Another 30 specialised judges in Peru have benefited from innovative training in Extinción de Dominio, a new form of legislation that allows stolen assets to be confiscated even if the asset holder cannot formally be convicted of a crime.

The two-day course, which took place on 3–4 September in the Superior Court of the city of Trujillo, is part of a wider series of training programmes aimed at building the capacity of specialised judges across Peru to implement the new legislation.

During his former position as Compliance Operations Manager at LafargeHolcim, compliance and communications professional Kyle Lewis worked closely with the Basel Institute on developing a new open-source search tool to help compliance officers spot and analyse links between individuals, organisations and criminal activities. He kindly provided this testimonial for the Basel Institute's Annual Report 2018.

During 2018 and 2019, the world has faced serious money laundering scandals involving reputable institutions. Surprisingly, abuses of financial systems were uncovered in countries that have low risk scores in the Basel AML Index, like Estonia and Sweden.

Falling rankings in the Basel AML Index, released today, show how many countries’ AML systems are a weak defence against today’s money laundering risks.

Ineffective anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) systems and lack of transparency are leaving the door open to increasingly sophisticated money laundering schemes.

There are still a few spaces available on a two-day FinTech AML Compliance course on cryptocurrencies and money laundering. The course is delivered by the Basel Institute in partnership with Swiss law firm MME and will take place on 10–11 December at MME's offices in Zurich, Switzerland.

In 2019, the world saw a significant number of money laundering scandals related to “Russian money” entering the financial markets of European countries, revealed through investigations by the OCCRP and other investigative media outlets.

Lise Stensrud, Policy Director Anti-Corruption at the Norwegian Development Cooperation Agency (Norad), explains the four challenges in "following the money" to tackle corruption, tax evasion and organised crime. Norad has recently become a core donor of the Basel Institute's International Centre for Asset Recovery, joining the UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Jersey.

The Basel Institute congratulates the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MINEM) on the launch of its comprehensive Code of Ethics and Conduct for Staff.

Adopted on 2 August 2019, the document was developed according to guidelines published by the Basel Institute’s Peru team in the context of the Swiss SECO-funded Public Finance Management (PFM) strengthening programme.

Mark Pieth, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Basel and founder/President of the Board of the Basel Institute, has been appointed to the University of the Western Cape in South Africa as an Extraordinary Professor.