Basel Institute on Governance

🎓 Do you care about countering corruption and financial crime? Are you looking to boost your knowledge, skills and career?   We are thrilled to announce Basel STUDY and our new postgraduate courses with the Universität Basel:   - Mastering Today's Anti-Corruption Challenges - Combating Financial Crime Through Asset Recovery   Check out our new offer: https://lnkd.in/daFFFytD Stefanie Bailer, Claudia Baez Camargo, Thierry Ravalomanda

Last chance to apply! 👇

🛃 Corruption at borders has serious impacts on safety, health and security. Think you can stop it just by increasing enforcement? Think again.    Corruption plays a highly functional role at borders (i.e. it's very useful for some!). More controls might lead to more corruption, or a change in criminals' strategies.   💡 Take a quick dive into deep research by Jacopo Costa and Saba Kassa, PhD for the EU-funded FALCON – Fighting Corruption and Organised Crime project. Our participation was funded by Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation SBFI.   Read 👇or at: https://lnkd.in/dhWZBzsr

🇪🇺 Is the EU going to assert itself at the vanguard in the fight against corruption?   Some of the points under negotiation in the EU's proposed anti-corruption directive could make all the difference – like rules on illicit political financing, non-trial resolutions of foreign bribery cases and more rights for victims of corruption.   Andrew Dornbierer and Rita Simões unpick the issues at stake: https://lnkd.in/ddf_PU5m Photo adapted from: Philippe STIRNWEISS, Copyright: © European Union 2022 - Source: EP.

🇺🇦 📸 Postcards from the latest session of our train-the-trainer programme for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) and High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine (HACC). Five selected individuals from these three agencies delivered our intensive training on financial investigations and asset recovery to 24 other colleagues. The train-the-trainer programme is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, with the aim of strengthening local expertise and fostering sustainable capacity building. Corruption and money laundering don’t just weaken economies – they threaten security and stability, making effective investigations more crucial than ever. As financial crime evolves, investigators must continually adapt and refine their methods. This training highlighted innovative approaches gaining traction in Ukraine, such as: - standalone money laundering offences - the use of circumstantial evidence to prove illicit wealth - civil confiscation. Participants emphasised the importance of hands-on exercises and inter-agency collaboration. One said: "The casework structure and teamwork between detectives, prosecutors, and judges allowed us to see investigations from different perspectives and work towards a common goal." Despite the challenges Ukraine faces, its practitioners remain determined in their fight against financial crime. We are committed to supporting them, not only through this train-the-trainer programme but also in their ongoing efforts to strengthen justice and accountability. Thierry Ravalomanda | Phyllis Atkinson | Juhani Grossmann | Lala Zinkevych

Do you know an organisation or multi-stakeholder initiative making a real impact in promoting ethics, integrity and anti-corruption in the private sector? 🏆 Now’s your chance to give them the recognition they deserve. Nominate them for our prestigious International Collective Action Awards: https://lnkd.in/e7B_W7Yh Past winners include an initiative of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) and Convention on Business Integrity in Nigeria 🇳🇬, the UN Global Compact Network Ukraine 🇺🇦, CoST Uganda 🇺🇬, the THAI CAC Thailand's Collective Action Coalition Against Corruption 🇹🇭, the Agribusiness Anti-Corruption Collective Action and the Transparency 100% Movement of the Pacto Global - Rede Brasil 🇧🇷. Who will be next? 📅 Deadline: 2 March 2025 🔗 Nominate now: https://lnkd.in/e7B_W7Yh Let’s shine a light on those driving positive change. Tag a deserving initiative or share this with your network! ✨ Collective Action at the Basel Institute

Corruption, (abuse of) power and (in)security are closely linked. This graphic gives a quick overview of how endemic corruption, state capture and the use of corruption for foreign policy goals can affect power and security. Intrigued? See our quick guides to corruption and security (https://lnkd.in/dsEr5c3h) and strategic corruption (https://lnkd.in/dxyJUqxW) by Saba Kassa, PhD and Monica Guy. Or catch Claudia Baez Camargo speaking with other leading thinkers on this topic at a webinar of the SOC ACE Research Programme on 20 Feb: https://lnkd.in/dM_MAhTx

No country should benefit from the harmful behaviour of its businesses abroad. That's why our latest paper praises the 🇬🇧 UK's efforts to tackle foreign bribery through negotiated settlements with companies... ... and recommends ways to improve its use of penalties to compensate the victims of corruption. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/eS6RMqjD Thanks to the author Sam H. and all who contributed feedback and advice, including Andrew Dornbierer, Jonathan Spicer, Debbie Price, plus Anand Doobay and Jonathan Sack via The International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators.

🇺🇦🌲 Friday saw an important step towards protecting Ukraine's forests, which are under threat due to the war and to corruption. Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) released a report that we prepared together with the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office of the Prosecutor General's Office and WWF-Ukraine with the support of Switzerland🇨🇭. We analysed corruption risks affecting Ukraine's forestry sector and the new state-owned enterprise Forests of Ukraine. We also present recommendations to mitigate the key risks. In brief: 🗞️ (Transparently) amend forestry legislation to close gaps. 🔍 Lift the moratorium on forestry state inspections that was put in place at the start of the war, and allow environmental NGOs to participate in forest inspections. 🪚 Introduce stricter controls over excessive "sanitary" logging (when trees are said to be suffering from pests or disease) and publish all documentation on sanitary logging electronically. 💶 Ensure greater transparency in timber sales by employing Ukraine's home-developed, world-class platform Prozorro.sales See the NACP press release: https://lnkd.in/gPUaCS-k Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine | Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

🎉 Some good news for international cooperation on asset recovery! 🇨🇴 🇬🇬 Colombia and Guernsey have signed an asset sharing agreement in respect of funds forfeited in this case: https://lnkd.in/gKh6Si2U Colombia's Attorney General, Luz Adriana Carmago Garzón, and HM Procureur of Guernsey, Megan Pullum KC, signed the agreement at a meeting in London also attended by the Director of our International Centre for Asset Recovery, Iker Lekuona, and Head of Latin America, Oscar Solorzano. Carmago Garzón confirmed that the funds recovered and returned to Colombia would be invested in tackling serious organised crime and compensating victims of conflicts. It's the first time the Colombian authorities have exercised their civil forfeiture powers in the recovery of assets from a foreign jurisdiction. We are delighted by the successful conclusion of this asset return and hope it paves the way for many more, in Guernsey, Colombia and further afield. See the press release of The Law Officers Of The Crown, Guernsey: https://lnkd.in/esAReiQ3