How can civil society organisations (CSOs) support efforts to recover stolen assets for their country? What are the different stages of the asset recovery process and what are potential actions in each one? What is the legal basis for the involvement of civil society in asset recovery? Where are the main risks and challenges, and how can CSOs overcome these?

Our International Centre for Asset Recovery originally developed a guide to the role of CSOs in asset recovery in 2014, together with partners in the context of the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery (AFAR). 

Eighteen participants from anti-corruption authorities across East Africa took part in the first ever online delivery of our Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery training programme last week.

Where corruption is already rampant, a crisis makes it worse. There are flash floods of relief money landing in contexts where power is imbalanced, governance is weak and criminals already know how to game the system. But we can fight back by making anti-corruption an integral part of crisis relief efforts. Like emergencies in the past, the covid-19 pandemic demonstrates that anti-corruption is not just a nice-to-have but can really save lives.

Estamos encantados de haber firmado un Convenio de Cooperación Interinstitucional con la Procuraduría General del Estado del Perú. A continuación figura el discurso pronunciado por Gretta Fenner, Directora General del Basel Institute on Governance, en la ocasión de la ceremonia de suscripción del Convenio de Cooperación Interinstitucional el 29 de julio del 2020:

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.