The International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) has further expanded its operational engagement in South America partnering with Paraguay where ICAR experts, in partnership with the Ministerio Público (Public Prosecutor’s Office) of Paraguay, conducted a 5-day training programme in financial investigation and asset recovery in Asunción from 25 to 29 July 2016.

At the opening ceremony of the second Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery training workshop in Uganda during August 2016, the Inspector General of Government, Lady Justice Irene Mulyagonja, emphasised the importance of hitting those convicted of corruption where it hurts most: in addition to imprisonment, illicit assets had to be confiscated as this was essential for the anti-corruption fight to be meaningful.

Romania has recently launched a project to “Support achieving the National Anticorruption Strategy objectives by increasing the efficiency of the asset recovery and management”. The project is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC), through the Swiss-Romanian Co-operation Programme.

Between July and December 2016, as part of the DFID-funded and ASI-managed SUGAR programme, ICAR experts delivered a series of four workshops on financial investigation and asset recovery to investigators and prosecutors from a range of Ugandan law enforcement and prosecuting authorities.

The training team chose a multi-phase approach for Uganda, which included the training of nearly 100 practitioners as well as the selection and training of three highly competent local trainers.

From 16 to 20 January 2017, experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted the first training workshop in the Train-the-Trainer programme for the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Collective Action (ICCA) contributed to the specialised training of officials from Egypt’s Administrative Control Agency, the country’s anti-corruption body. The training, which took place from 12 to 16 February 2017, was organised by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Arab States in partnership with the Arab Anti-Corruption and Integrity Network (ACINET) and the Ministry of International Cooperation in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

The Basel Institute on Governance and the Peruvian Judiciary organized a training seminar on anti-corruption and asset recovery aimed at building capacity in innovative methods to fight cross border corruption. The four day training is the first of a series of capacity building events requested by the Peruvian authorities and was delivered to the recently installed unit of judges specialized in corruption of public officials, created by the judicial authorities to deal with the Odebrecht scandal.

In order to tackle the widespread corruption in Bulgaria, the Centre for the Study of Democracy, a Bulgarian inter-disciplinary public policy institute, has partnered with the Basel Institute to provide technical assistance, under the Bulgarian Thematic Fund Security Project “Overcoming institutional capacity gaps to counter corruption and organized crime in Bulgaria”.

On 24 May 2017, the Basel Institute on Governance and the Anti-Corruption Commission of Bhutan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Both parties reconfirmed their mutual intention to continue to strengthen and promote their combined efforts to prevent and combat corruption in Bhutan.

The Corporate Governance Capacity Building Initiative for Malaysian SMEs, an effort of the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) in conjunction with the Basel Institute on Governance kicked off with a half–day conference on "stepping up corporate governance and anti-corruption practices", specifically in the SME sector on 20 July 2017. It focused on the importance of SMEs, the backbone of the Malaysian economy, to take ownership of compliance and corporate governance to ensure sustained competitiveness on the global market.