Estamos encantados de haber firmado un Convenio de Cooperación Interinstitucional con la Procuraduría General del Estado del Perú. A continuación figura el discurso pronunciado por Gretta Fenner, Directora General del Basel Institute on Governance, en la ocasión de la ceremonia de suscripción del Convenio de Cooperación Interinstitucional el 29 de julio del 2020:

We are delighted to have signed a new framework agreement with Peru’s Special Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Special Public Prosecutor’s Office (Procuraduría General del Estado del Perú) was established in 2019 as an independent authority within the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. In collaboration with the Attorney General’s Office, it is responsible for advancing prosecutions of offences where the Peruvian State is the victim, including corruption, money laundering and environmental crimes.

Kenyan officials working in the fields of anti-corruption, intelligence and financial investigation undertook a four-day intensive training programme on Advanced Operational Analysis last week.

Switzerland and Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) and National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding on the occasion of the visit of the Swiss President to Kyiv.

Formally signed on 21 July, the MoU is the basis for the continued engagement of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) with these two Ukrainian institutions in the fight against corruption.

Our recently released 9th Basel AML Index reveals – disappointingly – that global money laundering risks remain high. The average risk score across all 141 countries in the Public Edition this year is 5.22, compared to 5.39 in 2019.

Few countries are making dramatic progress in addressing these risks. In fact, only six countries improved their risk scores by more than one point. 35 countries went backwards. 

Basel AML Index 2020: Weak oversight and dormant systems leave countries’ doors wide open to money laundering

Released today, the 9th Basel AML Index will disappoint anyone wishing for tangible progress in combating money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) around the world. 

The average ML/TF risk score across all 141 countries in the 2020 Public Edition of the Basel AML Index remains unacceptably high at 5.22 out of 10, where 10 equals maximum risk. In fact, only six countries improved their scores by more than one point. 35 countries went backwards.

Our current struggles have highlighted in drastic fashion that unilateral solutions are no longer sufficient to challenges that are increasingly global and multi-disciplinary.

As part of a week-long virtual conference by the Grupo de Estudios del Sistema Penal, Head of Latin America and Senior Asset Recovery Specialist Oscar Solorzano presented in Spanish on the contested topic of non-conviction-based forfeiture of assets.

I recently spoke about Collective Action as part of a virtual panel discussion along with Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Minister of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service, on the topic of New Russian Antimonopoly Regulations. The webinar was organised by the Russian Business Ethics Network and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, and is available on YouTube here.

The International Centre for Asset Recovery has been helping Uganda’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) expand understanding of the work of its Asset Recovery Division across its regional offices.

Among other goals, this may lead to more and more wide-ranging referrals of cases to the Asset Recovery Division. Currently, case referrals are limited to corruption-related crimes, yet there are various other categories of crime that generate illicit proceeds. These also have the potential to be recovered by the State and reinvested.