Malawi hosts first regional workshop on managing seized assets

Crime must not pay, but what we recover must also be worth recovering.

With these words, Charles Mhango, Malawi’s Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, opened the first Regional Asset Management Workshop in Salima, Malawi, on 29 September 2026.

Over two days, nearly 40 prosecutors, law enforcement representatives and asset management officers from Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia worked with international experts on a practical question.

How do you stop seized assets losing value while a criminal case makes its way through the courts?

The workshop was organised by the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of Malawi, led by Fostino Yankho Maele. Ben Nicholson, British Deputy High Commissioner and Development Director, and representatives of the Royal Norwegian Embassy also took part.

Warm thanks to ICAR’s donors, in particular the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), for funding this valuable meeting of minds.

A shared challenge

Criminal cases can take years. In that time, seized cars rust, buildings fall into disrepair and businesses collapse. When an asset loses its value, everyone loses. The state recovers less if the suspect is convicted, and the owner gets back less if they are acquitted.

Practitioners increasingly understand that asset management is an essential part of asset recovery. The difficulty lies in the detail.

Resources are often limited, and laws do not always allow assets to be managed or sold before a case ends.
Essential good practices such as pre-seizure planning are still new in many places.
Complex assets such as companies, mines or petrol stations need specialist skills that prosecutors and police do not typically have.

These problems are by no means unique to Africa. Elizabeth Andersen, Executive Director of the Basel Institute, reminded participants that practitioners everywhere face them. A representative of Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau reinforced the point with the country’s own experience of managing seized real estate.

Learning from experience

Participants were eager to share what had worked for them and what had not. The camaraderie among practitioners was evident, which kept the discussions dynamic and encouraged peer learning.

Complex, income-generating assets came up again and again. One jurisdiction described managing a mine that was already struggling financially even before the price of its commodity fell sharply. Other delegations spoke about their efforts to ensure that tenants of seized properties paid rent to the state instead of to suspects.

There were positive experiences too. In one jurisdiction, seized assets put up for auction sold for more than their initial asking prices.

The countries represented at the workshop are now seeking to move towards specialised models and streamlined procedures for managing seized assets.

No single model

The clearest message from the two days was that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to asset management. A house, a fleet of tankers, a bank account and a crypto wallet each need different handling. What works in one legal system may not work in another.

That gives African jurisdictions an opportunity. They can learn from shared experiences in the region and beyond, and build models and processes that suit their own needs and circumstances.

Next steps

The discussions will inform broad principles that participating jurisdictions can adapt to their own systems.

A specialised focus group on managing seized cryptoassets is also launching under the Basel Institute’s Africa Crypto & Asset Recovery Network.

Through our ICAR field experts in Africa and our international partners, we look forward to supporting the region’s asset management and recovery professionals as they develop the policies, laws and practices needed to manage criminal assets and recover maximum value for victims and the state.