From 1 - 4 December 2016 you will find the Basel Institute on Governance at the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Panama City. The IACC is the world’s premier global forum for bringing together heads of state, civil society, the private sector and more to tackle the increasingly sophisticated challenges posed by corruption.

We will be hosting an information booth where you can obtain copies of our latest publications. Come by and learn more about our current activities and fields of research.

The Basel Institute on Governance and its International Centre for Collective Action (ICCA) hosted for the second time an international conference on anti-corruption Collective Action, entitled Collective Action: Evidence, Experience and Impact on October 20-21 2016 in Basel.

Basel Institute Chairman and criminal law expert Mark Pieth and Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz have just released their analysis of the issues revealed by the so-called “Panama papers”.

While the Panama Papers describe what was happening behind the secrecy, the Stiglitz and Pieth report entitled Overcoming the Shadow Economy focuses on what can and must be done, both by the international community and by the secrecy havens, to increase transparency.

Today (7 December 2016), the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released its latest evaluation of Switzerland. According to this FATF report, Switzerland’s regulatory framework on anti-money laundering and terrorism financing (AML/CFT) is well developed, but its application shows certain weaknesses.

What is corrupt behaviour? In order to better understand how endemic corruption “works” from the perspective of the affected populations themselves, researchers from the Basel Institute explore behavioural factors that impact attitudes towards petty corruption in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. One of the milestones of the research project has now been successfully completed with a systematic literature review.

Romania has recently launched a project to “Support achieving the National Anticorruption Strategy objectives by increasing the efficiency of the asset recovery and management”. The project is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC), through the Swiss-Romanian Co-operation Programme.

Between July and December 2016, as part of the DFID-funded and ASI-managed SUGAR programme, ICAR experts delivered a series of four workshops on financial investigation and asset recovery to investigators and prosecutors from a range of Ugandan law enforcement and prosecuting authorities.

The training team chose a multi-phase approach for Uganda, which included the training of nearly 100 practitioners as well as the selection and training of three highly competent local trainers.

From 16 to 18 January 2017, more than 400 financial investigators from money laundering, cybercrime and financial intelligence units met with experts in asset recovery and relevant private sector representatives at the Global conference on countering money laundering and digital currencies in Doha, Qatar. The event was organised by the Working Group on Virtual Currencies, a joint initiative of the Basel Institute on Governance, Europol and Interpol, and funded by the authorities of Qatar.

From 16 to 20 January 2017, experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted the first training workshop in the Train-the-Trainer programme for the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Firstly there needs to be the desire, both in terms of public consensus as well as at governmental level, though some could argue these should be one and the same in an ideal world. Subsequently, the rule of law underlines the principles of a democratic government and there is no scope, in most cases, to deviate from the law, however damning the circumstances might be.