The Basel Institute's latest Working Paper explores whether, why and how gold refiners can be further integrated in efforts to prevent and combat money laundering in Switzerland. The author, Stefan Mbiyavanga, explains the background and what motivated him to write it, including pending reforms in the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act.

Following the inaugural OECD Trust in Business Forum that took place in Paris on 1-2 October 2019, we are pleased to announce that Gemma Aiolfi, Head of Compliance, Corporate Governance and Collective Action, has become an official member of the Trust in Business Network (TriBuNe), the advisory board of the OECD’s Trust in Business initiative.

The B20 – or Business 20 – is an engagement group that brings the voice of the business community to the G20 process.  The G20/B20 presidency rotates on an annual basis with Saudi Arabia succeeding Japan in this role in December.

Pakistan has jumped up the Basel AML Index, the Basel Institute’s independent, data-based index of the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) around the world. The country’s risk score rose from 6.45 to 7.66 out of 10, where 10 equals the highest assessed risk of ML/TF.

We are pleased to once again confirm our commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and its Ten Principles and submit our third biannual Communication on Engagement.

Does your company do business in emerging markets? Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could really rely on the certification of a local business partner in those markets?

If you know you can trust the certifier and the certification process, due diligence will be quicker and easier - at least in theory.

The Basel Institute's International Centre for Collective Action is launching an innovative project to explore certification and its role in anti-corruption due diligence.

Child labour. Forced evictions. Confiscation of migrant-worker identity documents. Crackdowns by security forces on peaceful assemblies. Serious illness resulting from corporate pollution.

These are all examples of human rights abuses that might arise in business operations or supply chains, knowingly or unknowingly, in a company’s home country or abroad.

In 2019, Estonia achieved the lowest risk score out of the 125 countries in the Public Edition of the Basel AML Index, 2.68 out of 10. In fact, Estonia has consistently been among the top performers since 2012, when the Basel AML index was first calculated.

Money laundering risks in Malta have been in the headlines recently.

During his former position as Compliance Operations Manager at LafargeHolcim, compliance and communications professional Kyle Lewis worked closely with the Basel Institute on developing a new open-source search tool to help compliance officers spot and analyse links between individuals, organisations and criminal activities. He kindly provided this testimonial for the Basel Institute's Annual Report 2018.