In 2020, the Basel Institute on Governance with the support of the Siemens Integrity Initiative launched a series of roundtable discussions that brought companies together to analyse the potential nexus between corporate efforts to protect human rights and prevent corruption.

As countries improve their capacity to recover assets derived from criminal activity, they are faced with a challenge: how should these assets be managed while the judicial process is underway?

Emerging economies have long struggled with the question of how to combine economic development with sustainable use of natural resources. How does corruption factor into this combination?

A guest blog by Elisabeth Danon, Legal Analyst, OECD Anti-Corruption Division.

How can governments in South East Europe partner with the vibrant business sector and civil society to help combat corruption?

OECD experts and practitioners shared some novel ideas on this question at a two-day webinar on Collective Action – Building Alliances Against Corruption in South East Europe on 16 and 17 September.

Speaking at a B20-G20 dialogue on 13 September, the Basel Institute’s Managing Director Gretta Fenner called on G20 Member States to commit to and support the implementation of a multi-stakeholder approach to promoting integrity in procurement.

The Basel AML Index 10th Edition explore four aspects hindering the global fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF). The first element crunched Financial Action Task Force (FATF) data on how jurisdictions are responding to money laundering threats related to virtual assets. The answer: not well at all. Excerpt from the full report:

The use of virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies is exploding – for legitimate as well as illicit purposes.

This case study examines a 2021 unexplained wealth (illicit enrichment) case in Kenya involving a former Chief Accountant at the Treasury, Patrick Ochieno Abachi.

The case is related to Kenya’s so-called Anglo Leasing scandal, in which 18 high-value government security contracts were allegedly awarded to fictitious companies in the early 2000s. It illustrates one set of circumstances in which civil unexplained wealth (or civil illicit enrichment) legislation can be an extremely useful tool to target assets stolen through corruption.

Much has been said about palm oil and its impact on the environment. Major international debates are taking place about the issue, and numerous studies have highlighted the governance weaknesses associated with large-scale plantations.

To gain a better insight into what the Indonesian public thinks about this issue and others relevant to corruption, governance and natural resources, the Basel Institute on Governance and Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI), the leading Indonesian pollster, jointly conducted polls and interviews during July 2021.

A new sector-wide integrity programme seeks to transform and harmonise standards of ethics and compliance across all Moscow City Transport organisations.

Alexandr Rusetskiy, a Deputy General Director in the Moscow Directorate of Transport Services, together with Ilsur Akhmetshin of the Compliance-Elements partnership, explain the motivation, approach and challenges in this effort to bring state-of-the-art anti-corruption practices to the sector and beyond.

The sixth event in the Corrupting the Environment webinar series discussed waste trafficking, a topic that receives little attention despite generating significant criminal proceeds (estimates suggest up to USD 12 billion per year). In addition to the financial costs, waste trafficking has enormous impacts for the environment, including from pollution or degradation, and inhibits development by fuelling corruption and poverty in some countries.