On 22 and 23 February 2016, the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted an awareness raising seminar for approximately 100 prosecutors, investigators and other members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), held at the seat of the Court in The Hague, on financial investigations and asset recovery.

This seminar was a follow-up on an ICC workshop on international cooperation and financial investigations in October 2015, attended by experts from 13 countries and 6 international organisations, and in which ICAR had already been actively involved.

ICAR experts introduced the participants to a case scenario, which was based on facts involving the alleged commission of crimes mandated under the Rome Statute (RS). This scenario was used to highlight the importance of conducting a financial investigation as a means of producing evidence against those most responsible for crimes under the RS, and identifying assets which could form the basis for possible future forfeiture orders and reparations awards. 

Challenges the ICC encounters in its financial investigations are linked, inter alia, to the complexity of the financial crimes at stake and the tools at the disposal of the person of interest to disguise ownership over the assets in question. Therefore, the seminar focused on the relevance of asset recovery to ICC investigations, and understanding topics such as bank records, wire transfers, financial profiling, money movement systems and money and commodity flows. Money laundering (ML) was also covered, as ML investigations, initiated under the domestic legislation of Member States, can result in the collation of information relevant to ICC investigations. The use of offshore structures was discussed to raise the awareness of the participants to the ever-increasing ingenuity of criminals, and thus the importance of identifying the beneficial owner of illicit assets.

On the second day, ICAR introduced ICC investigators and prosecutors to interviewing techniques in the context of financial investigation. These were subsequently put into practice in several mock interviews, creating an opportunity for participants to “interview” non-financial witnesses, and to enhance their capacity to “extract” financial information.