The Basel Institute's International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) is hosting a side event on "Living up to the spirit of articles 43 and 46 UNCAC" at the Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention Against Corruption (COSP8). 

The following briefing notes are taken from the concept note for a side event at the Conference of States Parties (COSP) in Abu Dhabi on 20 December 2019.

A high-profile asset recovery case in Peru is putting the country’s new legislation on non-conviction-based confiscation (Extinción de Dominio) to the test.

The new Extinción de Dominio legislation, which roughly translates as "extinction of possession", allows stolen assets to be recovered even if the asset holder cannot formally be convicted of a crime. Introduced in August 2018, it enables the recovery of assets from foreign bank accounts whose owners, for example, are now dead or have absconded.

Experts from the Basel Institute's Peru country office trained 30 members of the Peruvian Procuraduría in a novel form of non-conviction-based asset recovery last week.

The High Court of Piura in northwestern Peru has announced it will set up a specialised court for cases relating to a new law on extinción de dominio (which roughly translates as "extinction of possession"), a form of non-conviction-based asset forfeiture.

Prosecutors specialised in corruption and money laundering crimes in the city of Trujillo in northwestern Peru have benefited from training in “Asset recovery via the legal mechanism of Extinción de Dominio”. This is one of several capacity building initiatives launched by our team in Peru this year as part of the Subnational PFM Programme of the Swiss SECO Cooperation.