Practically every country has a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and it plays a vital role in combating money laundering and other financial crimes. Yet there is often confusion – even among anti-corruption authorities – about how it works, what it can and can’t do, and what value it brings.
Thierry Ravalomanda, Senior Asset Recovery Specialist offers a quick overview.
Sophisticated and complex financial crimes span the globe. “Following the trail of the money” can involve many jurisdictions, each with their own laws and practices, and varying capacity or willingness to cooperate internationally.
Fighting corruption and money laundering, and recovering criminal proceeds, are therefore complex challenges. Specialised legal, financial accounting, analytical and investigation skills are essential.
Lise Stensrud, Policy Director Anti-Corruption at the Norwegian Development Cooperation Agency (Norad), explains the four challenges in "following the money" to tackle corruption, tax evasion and organised crime. Norad has recently become a core donor of the Basel Institute's International Centre for Asset Recovery, joining the UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Jersey.
An exclusive interview with Elmer Chirre Castillo (photo: right), Provincial Prosecutor of the Third Anti-Corruption Supraprovincial Prosecutor's Office of Lima.
By Oscar Solorzano (photo: left), Senior Asset Recovery Specialist and Country Manager for the Basel Institute's Peru country office.
The Basel Institute's 29th Working Paper, published today, aims to contribute to the international policy dialogue on the link between asset recovery and countries’ pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.
This Working Paper aims to contribute to the international policy dialogue on the link between asset recovery and countries’ pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.
It contends that supporting countries in recovering stolen assets and promoting sustainable development are mutually reinforcing. It also aims to correct the false reputation of asset recovery as a very technical legalistic field of development cooperation, and to generate broader understanding of the far-reaching role that asset recovery can play to foster development.
Asset recovery refers to the process by which the proceeds of crime are identified, traced, seized, confiscated and returned to their rightful owners. Generally speaking, States need to lead the process of recovering stolen assets.
However, civil society organisations (CSOs) can play an important role in the different stages of the asset recovery process.
This guide:
These practical guidelines are a set of international good practices intended to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of requesting and requested states in the asset recovery process.
Asset recovery is an intricate and time-consuming process. The guidelines unravel the asset recovery process, breaking it down into practical, manageable guidelines, allowing a targeted audience to focus on the asset recovery process in a comprehensive manner.
This is the report from the Non-State Actors Experts' Meeting, held on 2-3 September 2010 in Laxenburg, Austria. The event was co-organised by the Basel Institute on Governance and the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA). Attendance included prominent non-state actors from both developing and developed countries that play and important and active role in the asset recovery processes.
The Basel Institute has been working with the Ministry of Justice of Romania in a two-component project seeking to enhance the capacity of the Romanian authorities to recover the proceeds of crime. The project is being implemented by the Asset Recovery Office (ARO) of the Ministry of Justice in collaboration with the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) of the Basel Institute. Funding of the project has been provided by the Swiss-Romanian Co-operation Programme.