sports-specific crimes. He said investigators have met with Department of Justice officials and begun outreach with foreign law enforcement agencies and sports organizations to discuss ways to better police sports internationally. “We have this massive tool where it’s a codified thing that we can use to go after people,” Gillespie said. “You see lots of legislation come in, and sometimes it’s very loose and vague and not very expansive. This particular one, because of the elements, their definition of a major international sports competition, it’s quite expansive.” Born out of the Russia doping scandal, the law easily passed through Congress last year. But some international sports officials felt the United States was granting itself gratuitous powers, expanding its jurisdiction to any international sports event that includes an American athlete, is broadcast in the United States or features a sponsor that does business in the United States. The World Anti-Doping Agency railed against the bill, warning jurisdictional issues will complicate and undermine existing anti-doping efforts. The Tokyo Olympics could provide the first glimpse of how the law might be implemented, revealing the willingness of U.S. authorities to apply it, the level of cooperation they’ll receive from outside agencies and the hurdles inherent with enforcing extraterritorial laws. “These types of laws are helpful in terms of creating some kind of definition of the crimes. But their bark is often way worse than their bite,” said Mark A. Drumbl, director of the Transnational Law Institute at the Washington and Lee School of Law. “You can’t bring a case if you don’t have evidence. Without the transfer of people, information, witnesses, it leads to nothing.” The bill’s namesake, Grigory Rodchenkov, the whistleblower who helped expose the depths of the Russian scandal, said it will be needed in Tokyo, where Russia has been formally barred but dozens of Russian athletes will be allowed to compete as “neutral athletes from Russia.” In an email to The Washington Post, he said Russians “keep using doping as a weapon to test whether the international community will ever hold them to account.” “The Rodchenkov Act is now the ‘doping sword of Damocles’ hanging over the heads of the doping orchestrators who know that sooner or later they will be punished,” he said. “I do firmly believe that this law, and the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI, will bring a new day of real change, deterrence and justice to world sport.” ‘Absolutely inevitable’ Unique in the sports world, the Rodchenkov Act could be similar in practice to other extraterritorial laws, such as the RICO Act. The law equates doping with a form of fraud, victimizing athletes, sponsors and audiences who expect clean and fair competition. While the courts have helped define the reach and limits of other transnational laws, Congress tried to make the scope and reach of the Rodchenkov Act immediately clear. Paul Massaro, a policy adviser for the Helsinki Commission and a key architect of the legislation, has a background in anti-corruption, finance and trade and wanted a law that was practical and gave authorities proper guidance. In other sports-related cases — the FIFA investigation, for example — prosecutors have had to hunt for applicable pieces of the RICO and Travel acts. This law codifies the anti-doping crimes. “It is the real deal,” Massaro said. “It has real teeth, and we expect real enforcement. We expect real deterrence, and we have the capacity to do so. We’ve seen exactly this happen with all sorts of extraterritorial criminal law.” Massaro and Rodchenkov appeared this week on the “Helsinki on the Hill” podcast, one of the rare times Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory who now lives incognito in the United States, has spoken publicly. In the interview, he likened doping to a cancer that has metastasized over several years and said the world has “no remedy, no tool, no cannon or rifle to kill everything at once.” “Look, why Rodchenkov Act was inevitable? Because sport corruption and crime, they have close-link relations,” he said. “And if you take a helicopter view, what would we have in sport, we have several issues. It’s betting/gambling, sexism and doping. The first two issues, there are criminal laws and criminal things. So it was absolutely inevitable to bring criminal law enforcement into sport.” Passing a law and enforcing one are different matters. Extraterritorial criminal laws require cooperation at almost every level, Drumbl said, and even if the U.S. law is clearly defined, American authorities might need foreign support to vigorously pursue investigations. “Without the cooperation of other states — if the