We are delighted about the signing of a trilateral agreement on the return of illicitly acquired assets to Peru.
This practical handbook by the Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) Initiative of The World Bank and UNODC seeks to guide practitioners in the complex process of recovering stolen assets that have been hidden abroad. It covers strategic, organisational, investigative, and legal challenges of recovering assets. The Handbook also "provides common approaches to recovering stolen assets located in foreign jurisdictions, identifies the challenges that practitioners are likely to encounter, and introduces good practices".
I recently participated in a panel on the role of non-state actors in the recovery of stolen assets and proceeds of corruption at the 2020 International Anti-Corruption Conference, at which I presented the so-called “Russian arms dealer case”. The case is relatively small in monetary terms – around USD 700,000 plus interest – but hugely significant in terms of asset recovery efforts and international co-operation.
Twenty anti-corruption investigators and financial intelligence analysts from 10 African countries completed an intensive Advanced Operational Analysis course last week hosted by the Commonwealth Africa Anti-Corruption Centre (CAACC).
Peru’s Attorney General’s Office has recorded another successful use of its non-conviction based confiscation law, extinción de dominio, to recover stolen assets from abroad.
The case involves around USD 8.5 million plus interest frozen in a bank account in Switzerland since 2004. The assets derived from contracts for the purchase of overvalued MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft during the government of Alberto Fujimori.
This speech was given at a preparatory meeting for the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) against Corruption in 2021.
It deals with non-conviction based confiscation as a method to recover assets stolen through corruption, and how challenges in international cooperation in these cases can and should be overcome.
See Spotlight on non-conviction based confiscation at UNGASS preparatory meeting.
Senior Asset Recovery Specialist Oscar Solorzano has emphasised some of the key opportunities and challenges of non-conviction based confiscation laws at a preparatory meeting for the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) against Corruption in 2021.
Congratulations to the trailblazing Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) of Kenya, whose latest figures show recovered assets worth a total of KES 29.8 billion (over USD 271 million). KES 20.5 million of this, or around USD 187 million at current exchange rates, was collected in the last five years.
Are we at a turning point in the fight to save our planet from the ravages of environmental crime and corruption?
Possibly. The ongoing pandemic, caused by a zoonotic disease, has brought home the fact that environmental degradation is already altering our lives. Hopes that this was a one-off disruption and that we could soon return to the way things were have been dashed. It is now frighteningly clear that the pace of abuse of our planet keeps accelerating and the next crisis looms around the corner.
The Basel Institute on Governance is offering a new Cryptocurrencies and Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Training course aimed at law enforcement officials, professionals in AML compliance and FinTech/RegTech fields, as well as policymakers and investigative journalists.
Delivered over four three-hour online sessions, the course covers the essentials of how to detect and prevent the use of virtual assets for illicit activities.