We are pleased to once again confirm our commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and its Ten Principles and submit our third biannual Communication on Engagement.

During 14–18 October 2019, experts from the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted a 5-day training workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia as part of USAID CEGAH’s on-going programming with KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission), Office of the Attorney-General (AGO) and Ministry of Law and Human Rights relating to beneficial ownership.

What are best practices to promote transparency and accountability in the return of stolen assets?

This was the focus of a side event of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group on 9 October 2019 at the OECD headquarters in Paris. The event gathered authorities and experts from the G20 countries plus international organisations including the World Bank and United Nations.

Does your company do business in emerging markets? Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could really rely on the certification of a local business partner in those markets?

If you know you can trust the certifier and the certification process, due diligence will be quicker and easier - at least in theory.

The Basel Institute's International Centre for Collective Action is launching an innovative project to explore certification and its role in anti-corruption due diligence.

Child labour. Forced evictions. Confiscation of migrant-worker identity documents. Crackdowns by security forces on peaceful assemblies. Serious illness resulting from corporate pollution.

These are all examples of human rights abuses that might arise in business operations or supply chains, knowingly or unknowingly, in a company’s home country or abroad.

In collaboration with the Basel Institute on Governance, the Competence Centre for Arbitration and Crime at the University of Basel is planning a high-level workshop that brings together arbitrators, lawyers, forensics, academics, students and representatives of NGOs from around the world.

Basel Institute senior advisor and former board member Hans-Peter Bauer presented at the Baltic AML Forum on 2 October on the topic of Country Risk Assessment -  A Difficult Task. 

The Forum was opened by the Lithuanian Minister of Finance and attended by 150 participants, who were mainly compliance officers and tech experts from Baltic-region banks, FinTech companies and cryptocurrency ventures.

The ultimate aim of fighting corruption and returning stolen assets is to fight poverty and achieve sustainable development – and asset recovery is therefore not a nice-to-have but an obligation under international law.

PEFA, the international organisation that sets standards for measuring the performance of Public Financial Management (PFM) worldwide, has published a new version of its Volume IV Handbook on Using PEFA to support Public Financial Management improvement. The forward-looking handbook represents the first attempt to go beyond pure performance evaluation. Instead, the emphasis is on the action plans that come after the evaluation.