Are we at a turning point in the fight to save our planet from the ravages of environmental crime and corruption?

Possibly. The ongoing pandemic, caused by a zoonotic disease, has brought home the fact that environmental degradation is already altering our lives. Hopes that this was a one-off disruption and that we could soon return to the way things were have been dashed. It is now frighteningly clear that the pace of abuse of our planet keeps accelerating and the next crisis looms around the corner.

The Basel Institute on Governance is offering a new Cryptocurrencies and Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Training course aimed at law enforcement officials, professionals in AML compliance and FinTech/RegTech fields, as well as policymakers and investigative journalists.

Delivered over four three-hour online sessions, the course covers the essentials of how to detect and prevent the use of virtual assets for illicit activities. 

The Basel Institute on Governance has released a new eLearning course on Terrorist Financing.

Developed in cooperation with the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), the course is aimed at analysts, investigators, prosecutors, representatives of FIUs and professionals in the field of anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).

The 4th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies, co-organised by the Basel Institute on Governance, INTERPOL and Europol and hosted this year by INTERPOL, closed yesterday with a convergence around seven key recommendations for strengthening the global response to new financial crime threats relating to cryptocurrencies.

On 28 October 2020, Uganda registered a landmark judgment in the case of Uganda v Geoffrey Kazinda. Although there have been a couple of other previously prosecuted illicit enrichment cases, the Kazinda case is the most significant because of the vast sum of money involved: a total of UGX 4,630,195,258 (over USD 1,252,600).

Turning wildlife trafficking into a high-risk, low-profit trade is challenging. Our recent research on why and how wildlife trafficking happens in Uganda gives some insights into the factors that sustain the supply of large volumes of wildlife products moving from wildlife habitats in Africa to the hands of consumers all over the world.

Our recent policy brief on Curbing wildlife trafficking in Uganda: lessons for practitioners summarises the main findings from extensive field research on the drivers, facilitators and strategies of wildlife trafficking in Uganda.