What is the role of business in reducing illicit financial flows in the Southern Africa subregion? How is it evolving? What can businesses do to address corruption and money laundering risks in order to boost market growth and development and to strengthen governance systems?
The second Summit for Democracy on 29–30 March 2023 will shine a spotlight on corruption as a threat to democracy, peace and security. And in the context of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the security implications of state capture and strategic corruption will no doubt be at centre stage.
An initiative of US President Biden, the Summit seeks both high-level commitments and ground-level actions to advance democracy, fight corruption and counter authoritarianism.
The newsletter covers recent highlights at the Basel Institute in 2023, including a new Working Paper on confiscating sanctioned assets, the launch of our Collective Action Award for Southern Africa and corruption risk assessment training for environmental agencies in Malawi. It also features our latest news, blogs and other publications, as well as guest articles from friends of the Basel Institute. We take this chance to welcome 10 new staff members to the team.
The Basel Institute on Governance, the Ministry of Justice of Bulgaria and the Center for the Study of Democracy co-hosted a policy forum on anti-corruption and national security on 21 March 2023.
The policy forum provided a platform for cooperation for government and civil society representatives from Southeast Europe and their international peers, under the anti-corruption cohort of the Summit for Democracy.
The all-day meeting took place in person in Sofia, Bulgaria. Online attendance via Zoom was open to all.
The forum explored:
In last week’s interview on how Collective Action has cut corruption in Nigerian ports, Cecilia Müller Torbrand of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network and Soji Apampa of the Convention on Business Integrity explained their data-driven approach and the measurable impact it has had.
The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) delivers leading examples of Collective Action against corruption around the world and Nigeria is one of its flagship success stories. In collaboration with the Convention on Business Integrity (CBi), the initiative has kept seafarers calling at Nigerian ports safe from corrupt demands since 2019.
Nominations are now open for the Anti-Corruption Collective Action Award 2023, which this year focuses on Southern Africa.
Launched last year, the Collective Action Awards celebrate inspiring and outstanding Collective Action initiatives to tackle corruption and raise standards of business integrity.
An intensive training programme of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) in Zambia has brought fresh impetus to the country’s fight against corruption.
The financial investigations and asset recovery training programme, held in collaboration with the Zambian Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), brought together participants from a wide range of law enforcement and oversight bodies.
On International Women’s Day, we celebrate the conversations that issues of gender equality have triggered over recent years – conversations about the kind of world we want to live in and the values of the organisations we want to work for.
These conversations go far beyond narrow statistics of women vs men. They encompass equity in pay and parental leave; creating a culture where all staff feel welcome; and taking advantage of the different backgrounds and points of view that diversity brings.
At this month's meeting of the Follow-the-Money Working Group, Simon Marsh will present a case study from East Africa illustrating proactive financial investigations in illegal wildlife trade, with a focus on the international nexus.
The case study will reveal the strategies, challenges and successes in tracing the flow of illicit funds to disrupt a criminal network engaged in illegal wildlife trade.