Bio

Dr Costantino Grasso (LLB, PgD, LLM, PhD) is an Associate Professor in Business and Law at Manchester Metropolitan University and Global MBA Module Leader for Corporate Governance and Ethics at the University of London. His areas of expertise include transnational criminal law, corporate and economic crime, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and business ethics.

He has served as a consultant, advisor, and lecturer on topics related to those matters for the European Union and Council of Europe as well as national governments, academic institutions and firms in Europe and North America. Dr Costantino Grasso is the editor in chief of the Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Blog and member of the Society of Business Ethics (USA).

As an active member of research communities at both the domestic and international level, he has developed an extensive research network, which includes top American and European academic institutions like New York University, Boston College, Berkeley, Collège de France, Norwegian School of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, University Carlos III of Madrid, and LUISS Guido Carli.

Being qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and as a lawyer in Italy, he has always combined academic activities with legal practice. In 2014, he worked as a corporate governance and compliance specialist for the Serious Fraud Office participating in the first-ever U.K. Deferred Prosecution Agreement between that prosecuting body and ICBC Standard Bank Plc, which concerned a complex case of transnational bribery. On that occasion, he received an award for the substantial input into the success of the agreement and, on 23 November 2016, he was awarded as a member of the case team the UK Government Legal Department's Prosecutor of the Year Award. Although he did not accept the role due to the impracticality of serving judicial functions abroad, on 19 July 2017 he was appointed by the Italian Ministry of Justice as an honorary judge at the Court of Turin.

As of June 2018, he has been appointed as an international expert in the area of corruption and good governance by the Council of Europe - Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law - Economic Crime and Cooperation Division (Tender 2017/AO/51). In this capacity, he has already participated in several international missions liaising with judges, prosecutors, investigators and government representatives of various countries (e.g., Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Montenegro).

Finally, in recognition of his work in the area of financial crime, the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has recently granted him external funding for the project VIRTEU, which is an innovative and high-profile legal research project including both an interdisciplinary and a comparative approach, and is aimed at exploring the interconnections between tax crimes and corruption.

Selected publications

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

‘Peaks and Troughs of the English Deferred Prosecution Agreement: The Lesson Learned from the DPA between the SFO and ICBC SB Plc,’ Journal of Business Law, Issue 5, 2016, pp. 388-408.

Books

(with Stefano Manacorda) Fighting Fraud and Corruption at the World Bank: A Critical Analysis of the Sanctions System (Springer 2018) pp. 1-215.

Book chapters

‘The troubled path towards greater transparency as a means to foster good corporate governance and fight against corruption in the energy sector,’ in Handbook of Energy Finance: Theories, Practices and Simulations (World Scientific Publishing: Duc Khuong Nguyen and Stéphane Goutte eds.. 2020) pp. 363–393.

‘Corruption in World Bank-Financed Development Projects: A Phenomenon-Focused Examination,’ in Corruption in the Global Era: Causes, Sources and Forms of Manifestation (Routledge: Lorenzo Pasculli and Nicholas Ryder eds., 2019) pp. 258-276.

‘The Dark Side of Power: Corruption and Bribery within the Energy Sector,’ in Research Handbook on EU Energy Law and Policy (Edward Elgar: Rafael Leal-Arcas and Jan Wouters eds. 2017) pp. 237-256.

Articles in blogs, non-peer reviewed journals and newspapers

‘Liability of Legal Persons for Corruption Offences,’ Technical Paper, Council of Europe (2020)

Submission of written evidence in economic crime matters to the United Kingdom Parliament - House of Commons - Treasury Committee (2020)

‘The European Court of Justice as a bastion of democracy and rule of law,’ openDemocracy (2018)

‘Debate on corporate corruption in light of the 24-year sentence imposed to Park Guen-Hye in South Korea,’ (2018), The Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Blog

‘Three thoughts on corporate corruption in the wake of the Samsung’s heir release from prison,’ (2018), The Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Blog

‘The Dark Side of Power: The drivers of corporate corruption in the energy sector,’ (2018), The Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics Blog

‘We must do better to protect journalists like Daphne Caruana Galizia,’ The Conversation, (2017)

‘Lessons from Samsung and S. Korea in cracking down on corruption,’ The Conversation, (2017)

‘US Republicans give the oil industry what it wants – less transparency,’ The Conversation, (2017)

‘South Korea’s scandal reignites the global debate on corruption,’ The Conversation, (2016)