Every day, an unknown number of elephant tusks, rhino horn, pangolin scales and other wildlife products – alive and dead – cross the oceans in container ships and cargo flights for use in traditional medicine, crafts and the illegal pet trade. Rare trees are felled in ancient forests and shipped out under false certificates.

They leave behind the butchered carcasses of the last remaining animals of many species, scarred and emptied landscapes, legal livelihoods undermined by corruption and criminal activity, and communities ravaged by organised crime networks.

Given the vast dimensions of the multibillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade (IWT), it may be surprising that until recently, global efforts to tackle IWT came mainly from the conservation sector. This has typically consisted of numerous donor-funded efforts to catch poachers and raise public awareness of the plight of endangered species.

Valuable as those efforts are, they do little to impact the organised crime networks, corruption and illicit financial flows that allow the lucrative illegal trade in wildlife products to continue.

High-profile law enforcement operations against illegal wildlife trade (IWT), such as Interpol’s Operation Thunderball in July and the arrest of notorious trafficker Moazu Kromah in Uganda in June 2019, have drawn welcome attention to IWT as a financial and organised crime and not only a conservation issue.

Yet in working to strengthen legal frameworks and law enforcement capacity in countries that suffer from high levels of IWT, we must not forget the social drivers and facilitators behind wildlife trafficking – factors that laws alone are powerless to change.

This quick guide by Claudia Baez Camargo, Head of Governance Research, draws on Ms Baez Camargo's decades of research on social norms and their implications for anti-corruption practice. She explores:

• What is a social norm?
• How do social norms drive and perpetuate corrupt behaviour?
• The case of health facilities in East Africa
• How to identify social norms that drive corrupt behaviour
• What are the implications for anti-corruption practice?

And finally:

What exactly does international cooperation mean in the context of asset recovery? This is a wider question than many people think.

It also opens up further questions, such as not only how to return more stolen assets more quickly to victim countries, but how those returned assets can best be used to support sustainable development and strengthen criminal justice systems.

Learn more in this quick guide by Shane Nainappan, Senior Asset Recovery Specialist.

Someone once said that the more knowledge is freely shared, the more it grows. Our free eLearning courses on asset tracing, intelligence gathering and financial analysis exemplify this idea.

Peter Huppertz, Team Leader IT and eLearning, explains some of the benefits of online courses for financial investigators, analysts and others who need to acquire and practise these complex skills.

Practically every country has a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and it plays a vital role in combating money laundering and other financial crimes. Yet there is often confusion – even among anti-corruption authorities – about how it works, what it can and can’t do, and what value it brings. 

Thierry Ravalomanda, Senior Asset Recovery Specialist offers a quick overview.

Sophisticated and complex financial crimes span the globe. “Following the trail of the money” can involve many jurisdictions, each with their own laws and practices, and varying capacity or willingness to cooperate internationally.

Fighting corruption and money laundering, and recovering criminal proceeds, are therefore complex challenges. Specialised legal, financial accounting, analytical and investigation skills are essential.

This quick guide offers a short introduction to illicit enrichment laws, which are emerging as a powerful tool to combat corruption and recover stolen assets. Originally published in May 2019, it was updated in June 2021 following the Basel Institute’s publication of an open-access book on Illicit Enrichment: a Guide to Laws Targeting Unexplained Wealth.

Jacopo Costa, Senior Research Fellow, offers this quick guide to social network analysis (SNA). He explains how it can help us to better understand and tackle the transnational organised crime and dark networks that sustain corruption, money laundering and illicit trafficking.