The Basel Institute on Governance and the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) are co-organising and participating in several  different workshops at this year’s 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok, Thailand in November.

Our contribution to the 14th IACC is manifold: we are co-organizing workshops on asset recovery and on repairing social damages our of corruption cases, we are also contributing to workshops on legal remedies for victims of corruption and on governance in the Health Sector. Here is a brief description of these activities:

A workshop on “Co-operation between Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) and Law Enforcement Agencies in fighting against money laundering and recovering illicit assets”, organised by the IMF Legal Department in collaboration with the Basel Institute of Governance (BIG) and the Istituto Superiore Internazionale di Scienze Criminali (ISISC), was held in Syracuse, Italy, during the period 4 – 8 October 2010.

On 2 September 2010, in Laxenburg, Austria, the Basel Institute on Governance signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the newly established International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA) with the intent to undertake joint activities to prevent and combat corruption.

Such activities will include developing and delivering training and research activities for all relevant anti-corruption stakeholders.

View the MoU.

The Basel Institute on Governance co-organised with the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA) the Non-State Actors Experts' Meeting, held on 2-3 September 2010 in Laxenburg, Austria. Attendance included prominent non-state actors from both developing and developed countries that play and important and active role in the asset recovery processes.

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.