harm occurred somewhere else, if the information you need is somewhere else, if the wrongdoers are somewhere else — it’s just going to be hard in a practical, logistical sense to bring a case,” he said. “You need a lot of cooperation for this to work in a legal system. That’s the stuff that law makes more complicated. It’s not just politics. You’ve got to adhere to a whole set of standards.” Gillespie, too, says the FBI has had lengthy discussions with entities such as Interpol and the Council of Europe’s Network of National Platforms, in which more than 30 countries work together to probe sports competition. Known as the Group of Copenhagen, the multinational entity has relationships with organizations such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, and the FBI was among the agencies on-site at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, aiding real-time investigative efforts. “We need to increase our rapport and cooperation with the sporting organizations, those integrity elements,” Gillespie said. “And so to a certain extent, we have to kind of drop the FIFA in the past. That happened. We’re done. We’re not coming at you. We want to work with you to make sure that doesn’t happen within those organizations.” It’s not clear how much international sports organizations will welcome American authorities. WADA met with U.S. lawmakers last year to point out what it sees as problems with the legislation, and a spokesman said the organization’s position has not changed. “WADA as well as several governments and international sports organizations remain concerned that the Act could have a number of negative unintended consequences for the fight against doping in sport around the world,” WADA’s James Fitzgerald said in an email. “WADA continues to be ready and willing to assist the U.S. authorities in devising how best to implement the positive aspects of the Act without destabilizing the harmonized global anti-doping system.” Massaro said U.S. authorities won’t necessarily need the aid of organizations such as WADA to bring charges against bad actors. He notes that the Russian scandal unfolded under the watch of WADA and the IOC yet Russian athletes are still allowed to compete internationally. “The necessity will be minimal,” he said, “and honestly, in my opinion, it should be kept to a minimum. These organization are compromised, and they are part of the problem.” A test in Tokyo The FBI has been active in sports investigations in the past, but in establishing the Sport and Gaming Initiative last year, Gillespie said the agency was realigning resources, educating field offices and firming up relationships with sports organizations. In addition to international doping, he said, the FBI will have an interest in potential match-fixing and gambling-related crimes. He added the college sports arena could be especially vulnerable to corruption. He wants domestic and international leagues to know the FBI intends to be active in this space and hopes the network of extraterritorial laws discourages wrongdoers. He said the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Gang Section has indicated an interest in pursuing cases built off the Rodchenkov Act. Justice Department officials did not respond to requests to comment. “Obviously, the application of it will be key,” Gillespie said of the new law. “The first couple of cases that come under it are going to be very key for setting a precedent on the interpretation of it.” It’s not clear what the FBI presence might be at the Tokyo Games. At the Women’s World Cup, the Group of Copenhagen operated a mini command post, which included the FBI and other agencies, and Gillespie said, “We want to see if we can apply that towards the Olympics and these other major institutions. “We feel that it would be a good selling point for the International Olympic Committee for them to advertise that there’s an integrity element as part of those Games,” he said. “… We’ll have to present that under the international umbrella because they may be fearful of us coming at them directly.” With competition schedules scuttled and training upended during the coronavirus pandemic, drug testing has been inconsistent throughout the sports world for more than a year, ramping up fears that the Tokyo Games will be ripe for abuse. Massaro said these Olympics amount to a “very, very serious test” and everyone will be looking to see if the United States is serious about assuming a role as a global watchdog. “If Russia is going to test the waters and do in Tokyo what they’re doing in Ukraine right now — testing the Biden administration by heating up conflict — they’ll want to test it in Tokyo, and we’ll have to be ready to push back with this law,” Massaro said.

