The Lisbon Conference on 5-7 July 2022 saw high-level representatives from Lusophone countries, including Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Timor-Leste, come together with international experts. Together, they explored non-conviction based forfeiture (NCBF) laws – mechanisms to seize and confiscate proceeds of corruption and other crimes when a criminal conviction is not possible.
This two-day hybrid conference gathered thousands of crypto specialists and financial investigators from law enforcement, regulators and the private sector.
The conference was hosted by Europol at its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, together with the Basel Institute on Governance through the Joint Working Group on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies.
This session at the 2022 International Anti-Corruption Conference aimed to generate a realistic understanding of existing options for recovering assets frozen under sanctions related to the war in Ukraine. It also sought to identify and promote new instruments that countries could introduce for this purpose, thereby contributing to the global effort to accelerate asset recovery and push boundaries of current practice.
The head of Peru's Judiciary, Javier Arévalo Vela, has publicly highlighted Peru's success in recovering the proceeds of corruption and related financial crimes through its non-conviction based forfeiture law, Extinción de Dominio.
The subsystem Peru has rolled out to implement the law "allows the state to recover money from cases of corruption, money laundering and more" he said. Around USD 64 million have already been recovered, with many more cases in the pipeline.
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.
Non-conviction based forfeiture (NCBF) laws allow courts to confiscate assets of a criminal nature, even where no conviction has been obtained in relation to criminal conduct.
They have existed for many years in several countries in a wide variety of forms, and complement other asset recovery mechanisms. Yet this diversity – and the fact that many countries still do not have or use such laws – leads to challenges with their application, especially in cases with an international element.
The war in Ukraine has caused hundreds of billions of dollars of damage so far, including to critical infrastructure. Funding the country's ongoing and post-war reconstruction efforts is a topic very much under debate. Some suggest that assets frozen under war-related sanctions could be used to partly fund the reconstruction. Could they? How?
Publication
Strengthening Ukraine’s anti-corruption and judicial infrastructure to safeguard the recovery
This document takes stock of recent progress in strengthening Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure in the face of increased attacks on infrastructure and increased reconstruction efforts. It covers:
As the use of crypto assets expands into practically every country and sector, so does its abuse to commit new forms of crime and launder criminal proceeds. Yet with the right tools, capacity and cooperation, the unique characteristics of blockchain-based technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to investigate organised crime and money laundering networks and to recover stolen funds.