Study On The Preponderance Of Evidence Rule In World Bank Sanctions Procedure

The world bank plays an important role in reducing extreme poverty and promoting common prosperity.Promoting good governance and addressing corruption are key to achieving sustainable development and poverty reduction.The world bank’s anti-corruption sanctions system,with the continuous expansion of the world bank’s "administrative power" and the continuous strengthening of the sanctions mechanism,its sanctions influence is growing.The number of sanctioned enterprises in China has also increased year by year,causing heavy losses to the reputation and operation of Chinese enterprise.The "more likely than not" evidence rule in the world bank’s sanctions procedure is essentially a popular expression of the "preponderance of evidence rule" of the common law system.The evidence rule is the core standard to judge whether the sanctionable act is established.Its meaning is to determine that the possibility of the existence of the fact is greater than that of the non existence according to the probative power of the evidence.That is,after comprehensively considering all relevant evidence of both sides,the sanctionable act can be established as long as the evidence supporting the sanctionable act of the controlled party is better than the opposite evidence.The standard of proof is obviously lower than that of "high probability" usually adopted by civil law countries.The purpose of world bank sanctions is to protect the security of funds by sanctioning improper actors.The application of the rule of preponderance evidence is the natural choice for the world bank to pursue the goal of efficiency and security value.However,when the world bank applies the rule of preponderance evidence,it inevitably impairs the fairness and rationality of the sanctions ruling.With regard to the fairness of sanctions,the world bank has great discretion in the use of evidence.The inference based on anonymous evidence,hearsay evidence and circumstance evidence will be adopted by the world bank and will not be disclosed to the sanctioned party,which will lose the opportunity to refute.This unfair factor is bound to make the ruling result lack authenticity;As for the rationality of sanctions,the world bank uses a lower standard of proof to judge cases,but it has caused serious consequences of sanctions(expulsion sanctions,cross sanctions,etc.),which is obviously unreasonable in itself.Based on this,the world bank should replace the dominant evidence rule with the "clear and credible" evidence rule,or apply the dominant evidence rule at the first level of the sanctions procedure and the "clear and credible" evidence rule at the second level of the sanctions procedure.Chinese enterprises participating in the world bank financing projects should understand the world bank’s sanctions system and the application procedures of the advantageous evidence rules,establish a corresponding compliance system,enhance the ability of compliance management,and take preventive measures;The Chinese enterprises involved in the case should strengthen the cooperation with the world bank’s involved process,make good use of the rules of evidence,and actively respond to the investigation,so as to strive for favorable ruling results.