Mozambique faces critical infrastructure challenges – and opportunities – across all areas of its economy.
Yet the type of high-value procurement and infrastructure projects needed to boost development in the country are well known to be vulnerable to corruption. Risk factors include the high complexity, large transactions and multi-party negotiations that require close cooperation between the public and private sectors.
Shell companies, trusts and other corporate structures allow criminals to hide their illicit money abroad, often in offshore financial centres with poor beneficial ownership transparency. Officers seeking to investigate and prosecute transnational corruption cases need to understand these structures and how to cooperate with foreign jurisdictions.
From 15–19 May 2023, our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) training team was at the National Institute of Justice in Sofia, Bulgaria to deliver our flagship training on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery. The training is a crucial element of our collaboration with the Bulgarian government to assist in combatting corruption and recovering stolen public funds.
Phyllis Atkinson has led the training team of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) since 2010, having joined ICAR in 2009. The team’s work is essential to ICAR’s mission to support partner countries in developing their capabilities to investigate corruption and recover stolen assets.
Fifty-eight members of Ecuador’s criminal justice agencies have undergone intensive training on financial investigations and asset recovery over the last two weeks.
An intensive training programme of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) in Zambia has brought fresh impetus to the country’s fight against corruption.
The financial investigations and asset recovery training programme, held in collaboration with the Zambian Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), brought together participants from a wide range of law enforcement and oversight bodies.
Malawi has taken another positive step towards protecting the country’s wildlife, forests and other natural resources from illegal exploitation facilitated by corrupt practices.
Senior officers from Malawi’s main environmental and law enforcement agencies came together on 15-17 February 2023 for a three-day workshop led by the Basel Institute’s Green Corruption team. Together, the officers explored how to conduct systematic corruption risk assessments and develop targeted corruption risk mitigation plans for their agencies.
A cross-agency training workshop in Mozambique has boosted the skills of anti-corruption practitioners to investigate offshore structures used to hide and launder money and to request information and evidence from abroad.
Anti-corruption and asset recovery specialists in Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zambia have taken an important step forward in developing their ability to recover the proceeds of financial and other serious crime.
Kosovan financial investigators, police, prosecutors and judges have completed the first phase of an intensive Train-the-Trainer (TTT) programme on financial investigations and asset recovery.
Led by our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) training team in conjunction with UNDP and the Kosovo Judicial Academy, the five-phase TTT programme aims to result in four or five ICAR Certified Trainers while simultaneously training other local participants in the process.