Switzerland and Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG) and National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding on the occasion of the visit of the Swiss President to Kyiv.

Formally signed on 21 July, the MoU is the basis for the continued engagement of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) with these two Ukrainian institutions in the fight against corruption.

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.  

Stefan Mbiyavanga, Legal Specialist for Latin America, recently gave an in-depth presentation on challenges and best practices for recovering assets hiding in international financial centres as part of an online conference by the Grupo de Estudios del Sistema Penal.

The week-long conference, in Spanish, sought to disseminate perspectives on asset recovery, non-conviction-based confiscation and mutual legal assistance (MLA) to practitioners and law students in Latin America.

Congratulations to our partners in Kenya, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) for their success in one of the country’s most significant corruption cases to date: the sentencing of John Waluke, a Member of Parliament, and Grace Wakhungu, who is the mother of a former Environment Cabinet Secretary, in a maize procurement fraud worth nearly USD 3 million.

In the third article in our series of perspectives on illegal wildlife trade (IWT) and financial crime, produced in collaboration with the International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators, Gretta Fenner explores the role of asset recovery in combating wildlife trafficking.

She asks: Should assets recovered from corrupt practices linked to wildlife trafficking be channelled into conservation and counter-IWT enforcement efforts? What are the pros and cons, and have there been any examples of this type of strategy?

The amount of money flowing through mobile payment systems such as M-Pesa, MTN Mobile Money and Orange Money has exploded, in part due to covid-19 lockdowns. Should we be worried about the use of mobile money for financial crimes? 

In this quick guide, Andrew Dornbierer explains how mobile money could be abused for corruption and money laundering. Drawing on on-the-ground experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, he also outlines how law enforcement officers can take advantage of this widespread payment method to catch corruption and money laundering schemes and prove them in court.