Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{207511,
        author = {Yusnita Alfalah Setia},
        title = {When the Victim Cannot Speak: A Legal Analysis of Corruption in Public Welfare and Animal Care Funds},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {3},
        pages = {1250-1261},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=207511},
        abstract = {Anti-corruption law has traditionally been organised around a human complainant: a citizen, a taxpayer, or an institution capable of reporting harm, filing a complaint, or claiming compensation. This victim-centred architecture leaves a structural blind spot wherever the beneficiaries of a public fund cannot speak, complain, or testify most starkly in the case of captive animals whose feeding and veterinary budgets are embezzled, but also in the case of institutionalised elderly, disabled, and cognitively impaired persons whose welfare funds are diverted by the very custodians entrusted to protect them. This article examines this blind spot through doctrinal legal analysis combined with four documented cases: the 2026 Surabaya Zoo corruption case in Indonesia (state losses of approximately IDR 10.2 billion, or roughly USD 650,000, over an eight-year period), the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium embezzlement scandal in Ohio, United States (over USD 2.3 million misappropriated), the Kyiv Zoo embezzlement investigation in Ukraine, and welfare-fund embezzlement cases affecting elderly and disabled residents in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on the corruption-as-human-rights-violation literature, the emerging law and scholarship on legal standing for animals, and the guardianship-abuse literature in elder law, the article argues that the absence of a complaining victim does not equate to the absence of harm, and that anti-corruption regimes must develop proxy mechanisms including guardian ad litem-style standing, mandatory third-party physical audits, and specialised whistleblower channels to detect and prosecute corruption where the injured party cannot exercise the procedural rights ordinarily available to human victims. The article concludes with a set of comparative policy recommendations addressed to legislators, prosecutors, and institutional regulators.},
        keywords = {corruption; voiceless victims; animal welfare law; legal standing; elder financial exploitation; public fund embezzlement; anti-corruption law; UNCAC.},
        month = {August},
        }