We are delighted to have signed a new framework agreement with Peru’s Special Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Special Public Prosecutor’s Office (Procuraduría General del Estado del Perú) was established in 2019 as an independent authority within the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. In collaboration with the Attorney General’s Office, it is responsible for advancing prosecutions of offences where the Peruvian State is the victim, including corruption, money laundering and environmental crimes.

Kenyan officials working in the fields of anti-corruption, intelligence and financial investigation undertook a four-day intensive training programme on Advanced Operational Analysis last week.

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.

As part of a week-long virtual conference by the Grupo de Estudios del Sistema Penal, Head of Latin America and Senior Asset Recovery Specialist Oscar Solorzano presented in Spanish on the contested topic of non-conviction-based forfeiture of assets.

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.

At a virtual meeting attended by around 900 Indonesian anti-corruption professionals on 8 July, Senior Asset Recovery Specialist Jonathan Spicer gave practical advice on how to succeed in obtaining mutual legal assistance (MLA) in corruption and money laundering cases.

We are delighted to announce that our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR)’s support to the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau in Tanzania is entering an ambitious second phase.

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?