Not long ago, America’s greatest adversaries were bound together by communist ideology. Today, they most often are defined by political corruption—authoritarian leaders using the levers of government to enrich themselves and ward off political opponents. Corrupt leaders cling to power through patronage networks and exploit rule-of-law jurisdictions, like the United States, to conceal and protect their stolen assets. These leaders are also accustomed to using strategic corruption as a tool of foreign policy. Corruption has its most perverse effects on the people who are forced to live under it. Corruption undermines democracy, hollows out the rule of law, and prevents the efficient and fair delivery of government services, as evidenced in the scandals affecting certain pandemic response efforts. Corruption also fuels the rise of authoritarian opportunists who seek to exploit social divisions, restrict freedom, and use public office for personal gain. Corruption also poses a wider threat to American democracy and prosperity, and to the prosperity of our allies. Almost every major transnational threat—such as human trafficking, black markets, and terrorism—is inextricably linked to corruption. Slowly but surely, the fight against corruption is gaining momentum worldwide. In Russia, corruption exposed by activist Alexei Navalny has sparked mass protests against a political elite that systematically steals from them. In the past three years alone, outrage against corruption has fueled protests in 32 countries. Despite these encouraging signs, opportunities to root out corruption remain rare—and when they arise, the window for action closes quickly. To have maximum impact in this fight, the United States needs to be ready to assist anti-corruption reformers on short notice. Seizing Opportunities for Reform The United States currently spends about $115 million a year on global anti-corruption programs. To put this in perspective, we spend $9.5 billion annually on global health assistance programs. Unfortunately, many of the funds we put toward anti-corruption efforts get trapped in multi-year technical programs that are unable to respond nimbly to sudden opportunities for governance reform. Scholars and practitioners have demonstrated that rapid action is crucial to making corruption reforms stick. When the rare window for reform opens, reformers must act quickly and boldly to capitalize on public momentum and prevent old-guard cronies from reasserting their influence. If the United States does not compete in these environments, fledging reformers will have an even harder time succeeding, and authoritarian kleptocrats will gain ground. The United States needs to be proactive in developing strategic relationships and agile programs that will keep us relevant in moments of historic opportunity. Last month, we introduced the Countering Russian and Other Overseas Kleptocracy (CROOK) Act to upgrade America’s anti-corruption efforts by targeting kleptocracy at the source. The CROOK Act would create an anti-corruption action fund to help activists leverage public sentiment to achieve lasting reform, without any additional cost to taxpayers. The fund would be financed through a $5 million surcharge on entities found liable for $50 million or more in criminal fines and penalties under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Based on data from the last 10 years, this bill would put an additional $16 million per year toward global anti-corruption work. Funds would continue to accrue until a historic window of opportunity opens, at which point funds would be rapidly deployed to help establish the rule of law. Imagine if the United States had been able to inject more anti-corruption resources into Ukraine after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, or Armenia after the 2018 Velvet Revolution, or Malaysia after its 2018 election. If the United States had been ready with an anti-corruption action fund, we could have dramatically amplified the work of courageous reformers to establish lasting change, and ultimately make the United States more secure. Leveraging FCPA fines and penalties to fight global anti-corruption is a long-overdue shift. The FCPA, passed in 1973, makes it illegal for a U.S. business to pay a bribe abroad and collects enormous fines and penalties every year—often in the billions of dollars. Yet historically, these fines have gone exclusively to the U.S. Treasury rather than being recycled into anti-corruption efforts. On issues like human trafficking and child pornography, the U.S. government already uses some money collected from perpetrators to aid victims and help fight the crimes committed against them. It is time for a similar approach to fighting corruption.  Enhancing FCPA Enforcement The FCPA represents America’s commitment never to export corruption abroad. This draws a stark contrast with kleptocratic powers like China, a nation that exports corruption skillfully and aggressively through its Belt and Road Initiative. Regrettably, vigorous enforcement of the FCPA—though fully legal—has been a sticking point with some allies, who falsely claim it is a means to line American pockets. The CROOK Act would undercut these claims by redirecting a portion of fines and penalties collected to help U.S. partners fight corruption. The CROOK Act would also rebut a longstanding critique of the FCPA: that the U.S. unfairly targets private companies for offering bribes rather than targeting the source of demand for those bribes among foreign officials. The CROOK Act would create a more holistic approach by helping establish rule-of-law structures that would restrain officials from seeking bribes, resulting in a more level playing field for American businesses. The world’s most prominent anti-corruption advocates have all endorsed the CROOK Act, including Transparency International USA and the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition. Like much of the legislation that has emerged from the U.S. Helsinki Commission on which we serve, this bill enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Fighting corruption is an imperative for the United States. As a beacon of liberty and the rule of law, it is our duty and the purest expression of our values. It is also a highly practical form of soft power that advances our national security. Allocating the right resources for this fight is a small price to pay for advancing good governance abroad and creating a more stable world. Passing the CROOK Act would be decisive step in the right direction.