Environmental criminals and their corrupt facilitators get rich by destroying our planet and its natural resources. This publication for the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) project explains how and why to confiscate their illicit assets – with or without a criminal conviction.
Publication
Papering over cracks or building stronger systems together? Financial crime in the context of covid-19
This article is the Basel Institute’s contribution to the Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development Review of Legal Experiences and Global Practices Relating to COVID-19, published in December 2021. The Global Forum is an initiative of The World Bank. The contribution was submitted in July 2020; the version below contains minor updates to hyperlinks.
This summary report emerges from the XIth edition of the Lausanne Seminar, 2–3 September 2021.
The XIth Lausanne Seminar raised awareness of recent innovations with regard to the use of public-private collaboration to achieve asset recovery outcomes, providing participants with insights and tools for the development of public-private financial information-sharing partnerships (FISPs) in their respective jurisdictions.
The 5th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies on 7-8 December 2021, co-organised by the Basel Institute on Governance, INTERPOL and Europol, saw several thousand participants from the public and private sectors gathering to exchange knowledge on virtual assets-based money laundering and related risks in the crypto sphere.
News
Environmental corruption as a roadblock to reaching the SDGs: virtual CoSP side event on 17 December
Environmental crime is lucrative, with its profits easily realised via financial crime and corruption. What is being done to trace illicit financial flows that facilitate environmental crime? And what about the illegally obtained profits derived from it?
Anti-corruption prosecutors are under attack everywhere. They are threatened, exposed to undue influence or hindered by abusive defence strategies.
At a special event at the Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), a panel of international experts will discuss measures that different stakeholders must take to protect prosecutors, and by extension protect the Convention.
Anti-corruption investigators and prosecutors from Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zambia joined experts from our International Centre for Asset Recovery on 16–18 November to share experiences of non-conviction based forfeiture (NCBF) laws in their countries.
Publication
Enriquecimiento ilícito: Una guía sobre las leyes que abordan los activos de procedencia inexplicable
Enriquecimiento ilícito ofrece una guía completa sobre las leyes de enriquecimiento ilícito y su aplicación para perseguir los activos de procedencia inexplicable y recuperar las ganancias derivadas de la corrupción y otros delitos. El libro, de acceso libre, abarca tanto las leyes penales como las civiles de todo el mundo.
Oscar Solórzano, Head of Latin America at the Basel Institute on Governance and Senior Asset Recovery Specialist at our International Centre for Asset Recovery, interviewed Dr Hamilton Castro Trigoso, Provincial Prosecutor of the First Provisional Provincial Prosecutor's Office for Extinción de dominio in Lima, on his experiences in investigating and enforcing asset confiscation judgements abroad.
As world leaders gather this week at COP26 to negotiate their climate change commitments, we ask – will they include a credible commitment to fight corruption?
Because if there is one thing that will scupper efforts to address the climate crisis, it is corruption. Yet corruption is strangely missing from the conversation. Here are some things that deserve to be talked about louder.