Deadline: 26-Oct-22
The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the U.S. Department of State announces an open competition for organizations to submit applications to carry out a project to build capacity in the Dominican Republic to combat transnational crime and corruption.
Project Vision: The Dominican Republic effectively combats corruption and transnational crime to strengthen democratic institutions, advance the rule of law, and dismantle criminal networks.
Project Goals and Objectives:
- The Dominican Republic develops new legal and operational tools to combat financial crimes.
- Dominican Republic justice sector actors are trained to operate effectively within the CAF legal framework to combat transnational organized crime and corruption.
- The Dominican Republic agency responsible for managing seized illicit assets has the technical capacity and resources to implement its responsibilities transparently and timely.
- Dominican officials effectively investigate and prosecute money laundering cases through the DR’s interagency task force.
- The Dominican Republic justice sector modernizes and streamlines processes to become more efficient and transparent.
- The Dominican Republic justice sector improves the execution of its plea agreement policy and reduces reliance on pre-trial detention to remove backlogs in cases and prison overpopulation.
- The Dominican Republic creates a pretrial services department for the judiciary to improve court efficiency and reduce prison overpopulation.
- The Dominican Republic justice sector creates and incorporates sentencing guidelines into their court proceedings to enhance transparency and consistency.
- The Dominican Republic deters corruption by efficiently investigating, and prosecuting, and securing convictions in corruption cases
- The Attorney General’s anti-corruption unit investigates and prosecutes cases.
- The Attorney General’s internal affairs unit investigates corruption and corrupt officials are removed from positions of authority.
- The Dominican Republic’s judicial investigates corruption and coordinates prosecutions with the Attorney General.
Components
- Financial Crimes Project: Project will provide technical assistance, training, and advise to advance asset recovery and management, anti-money laundering, and additional financial crime lines of effort as appropriate. Rapid deployment sub-projects may be required based on emerging needs and new requests from the Dominican Republic government. The project will focus its initial stages on assisting the GODR to implement the newly-passed Civil Asset Forfeiture law, which might include the potential deployment of an in-country expert to provide technical assistance to increase the capacity of the agency charged with managing seized assets . This project will support the strengthening of the DR’s AML regime and further inter-institutional cooperation, including support to the DR’s AML Task Force to develop cases.
- Institutional Development and Capacity Building for Justice Sector:Project will assess current judicial and prosecutorial needs to improve coordination and capacity of investigators, prosecutors, and judges to prosecute multi-faceted transnational crimes. Project will provide rapid deployments, training, and technical expertise, among other capacity-building tools. The project will provide model practices, technical advice, or model legislation to help the government undertake legal and judicial reforms as necessary to investigate and prosecute transnational crime; disrupt the financial resources of transnational crime networks; reduce pre-trial detention prison populations; dismantle transnational crime organizations; and provide equitable access to justice to all, including vulnerable populations. Primary beneficiaries will include the PGR and the Dominican judiciary. The project will also aim to strengthen links and foster interagency coordination between investigators, prosecutors and the courts. As required, the project will perform detailed diagnostic assessments of DR institutions.
- Anti-Corruption: Project will provide technical assistance to existing anticorruption units within the Dominican Judiciary and Attorney General offices and other agencies, including internal affairs offices. This project will deploy a broad range of interventions such as diagnostic assessments, technical assistance, tailored trainings, seminars, written materials, 5 | Page technological resources, a mong others to assess and address anti-corruption investigations and prosecutions. Illustrative project activities may include, but are not limited to, training, technical assistance, mentoring internal affairs units, building and prosecuting complex cases, and tabletop exercises aimed at improving the coordination between the Dominican judicial institutions and the PGR.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $1,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $1,000,000
- Award Floor: $300,000
- Length of performance period: 12 to 24 months
Priority Country: The Dominican Republic
Attendees and Audiences: Target audience includes judges, prosecutors, court administrators, public defenders, financial crimes investigators, and law enforcement officials.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible Applicant Types
- The following organizations are eligible to apply:
- US-based non-profit/non-governmental organizations (NGOs);
- US-based educational institutions subject to section 501(c) (3) of the US tax code ;
- The following organizations are eligible to apply:
- Other Eligibility Requirements
- In order to be eligible to receive an award, all organizations must have a unique entity identifier (also known as UEI), as well as a valid registration on www.SAM.gov. Individuals are not required to have a unique entity identifier or be registered in SAM.gov.
- Applicants are only allowed to submit one proposal per organization. Organizations may form a consortium and submit a combined proposal, however one organization should be designated as the lead applicant and other organization(s) listed as sub-recipient partner(s).
- To be eligible to receive a federal assistance award, organizations must have a commitment to non‐discrimination with respect to beneficiaries and adherence to equal opportunity employment practices. INL is committed to an anti-discrimination policy in all of its programs and activities. INL welcomes applications regardless of an applicant’s race, ethnicity, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or other status.
- Applicants are reminded that US Executive Orders and US law prohibits transactions with, and the provision of resources and support to, individuals and organizations associated with terrorism. It is the legal responsibility of the recipient to ensure compliance with these Executive Orders and laws. This provision must be included in any sub‐awards issued under this grant award.
For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=343223