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.

In 2019, Estonia achieved the lowest risk score out of the 125 countries in the Public Edition of the Basel AML Index, 2.68 out of 10. In fact, Estonia has consistently been among the top performers since 2012, when the Basel AML index was first calculated.

Money laundering risks in Malta have been in the headlines recently.

Local governments in the Peruvian regions of Piura, La Libertad and San Martín have held public accountability consultations to listen to citizens’ views and encourage greater participation.