This Working Paper explores the wide variety of non-conviction based (NCB) forfeiture laws in Latin America, with a special focus on the region’s predominant model, Extinción de dominio.
It argues that NCB forfeiture legislation, which allows for the recovery of stolen assets outside of criminal proceedings, can contribute significantly to a state’s criminal policy response to rampant economic and organised crime.
A new guide to non-conviction based forfeiture published by GAFILAT, the Latin American body of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) sets out good practices for this powerful but under-used form of asset recovery legislation. It also emphasises the need for laws to align with both domestic constitutions and international human rights standards.
Asset recovery tools are integral to combatting corruption, organised crime, sanctions evasion and other profit-motivated crimes. However, in many states, the range of asset recovery tools available to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies is limited.
This quick guide examines the established good practices in asset recovery legislation as well as less conventional, broader measures. It shows how states can widen their asset recovery toolkit and increase the potential for asset recovery success.
The Basel Institute's technical assistance to the Prosecutor General’s Office in Mozambique will now continue through 2027, thanks to a second-phase agreement with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Mozambique office.
Since 2018, our locally based team has been helping to build the capacity of the Prosecutor General's Office to investigate and prosecute corruption and related financial crimes, as well as to recover stolen assets. Training support was extended to the country’s Criminal Police in 2022.
Authorities in Cusco in southeast Peru have succeeded in recovering a house and land linked to acts of corruption by the former mayor of the province of Canchis, using a recently introduced non-conviction based forfeiture law.
In an article published in the inaugural issue of the Bulletin of The International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators, Oscar Solorzano and Gretta Fenner analyse a recent decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, which cleared the way for returning funds tied to corruption to Peru. The decision sets an important precedent for the use of non-conviction based forfeiture laws to recover illicit assets in the absence of a criminal conviction. This is a crucial step in the fight against global corruption.
As the war in Ukraine intensifies, calls are growing for states to confiscate Russian assets frozen under sanctions and redirect them to provide support to Ukraine. Our latest Working Paper argues that states can and should do this by enhancing the effectiveness and scope of established asset recovery measures – not by introducing new untested mechanisms that risk inviting future legal challenges, defeating the purpose of sanctions and violating the rule of law.