A new article in the open-access African Studies journal makes a novel contribution to understanding petty corruption in East Africa. By providing evidence of behavioural drivers of petty corruption in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, the research could help in designing more effective anti-corruption strategies.

Eighteen participants from anti-corruption authorities across East Africa took part in the first ever online delivery of our Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery training programme last week.

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.  

Before joining the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery, Tom Walugembe was a Senior State Attorney at Uganda’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. In this role, he secured the first ever money laundering conviction in Uganda in the case of Uganda v Serwamba David Musoke and 6 Others.

This landmark case blazes a trail not just for Uganda but for other countries to prosecute cases of money laundering and recover illicit assets.

In its new report on Breaking the Silence around Sextortion, Transparency International references our work on the recent evolvement of the anti-corruption field towards “documenting and recognising non-monetary forms of corruption”.
 

High-profile law enforcement operations against illegal wildlife trade (IWT), such as Interpol’s Operation Thunderball in July 2019 and the arrest of notorious trafficker Moazu Kromah in Uganda in June, have drawn welcome attention to IWT as a financial and organised crime and not only a conservat

A new research project led by the Basel Institute's Public Governance team aims to help anti-corruption practitioners design more effective interventions by taking into account – and in fact leveraging – the informal relationships and social networks that underlie people's behaviour.

Our latest Working Paper on "Corruption and wildlife trafficking: exploring drivers, facilitators and networks behind illegal wildlife trade in East Africa" is part of a multi-disciplinary programme of work focused on intelligence-led action against financial crime in illegal wildlife trade (IWT).