Virtual training is helping to build networks and bridges between anti-corruption officials located in different countries – bridges that will help to improve regional coordination and cooperation in cases of financial crime.

This week, our team in Mozambique has started a series of virtual training courses for prosecutors, investigators and judges across 11 provinces. Getting to this point has been quite a challenge, as Senior Asset Recovery Specialist Margarida Bandeira de Lima explains below. It shows the vital importance of basic technology in enabling public officials responsible for fighting corruption to do their jobs.

Eighteen participants from anti-corruption authorities across East Africa took part in the first ever online delivery of our Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery training programme last week.

Kenyan officials working in the fields of anti-corruption, intelligence and financial investigation undertook a four-day intensive training programme on Advanced Operational Analysis last week.

The International Centre for Asset Recovery has been helping Uganda’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) expand understanding of the work of its Asset Recovery Division across its regional offices.

Among other goals, this may lead to more and more wide-ranging referrals of cases to the Asset Recovery Division. Currently, case referrals are limited to corruption-related crimes, yet there are various other categories of crime that generate illicit proceeds. These also have the potential to be recovered by the State and reinvested.  

We are delighted to announce that our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR)’s support to the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau in Tanzania is entering an ambitious second phase.

Amid the current buzz around virtual training, it's good to be reminded that effective capacity building is about a lot more than just learning new skills. Some of the most important aspects of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) workshops can't easily be transferred to cyberspace.

Law enforcement officers from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Djibouti, Tanzania and South Sudan last week worked together to solve a simulated investigation aimed at confiscating “laundered” cryptocurrency – entirely online.

In early April, more than 770 public officials across Peru took our latest virtual training course on public financial management (PFM). This free seven-week course is part of a programme financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to strengthen standards of PFM in 11 subnational governments.

The UK government's British Integrity Initiative has announced that from now until the end of July, the Department for International Development will cover the full cost of the Basel Institute’s integrity guidance services for eligible small- and medium-sized businesses.

Companies currently benefiting from the programme, which until now has been subsidised by 60–80 percent depending on the company’s size, will also see their fees waived.