Legislation in Canada Could Change How the World Deals With Frozen Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials

In May 2019, Senator Ratna Omidvar joined Mark Leon Goldberg, host of the Global Dispatches Podcast, to share her story of displacement and discuss her latest bill the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act (Bill S-259). Global Dispatches is produced through UN Dispatch, a site providing commentary and coverage on the UN and UN-related issues. Listen below: 

Several countries have laws on the books that enables governments to freeze the assets of corrupt foreign officials. Canada is one of those countries, and now one Canadian Senator is trying to take that law one step further by redistributing the frozen assets to those harmed by the actions of the corrupt official.Ratna Omidvar is an independent Senator from Ontario to the Senate of Canada. She is the author of legislation that is starting to make its way through the Canadian Parliament called the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act. The bill would seize the assets of corrupt and abusive foreign officials and redeploy those assets to the very people harmed by those foreign officials. This includes people displaced by the actions of corrupt and violent regimes.

We kick off discussing Senator Omidvar’s personal history of displacement before having a longer conversation about the contours of this legislation. This includes an extended discussion about how legislation in Canada can influence other parliaments of liberal democracies around the world.

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