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.
Perú ejecutará sentencia de Extinción de Dominio (decomiso sin condena) de cuenta del complejo Montesinos en el Gran Ducado de Luxemburgo.
Los procesos de recuperación de activos suponen largos periodos de espera e inactividad durante los cuales el operador de justicia no puede mostrar resultados concretos, particularmente cuando el objetivo es recuperar activos disimulados en centros financieros internacionales a través de la cooperación internacional en materia penal.
A high-profile asset recovery case in Peru is putting the country’s new legislation on non-conviction-based confiscation (Extinción de Dominio) to the test.
The new Extinción de Dominio legislation, which roughly translates as "extinction of possession", allows stolen assets to be recovered even if the asset holder cannot formally be convicted of a crime. Introduced in August 2018, it enables the recovery of assets from foreign bank accounts whose owners, for example, are now dead or have absconded.
The first intensive training workshop on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery in Mozambique by the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) training team sparked vivid discussions on the practical challenges of investigating and combating money laundering in Mozambique and on how different agencies can work better together to achieve this.
Anti-corruption officials in Tanzania have been upgrading their skills in specialised financial investigation topics with the help of the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) and a local trainer certified by ICAR’s train-the-trainer programme.
A new research project led by the Basel Institute's Public Governance team aims to help anti-corruption practitioners design more effective interventions by taking into account – and in fact leveraging – the informal relationships and social networks that underlie people's behaviour.
Our latest Working Paper on "Corruption and wildlife trafficking: exploring drivers, facilitators and networks behind illegal wildlife trade in East Africa" is part of a multi-disciplinary programme of work focused on intelligence-led action against financial crime in illegal wildlife trade (IWT).