In October 2011, FIFA had announced that it had commissioned four internal Task Forces to conduct a thorough reform process. Concurrently, it indicated that an external advisory board, the Independent Governance Committee (IGC) would oversee its governance reform and make final recommendations to FIFA`s Executive Committee (ExCo).
After the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) announced its decision to reform the organisation and to commit to greater transparency earlier this year, it asked Prof. Dr. Mark Pieth to advise on the reorganisation of its governance.
In this role, Prof. Pieth examined the organisational structures and procedures and their abilities to deal with existing risks and challenges.
ICAR attended the 19th Plenary of the Egmont Group on 11-15 July 2011 in Yerevan, Armenia.
In cooperation with the Operational and the IT Working Groups, ICAR gave presentations on the Asset Recovery Intelligence System (ARIS) which is already successfully deployed in a number of FIUs.
In addition ICAR, jointly with the Operational Working Group organised a workshop on combatting corruption and recovering stolen assets. The workshop has launched a long term project to identify and explore the role of the FIU in these areas.
On 6 June 2011, the Commissioner, Professor Padee Pothisiri of the National Anti-Corruption Commission of Thailand, together with a delegation, visited the Basel Institute on Governance to sign an official Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Institute.
On 27-28 February 2011, a group of experts from 10 countries met in Lavin, Switzerland, to discuss the concept for the next Basel Institute on Governance conference on terrorist financing (the so called Giessbach conferences, named after the location of the first conference held in 2007) which is planned to take place in October 2011.
The group concluded that terrorist financing should not be seen as an isolated agenda but in conjunction with the threats originating from money laundering and organised crime.
From 26th January to 27th February 2011, the Basel Institute on Governance conducted seven multi-day training workshops on Anti-Money Laundering / Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) in co-operation with the Financial Intelligence Unit Secretariat of Zambia. Over 200 participants from the following areas attended:
On Monday 26th November 2013, representatives from the World Economic Forum's Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), the OECD, the Basel Institute on Governance, and Siemens discussed the need for businesses to use Collective Action in the fight against corruption.
This was addressed on the occasion of the Fifth Conference of the State Parties (CoSP) to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, held in Panama City, Panama.
We welcome the support, voiced in the Nigeria-US sponsored resolution on "Facilitating international cooperation in asset recovery" adopted at the Conference of State Parties to the UNCAC in Panama on 29 November 2013, for the Lausanne process and the related initiative to develop practical guidelines for efficient asset recovery.
This project has been initiated by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with the International Centre for Asset Recovery and with the support from the StAR Initiative.
Before the adoption of UNCAC, there was no policy or international legal framework guiding the disposal and monitoring of repatriated assets. As a result, there were no globally accepted rules to follow when repatriating confiscated assets to requesting countries.
Even after the adoption of UNCAC, global practice regarding the disposal of repatriated assets remains unclear. Indeed Article 57 (5) of UNCAC does not provide clear guidance in relation to the final disposal of confiscated assets.
On 24-25 October 2013, in coordination with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the International Centre for Asset Recovery organised and hosted a two-day workshop on the topic of "Returning Stolen Assets." The workshop took place in Küsnacht (Zürich), Switzerland.