Gemma Aiolfi, Head of Compliance and Corporate Governance / Collective Action, discussed anti-corruption Collective Action and High Level Reporting Mechanisms in Vol. 36, Issue 5 of the Thai Institute of Directors' (IOD) Boardroom Magazine.
In early December 2014, at the invitation of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Center of Asset Recovery (ICAR), along with other key organisations including ARINSA, CARIN and INTERPOL, co-hosted a conference on the recovery of proceeds from wildlife and forest crimes held in Panama City, Panama.
During 2016, ICAR will be providing capacity-building workshops on financial investigation and asset recovery in India, Paraguay and Peru.
In India, ICAR will assist the country’s anti-money laundering investigating and prosecuting agency, the Ministry of Finance Enforcement Directorate (ED), to increase its capability to investigate financial crime with international links. In partnership with the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, ICAR is planning a financial investigation training for 50 ED investigators over a two-week period.
On Friday 4 December 2015, the Basel Institute and the Government of Sri Lanka signed an agreement to strengthen collaboration in the fight against corruption and the recovery of stolen assets.
On Thursday 12 November 2015 Basel Institute on Governance Managing Director Gretta Fenner met with Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to take stock of the cooperation between the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) and the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) to recover assets stolen by former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych and his close allies. Both parties recognised the challenges of asset recovery, and the particular challenges of asset recovery in the Ukrainian context.
On 26 and 27 October 2015, the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) supported the International Criminal Court (ICC) in a workshop, held at the seat of the Court in The Hague, on international cooperation and financial investigations. The workshop was supported by the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United Nations and the European Commission and attended by experts from 13 countries and 6 international organisations.
Phyllis Atkinson, Head of Training at the International Centre for Asset Recovery gave a presentation entitled “Global Challenges in Following the Money” on 9 October 2015 at an event hosted by the Institute for Commercial Forensic Practitioners (ICFP) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
At the request of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) of Thailand, the Basel Institute carried out a three-day executive workshop on the role of good governance and anti-corruption in the context of national development for senior executives from various relevant public offices and related institutions of Thailand.
A partnership and cost-sharing agreement was concluded in May 2015 between the ICAR, and the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan (PCUz) and the Swiss Co-operation Office under the Swiss Embassy in the country with regard to the PCUz’s project entitled "Support to combating and preventing corruption in Uzbekistan". Experts from the ICAR delivered a training workshop in Uzbekistan during September 2015 after first conducting an initial on-site scoping mission to engage with relevant authorities and to collect facts and figures for developing a relevant training programme.
Within the context of the three-year initiative on "Mapping and Visualising Cross-Border Crime” funded by the Swiss-Romanian Co-operation Program which was launched in 2014, experts from the ICAR conducted the second training workshop in Bucharest during 30 September – 1 October 2015. The workshop was once again conducted in partnership with two Romanian non-profit organisations, the Journalism Development Network (JDN) and the Rise Project.