The Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) continues to support DFID’s Tackling Serious Organised Corruption (TSOC) programme in Malawi by enhancing local capacity to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate complex financial cases, including money laundering.
News
Tools to support enhanced due diligence in response to new EU list of high-risk third countries
The European Commission has released a new list of 23 “high-risk third countries” with weak anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) frameworks.
This means that banks and other entities subject to the EU’s AML rules will have to apply increased due diligence in relation to customers and financial institutions from these countries.
We are delighted to announce that the partnership between the Basel Institute and the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) of Tanzania in support of Tanzania’s efforts to combat corruption and recover stolen assets will continue.
We are delighted to welcome the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) as a core donor to the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR). With the three-year grant, Norway joins the UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Jersey in supporting ICAR’s Operational Strategy 2017–20.
The traditional criminal response has been insufficient in the combat against corruption, money laundering and other financial crimes. Billions of dollars continue to be laundered by individuals and criminal organisations through and ever-growing myriad of complex financial schemes. Official Development Assistance (ODA), a fundamental tool of development policy, is equally prone to corruption, embezzlement and abuse — to the extent that up to 30% of disbursements may be siphoned off by corrupt actors and criminal organisations.
Basel Institute President Mark Pieth was interviewed by cash.ch journalist Daniel Hügli at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos. See the original interview here.
Below is the (unofficial) English translation of his comments on commodity trading, gold supply chains and clean investments.
Experts in law enforcement, money laundering investigations and cryptocurrencies will meet in the Hague on 6–7 March 2019 for the 3rd Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies.
Co-founded and co-organised by the Basel Institute on Governance, the conference is hosted by Europol and Interpol on alternate years. The 2019 conference will be held at the Europol headquarters.
ICAR is collaborating with Streamhouse to develop and deliver a workshop in the context of a law enforcement training programme of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.
The workshop will focus on legal, investigative, prosecutorial and operational issues for successfully pursuing whistle-blower and other evidence in mineral fraud cases. The workshop will be delivered to enforcement officials of the region in early May 2013.
As part of a one-year train-the-trainer programme in Egypt, funded by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the ICAR training team implemented a first series of training sessions in Egypt, focusing on the investigation of complex corruption and money laundering cases and techniques for the recovery of stolen assets.
ICAR is currently developing a regional training programme on “Financial Investigations and Recovering Stolen Assets” for a group of practitioners from relevant institutions from selected countries of the MENA region (Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, South Sudan and Yemen).