Before the adoption of UNCAC, there was no policy or international legal framework guiding the disposal and monitoring of repatriated assets. As a result, there were no globally accepted rules to follow when repatriating confiscated assets to requesting countries.
Even after the adoption of UNCAC, global practice regarding the disposal of repatriated assets remains unclear. Indeed Article 57 (5) of UNCAC does not provide clear guidance in relation to the final disposal of confiscated assets.
On 24-25 October 2013, in coordination with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the International Centre for Asset Recovery organised and hosted a two-day workshop on the topic of "Returning Stolen Assets." The workshop took place in Küsnacht (Zürich), Switzerland.
The International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) joined the Peruvian General Attorney Office and the Swiss Embassy in Peru for a workshop on “Seeking Effective Legal Mechanisms against Corruption and other Financial Crimes” held in Lima, Peru, on 23-24 March 2015.
During 2016, ICAR will be providing capacity-building workshops on financial investigation and asset recovery in India, Paraguay and Peru.
In India, ICAR will assist the country’s anti-money laundering investigating and prosecuting agency, the Ministry of Finance Enforcement Directorate (ED), to increase its capability to investigate financial crime with international links. In partnership with the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, ICAR is planning a financial investigation training for 50 ED investigators over a two-week period.
Having been engaged in Peru for a number of years on a series of anti-corruption projects, in particular in relation to the recovery of stolen assets, the Basel Institute is now expanding its programme of work in the country to more comprehensively support Peru in its efforts to devise and implement effective public governance measures for countering and preventing corruption.
On 9 March 2016, the Basel Institute on Governance, through its Managing Director Ms Gretta Fenner, and the Peruvian Judiciary, through its head of the Judiciary Victor Ticona Postigo, signed a framework agreement in a bid to fight cross-border corruption and money laundering and, in turn, facilitate the return of assets arising from such crimes.
On 15 January 2016 the Peruvian National Public Prosecutor and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland (SECO) signed an agreement to prevent and investigate acts of corruption in public finance at the subnational level and recover misappropriated public assets.
This agreement is part of the ¨Subnational Public Finance Management Strengthening Program¨ signed between the governments of Peru and Switzerland in October 2015, which is being implemented by the Basel Institute on Governance through its Lima office.
In Peru where the Basel Institute recently established its first country office in the context of its more recent public finance management programme funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Institute’s training experts of the International Center for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted two 5-day back-to-back training programmes in financial investigations and asset recovery from 23 May to 4 June 2016.
Experts from ICAR delivered a 4-day training workshop on Operational Analysis to the Peruvian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in Lima from 6 to 9 June 2016 with the aim to strengthen the FIU's analytical and operational capacities in financial investigations.
Below is an interview with Mr. Camilo Alberto Enciso Vanegas, former Secretary for Transparency of the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia and international anti-corruption expert, who visited Peru on behalf of the Basel Institute on Governance (BIG) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in August and October 2017 to support efforts to adopt a High Level Reporting Mechanism (HLRM) in the country.