In Peru where the Basel Institute recently established its first country office in the context of its more recent public finance management programme funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Institute’s training experts of the International Center for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted two 5-day back-to-back training programmes in financial investigations and asset recovery from 23 May to 4 June 2016.

This two-week country-specific training programme focused on strengthening the capacity of the Public Prosecutor to prevent and investigate acts of corruption in public finance at subnational level and recover misappropriated public assets. The training further aimed to enhance the ability of Peruvian investigators to draft and handle international Mutual Legal Assistance requests, an operational necessity which is particularly important as many of the current Peruvian corruption cases involve offshore links and thus also demand effective overseas investigations so that laundered assets may be recovered from abroad, including forfeiture of criminal assets.

The workshops were attended by a total of 59 participants, including prosecutors from the Office of the Attorney General, representatives of the Financial Intelligence Unit of Peru (Unidad de Inteligencia Fianciera del Peru) and members of the judiciary.