On 9 March 2016, the Basel Institute on Governance, through its Managing Director Ms Gretta Fenner, and the Peruvian Judiciary, through its head of the Judiciary Victor Ticona Postigo, signed a framework agreement in a bid to fight cross-border corruption and money laundering and, in turn, facilitate the return of assets arising from such crimes.
The Basel Institute on Governance, RISE Project and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) are hosting a training workshop on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery – “Follow the money”.
The Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR), in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), conducted a National Workshop on the management of seized/frozen and confiscated criminal assets in Accra, Ghana, from 24 to 26 February 2016.
The Basel Institute has been awarded two new research grants; one by the British Academy as part of its GBP 4 million global anti-corruption research scheme in partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) in the context of DFID’s Anti-Corruption Evidence ('ACE') Research Programme; the second by DFID’s East Africa Research Fund (EARF).
On 15 January 2016 the Peruvian National Public Prosecutor and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland (SECO) signed an agreement to prevent and investigate acts of corruption in public finance at the subnational level and recover misappropriated public assets.
This agreement is part of the ¨Subnational Public Finance Management Strengthening Program¨ signed between the governments of Peru and Switzerland in October 2015, which is being implemented by the Basel Institute on Governance through its Lima office.
Experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Collective Action (ICCA) were in Kigali, Rwanda on 25-27 January to support the country’s Office of the Ombudsman in developing Collective Action strategies for public-private sector cooperation to tackle corruption.
In the context of the “Strengthening Uganda’s Anti Corruption Response (SUGAR)” project, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted a four- day training workshop on the concepts and process for conducting a Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing (ML/TF) National Risk Assessment (NRA) for representatives from governmental authorities, supervisory authorities and private sector, in Kampala, Uganda, from 19 – 22 January 2016.
The Basel Institute has contributed a case study on successful social accountability to Integrity Action and UNDP's initiative to make available a series of knowledge management tools to promote bottom up demand for good governance.
This case study from the Philippines reflects on the results of the application of an assessment methodology to contextualise social accountability that has been developed by the research team at the Institute's Public Governance Division in collaboration with UNDP.
The report summarises findings from a series of events organised in 2015 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in cooperation with the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Basel Institute's ICAR. It focuses on challenges of the Court with respect to financial investigation and international cooperation.
In Peru where the Basel Institute recently established its first country office in the context of its more recent public finance management programme funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Institute’s training experts of the International Center for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted two 5-day back-to-back training programmes in financial investigations and asset recovery from 23 May to 4 June 2016.