five minutes left ok this is a case about the proper role of the courts when government agents engage in deliberate systematic and deceitful pronouncing the name correctly in b she well he will are the fines in payment of invoices that falsely described the products that were being paid for he paid for you know solar panel invoices when he knew he was buying guns it was either a part of the transaction or if it knew what was going on so that it was not deceived and you got your minister of defense who seems to be involved in the transaction and he knew what was going on and you got your you when i get i'm having trouble with the name and and mitch and ritchie who also appears to be knowing what's going on so it seems to me that the ivory coast knew that this was an illegal transaction or at least people who are sufficiently associated with the government knew that this was illegal and therefore that knowledge is charged to the ivory coast therefore ivory coast was marked a fraud and how do you respond to that about two minutes on change do you want to see if that time  they please the court morning your honour's own marduk and for the united states the ivory coast through its officials and agents paid an arms broker money to achieve a public purpose which was the the equipping of its police through illegal means the district court was correct to find at the ivory coast responsible for the agent's actions this is not and i'd like to start sort of at the top with with counsel's introduction this is actually not a case about sovereign immunity or about special treatment of a sovereign for several reasons in this case oh i think it's extremely questionable whether a plaintiff can ever use sovereign immunity as a sword but clearly it has been waived a second as i think the parties can see to it's a purely commercial transaction so it would not fall within a foreign sovereign immunity act which means that really regular principles of agency respond the security or apply well why is this a purely commercial act i understand that there's an exception to the forms armament aegis act for commercial activities so that for example air france operating as a commercial carrier does not have the sovereign immunity of france but this was obviously a governmental function they're trying to buy arms in order to have those available during the election because they fear some sort of violence that strikes me as sovereign activity i understand the sovereign  but if simply buying things by the sovereign is commercial activity within the meaning was never an immunity act that's a pretty big loophole or pretty big exception to the act well i i believe it is commercial activity for a public purpose and i think what with the supreme has been is quite different from commercial activity for example the sovereign running a business as air france for example not for purposes of immunity i have to disagree with that your honor because in well to over the supreme court  sovereigns buy bullets they buy army boots it's still commercial activity even though it's clearly for a public purpose here we have a sovereign that is acting as a trader in the marketplace it's not buying blankets it's buying gun but the blankets could be for a public purpose i mean certainly you know we've got a you've got another you've got various other arguments beyond commercial activity on server immunity truth they really i think there are basic principles of agency responding had superior that that we never authorized and this court said that he was within the scope of his office when he did that because he acted at least in part to benefit the republic of taiwan so what's your response to opposing counsel representation that the u s government federal agents were the first to suggest purchasing the weapons illegal and what's your response to that well what the recordset shows and this is at page one hundred four of the excerpts of record is that the agent did ask sure what he wanted to do assuming there was trouble in the transaction page one eighty four he says well to be specific the undercover agent says well the state department can say no to something but that's not to say there aren't other ways of delivering the growth of the goods so my question is what are your contingencies if this doesn't work the answer is we go the other way then later  actually says and this is just a few lines beneath that he says he says well that's good to know talking about this potential plan b and i was hoping you would say that at some point i wanted to cross that bridge so sure was perfectly ready to go the legal route that the significance of getting these weapons was getting them in time for the election so whether that was through the u n exemption great if that didn't work out they still wanted those weapons for the election so they were clearly prepared to get them by any means necessary and sure says although i don't think there's any doubt about it on page one hundred three that he was acting as the exclusive agent for not just the defense minister but the the ivory coast government some private gain involved does that negate the entire public purpose of the transaction and i would say no under the loop because in lieu of this course said lou versus republic of taiwan this court said that as long as there was some intent to benefit the solder sovereign we don't care that there was also some personal benefit so and in that case there was a personal grudge that the agent had against that the victim in this case  kickback was never paid certainly there was a negotiated kickback but there was a much greater sovereign purpose which is to get the guns to the country before the election and i think this could have been a different case and maybe more like the marcos case if he had been buying guns for his own collection for it or just so his friends could go out hunting with them then maybe this would have been something for purely private gain but here we have i think concededly a public purpose so he is acting to benefit the sovereign the sovereign is answerable to his conduct and frankly i don't think there is much higher you could get in the chain of government there than the defense minister except for the president and i think this is clearly within the agency of the defense minister to negotiate arms transactions so in your view and does not defeat the status of defense minister   as an agent for the government that he was in fact as he went through this transaction violating the law being a corrupt official correct and i don't think that i mean that that's what the district court said i don't think the district court needed to go that far because i think the district court was was talking about cases where that where the defendant the sovereign is trying to defeat sovereign immunity this is a different case so is an illegal act the sovereign can be responsible for illegal acts of its agents and which is exactly what the southern district of new york said in the iraqis which was since  d so i think that's a bit of a red herring to focus on and for the defense to focus on the brightness assume for a moment that we cannot attribute to the ivory coast for purposes of this greeing that he understood the transaction was illegal he said that in his argument and it's alluded to in his documentary declaration the document how the actual document is not and in the record but he does say he does allude to it and it was argued what is the for that that he signed a document and council said just that that saying that he understood the deal was illegal but he said just now an argument that he did so under obliged to do anything the other side wanted at that time then there is a declaration from government council at docket number one fifty six where she talks about this document and says she would be willing to provide rely on that at all i think what the court can rely on are the descriptions of the false bank drafts that he admits to one at page forty seven the fact that he admits in his declaration that he was a lawyer and his entire charge was to see that this came through illegally legal age forty seven are you referring to i'm sorry page forty seven the earlier reference was to paragraph twenty two about this document paragraph twenty three is the false bank draft admission and paragraph twenty four is the populace there you have twenty three just says well we're trying to get around the bank doesn't say we're trying so he says that he and his coconspirators and you that this was an illegal deal and that's it pages supplement excerpts of record pages eighteen and nineteen now the ivory coast asked the court to not look at that saying that it wasn't in the record but that's actually not true it was it was incorporated by reference or referenced in the government's opposition to summary judgment motion at page eight that one forty eight page eight it was also quoted in full in the in the the joint case management conference statement excerpts of record one twenty one one twenty two and you and of course the plea agreement was filed on the open records so it was in the in the record in the district court but beyond that the fact that in the bici wired this money even though he says he was charged with making sure he saw certification at this complied with the embargo and admits that he never saw that documentation implying showing that it complied with the embargo at least puts the burden on him to explain why he did that and third of all he says that  he even though he says he had doubts about sure this isn't paragraph twenty one but felt that he was required to deal with him but i'd like to back up for a moment because i think that the cheese innocence or purported innocence is really it's irrelevant it's a bit of a sideshow because there are other agents that bind the government here it's not just a money but also shore shore says that he was he had an exclusive agency with the ivory coast government supplemental excerpts of record yeah it says my coconspirator authorized the transfer of one point nine six million dollars from the government of the cote d'ivoire as final payment of the outstanding balance and of course the beach he says he was the one so briefly your honour's and to be ci ci's purported innocence is is necessary but not sufficient to the ivory coast summary judgment motion and they can't prove it because at the very least ivory coast and i don't think it was abuse of discretion for the government i mean for the district court not to order additional discovery the court to affirm ok thank you very much you save some time  reserve five minutes we took you over why don't we put five minutes on the clock