Speaker details

Biography

The Chair of Integrity Initiatives International, Mark L. Wolf, is a Senior United States District Judge, and the former Chief Judge, of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Prior to his appointment in 1985, among other things, Judge Wolf served as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States after Watergate and as the Deputy United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. In 1984, he received the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award for exceptional success in prosecuting public corruption in Massachusetts. Judge Wolf has served as the Chair of the Committee of District Judges of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and on the Judicial Conference Committees on Criminal Law, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and Codes of Conduct. Among other honors, Judge Wolf has received Citations for Judicial Excellence from the Federal, Massachusetts, and Boston Bar Associations. In a 2011 editorial, 'The Judge Who Cracked the Bulger Case,' The New York Times commended Judge Wolf for exposing the corrupt relationship between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Top Echelon Organized Crime informant James 'Whitey' Bulger. The editorial stated that: 'Judges are supposed to dispense justice but rarely root out crimes. As a result of Judge Wolf's courage and persistence, there were 'high profile hearings in Congress on the F.B.I.'s Use of Murderers as Informants,' an F.B.I. agent was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and 'the government paid more than $100 million in claims to families of people murdered by informants shielded by the F.B.I.' A graduate of Yale College and the Harvard Law School, Judge Wolf has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School a seminar on Combatting Corruption Internationally. In addition, Judge Wolf is a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has frequently spoken on the role of the judge in a democracy, human rights issues, and combatting corruption in foreign countries, including in Russia, Ukraine, China, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Denmark, Egypt, Cyprus, and Panama. In 2014, Judge Wolf published a Brookings Institution article and a Washington Post Op-Ed piece advocating for the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court to combat grand corruption--the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation's leaders. The proposal quickly gained the support of, among others, the now former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Judge Sergio Moro of Brazil, then President of Colombia Juan Manual Santos, Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, Global Witness, GOPAC, leading international prosecutors, and courageous young people throughout the world. In 2016, Judge Wolf, Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa, and other colleagues created Integrity Initiatives International to strengthen the enforcement of criminal laws against corrupt leaders by: actively supporting national measures such as the Ukraine national anti-corruption court, promoting closer collaboration between anti-corruption and human rights organisations, forging a network of young people dedicated to combatting corruption in their own countries and around the world, and catalysing a campaign to create the International Anti-Corruption Court.