Criminals exploit legal loopholes, borders and other avenues to conceal the proceeds of their illegal activities and evade prosecution. Meanwhile, they use their illicit proceeds to buy luxury villas or increase their power and influence. Victims of crime – including communities affected by corruption – suffer the losses.
Publication
Policy Brief 14: Targeting unexplained wealth: Implications of the EU’s 2024 Directive on asset recovery
The European Union’s 2024 Directive on Asset Recovery and Confiscation obliges Member States to, among other things, introduce legislative measures to enable the confiscation of “unexplained wealth”.
This policy paper examines Article 16, which contains this obligation, and the powers and restrictions that Member States will need to include in such “unexplained wealth” measures to ensure compliance with the Directive.
This Working Paper explores the wide variety of non-conviction based (NCB) forfeiture laws in Latin America, with a special focus on the region’s predominant model, Extinción de dominio.
It argues that NCB forfeiture legislation, which allows for the recovery of stolen assets outside of criminal proceedings, can contribute significantly to a state’s criminal policy response to rampant economic and organised crime.
Publication
Working Paper 51: Good practices in asset recovery legislation in selected OSCE participating States
Asset recovery tools are integral to combating corruption, organised crime, sanctions evasion and other profit-motivated crimes. However, in many participating States of the OSCE, the range of asset recovery tools available to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies is limited.
This Working Paper identifies legislative mechanisms in OSCE participating States that empower the state to confiscate suspected or proven proceeds of crime. The overall objective is to ascertain:
As the war in Ukraine intensifies, calls are growing for states to confiscate Russian assets frozen under sanctions and redirect them to provide support to Ukraine. Our latest Working Paper argues that states can and should do this by enhancing the effectiveness and scope of established asset recovery measures – not by introducing new untested mechanisms that risk inviting future legal challenges, defeating the purpose of sanctions and violating the rule of law.
Written in the light of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, this Working Paper explores whether it is justifiable to confiscate assets frozen under financial sanctions in order to redirect them to the victims of state aggression.
The paper first explores the concept of sanctions and financial sanctions (asset freezes) and what they mean in practice.
The final recommendation of the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia (‘the Commission’) urged the government to legislate an unexplained wealth order (‘UWO’) as part of a wider approach to counter the prevalence of money laundering and proceeds of crime in the province.
This document analyses the feasibility of this recommendation. It:
“Money laundering is a significant problem requiring strong and decisive action,” concluded Honourable Austin F. Cullen in the final report of his widely discussed Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia in June 2022.
This case study describes how Kenya’s civil illicit enrichment legislation enabled the recovery of corruptly acquired assets from a former Chief Accountant at the Treasury.
It examines a 2021 unexplained wealth (illicit enrichment) case in Kenya involving the former Chief Accountant Patrick Ochieno Abachi. The case is related to Kenya’s so-called Anglo Leasing scandal, in which 18 high-value government security contracts were allegedly awarded to fictitious companies in the early 2000s.
This case study explains how the Ugandan Inspectorate of Governance achieved a landmark prosecution of a former Principal Accountant in the Office of the Price Minister under the country’s illicit enrichment law.
On 28 October 2020, Uganda registered a landmark judgment under its illicit enrichment law 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).