The Basel Institute was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Rafael Merchan, the former Secretary of Transparency of Colombia, at his home over the Christmas holiday.

The Basel Institute on Governance is delighted to host the International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators. 

The Academy was created this year by Stéphane Bonifassi of Bonifassi Avocats (Paris), Lincoln Caylor of Bennett Jones (Toronto) and Elizabeth Ortega of ECO Strategic Communications (Miami).

The Basel Institute on Governance / International Center for Asset Recovery is proud to have signed an Executive Agreement with INTERPOL during a jointly organised conference on Kleptocracy in Lyon on 22 October 2009. This agreement will help both organisations to work closely together in asset recovery areas. Common projects will include training in asset recovery, exchange of experts, development of an e-learning programme, contributions to the Asset Recovery Knowledge Center.

As a result of a highly competitive tender procedure, the Basel Institute on Governance/ICAR has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery Agreement from the World Bank Group for the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) training program.

Since 9/11, tremendous efforts have been made and large financial sums have been invested to build up efficient anti-terrorist financing systems. Nearly eight years later, concrete results are still difficult to identify.

The Basel Institute on Governance and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding in March 2008.

The MoU defines terms of collaboration in the design and delivery of training courses on investigation, asset tracing and asset recovery; in the promotion of international legal cooperation and public-private partnerships to combat corruption, money laundering and the financing of terrorism; and in the provision of assistance in implementing international conventions on AML and corruption.

Prof Mark Pieth, President and Founder of the Basel Institute on Governance, has been awarded the 2007 Integrity Award by the leading international NGO anti-corruption coalition Transparency International.

He receives the award, which will be presented to him in a ceremony to be held on 21 January 2008 in Berlin, jointly with Le Hien Duc, a Vietnamese grassroots anti-corruption activist.

The Basel Institute on Governance has been instrumental to the design, development and implementation of industry standards through collective action across the world and in a large variety of sectors. Examples of this experience are the PACI Principles, the Wolfsberg Anti Money Laundering Principles, the Clovis Principles and our ongoing efforts in the Power Systems, Logistics & Transport and Art Trade sectors.

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.