Mark Pieth has been appointed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) as one of the three independent persons to its newly created Vetting Panel. The IAAF has been in the spotlight in recent years in relation to corruption in the way it was managing the sport,  culminating in the Russian doping scandal and the banning of the former President of the IAAF and the former treasurer from the sport for life. 

On 27 February, Dr Claudia Baez Camargo, Head of the Institute’s Public Governance Research, gave a talk on her latest research findings at the British Academy. Her presentation on “Informal Governance and Corruption: Transcending the Principal-Agent and Collective Action Paradigms” was recorded and can be accessed online here.  

The Basel Institute on Governance welcomes the recent decisions by courts in Luxembourg and Switzerland to return almost USD 17 million to Peru in cases related to the regime of former Peruvian President Fujimori. We congratulate the involved authorities in Peru, Luxembourg and Switzerland for the successful conclusion of these 15-year old cases. We are honoured to have been able to support this successful outcome.

The Basel Institute on Governance welcomes the successful conclusion of a case of asset recovery involving the UK and Kenya. The assets in the amount of £2,222,957 were confiscated by Mr Recorder Andrew Mitchel QC in the case of R v Smith and Ouzman. The UK authorities decided that an amount of £349,057.39 should be used to purchase specialised ambulances that were formally handed over to the Kenyan Government on 17 March. The purchase of ambulances with the returned assets meets urgent needs in the Kenyan health care delivery system.

From 30 to 31 March 2017, the OECD invites pioneers from a variety of backgrounds and academic disciplines to share their latest evidence and findings in corruption at the Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum in Paris. Researchers from the Basel Institute will be present to discuss their findings on new approaches to anti-corruption. 

The Lausanne Process consists of seminars (Lausanne seminars) addressed to practitioners in the field of asset recovery. Switzerland has been hosting them regularly since 2001. Experience has shown that close cooperation between the countries involved, particularly at the judicial level, that is at the stage of mutual legal assistance, is of key importance for the successful restitution of such funds. The Lausanne seminars are intended to transfer practical knowledge and to help strengthen international cooperation and coordination between requesting and requested states.

The Basel Institute on Governance and the Peruvian Judiciary organized a training seminar on anti-corruption and asset recovery aimed at building capacity in innovative methods to fight cross border corruption. The four day training is the first of a series of capacity building events requested by the Peruvian authorities and was delivered to the recently installed unit of judges specialized in corruption of public officials, created by the judicial authorities to deal with the Odebrecht scandal.

On Wednesday, 19 April 2017 the Basel Institute in cooperation with Norton Rose Fulbright hosted an insightful discussion as to how to develop a successful anti-corruption Collective Action with peer companies or other stakeholders and how Collective Action can invigorate anti-corruption programmes in markets with systemic corruption.  

On 28 April, Kenya's Attorney General’s Office and the Swiss Federal Office of Justice signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on international mutual assistance in criminal matters in Nairobi. The MOU will facilitate the cooperation between the two countries in investigating and prosecuting international corruption and other financial crimes.

Windward Trading, a company registered in Jersey, pleaded guilty yesterday, on 24 February 2016, to four counts of money laundering at Jersey's Royal Court. A confiscation order was granted amounting to GBP 3.6 million and discussions are underway between the Government of Kenya, Jersey authorities and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom as to the repatriation of these assets.