Malawi’s forests and wildlife are under growing pressure from illegal exploitation, driven by rising demand for natural resources and enabled by corruption and illicit financial flows. From illegal logging to wildlife trafficking, environmental crimes not only threaten biodiversity and local livelihoods, but also weaken public institutions and deprive the country of vital resources for sustainable development.
Publication
Case Study 14: Madagascar: a landmark conviction for money laundering linked to environmental crime
This Case Study demonstrates how international cooperation and the follow-the-money approach revealed a transnational criminal network trafficking endangered species and led to Madagascar’s first money laundering conviction related to wildlife trafficking.
Key points:
The diversity of activities to prevent and combat corruption that harms the environment is laudable. But it is far from the scale needed to tackle today's corruption and environmental challenges.
Adopted in 2019, UNCAC Resolution 8/12 – Preventing and combating corruption as it relates to crimes that have an impact on the environment – urges States Parties to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) to prevent, investigate and prosecute corruption offences where they may be linked to crimes that have an impact on the environment.
The Working Paper Saplings of hope presents an updated overview of emerging and promising prevention and enforcement actions, initiatives and measures implemented by States Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) to combat corruption related to crimes that have an impact on the environment. It focuses specifically on initiatives from 2024 and 2025.
Publication
Case Study 12: Indonesia: a landmark money laundering conviction in a forestry crime case
This Case Study highlights how investigators of Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry achieved their first conviction for money laundering linked to forestry offences, leveraging institutional and legal changes in financial investigation procedures.
Key points:
This article is part of a series on careers in fighting financial crime and opportunities to learn and study with the Basel Institute. Our colleague Joseph Mihajason Rakotondramanana shares his professional journey, from the private sector and his early steps as an analyst in Madagascar to his current role as a Specialist in Financial Investigation with the Basel Institute’s Green Corruption Programme.
"The link between financial crime and environmental harm is too often ignored. All the more reason to act."
The article analyses drivers and determinants of illicit wildlife trade (IWT), targeting those factors that support the participation of individuals in poaching and transportation of wildlife goods.
Environmental criminals and their corrupt facilitators get rich by destroying our planet and its natural resources. This publication for the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) project explains how and why to confiscate their illicit assets – with or without a criminal conviction.
The paper investigates the role of criminal networks in fostering illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and how these relational structures interact with transnational organized crime. The paper frames these topics within the debate around the opportunistic or organized nature of IWT. The aim is to understand how chaotic behaviors can transform into an ordered and organized strategy.
This collection of insights on corruption, the environment and illicit trade emerges from the monthly Corrupting the Environment webinar series between December 2020 and August 2021.