MoFo Helps Afghan Defenders Take On Corruption Crackdown

Law360 profiled Morrison & Foerster’s pro bono partnership with the International Legal Foundation, featuring the firm’s recent work training Afghanistan’s public defenders to handle anti-corruption cases.

“It’s very hard to find a lawyer who actually understands a public corruption offense, never mind being able to afford one,” said partner Carrie Cohen, who is a former federal and state prosecutor and spearheaded the program at MoFo. “Even in the U.S., there are individuals charged with corruption who do not have the economic means to hire their own attorneys.”

As Law360 reports, such cases are increasingly common in Afghanistan, where President Ashraf Ghani created the Anti-Corruption Justice Centre in 2016. In February 2018, Carrie, with partner Amanda Aikman, began learning Afghan rules of procedure and public corruption offenses and started offering case-by-case advice. They then developed a training manual that is now a tangible resource for defenders with white-collar clients. It also formed the basis of a weeklong training course that MoFo’s Singapore-based Dan Levison and Sheryl George delivered to 21 Afghan defenders in September 2019.

Read the full article.