Data Cleaning and Harvesting
During investigations, you will often find documents in different formats, making data analysis difficult and progress a challenge. Learning new Excel techniques for data cleaning is an essential step to transform this "chaos" into a clear and organized format. Along with the data harvesting techniques you will learn in this course, you will be able to quickly identify suspicious transactions that might indicate illicit activity.
Take your skills to the next level by learning how to:
- Prepare financial documents for data analysis
- Apply Excel functions to fix formatting errors
- Identify additional sources of financial data
- Use OCR software to digitise hard copies and export data
- Scrape data from websites.
This course is self-paced. You can start, take breaks, and continue at any time. It is structured in sessions that build on each other, so we recommend you start with Session 1.After completing the course, you will be eligible for a certificate of completion.
Note: If you are new to analysing financial data, we recommend you start with our course on Financial Analysis using Excel
Collective Action Against Corruption
Collective Action is a powerful anti-corruption approach that brings businesses, civil society, and international stakeholders together to address shared corruption challenges and promote integrity and fair competition. This fully interactive course equips participants with the practical skills needed to conceptualise, establish, and implement Collective Action initiatives in diverse settings.
In this course, you will take on the role of Martha, a young entrepreneur in the fictional country of “Wakandaa.” Faced with a window of opportunity as the new government pledges to crack down on corruption, you will identify key stakeholders from the private sector, civil society, and the international community to join you in creating a Collective Action initiative. Together, you will explore the unique corruption challenges and work to promote fair business opportunities.
You will learn to:
- Identify and engage relevant stakeholders from the private sector, government, and civil society
- Understand the principles of Collective Action and how to apply them in anti-corruption efforts
- Navigate common challenges, such as managing conflicting stakeholder expectations and building trust
- Adapt to changing political and economic landscapes in the fight against corruption
- Develop and implement strategies for improving business integrity and fair competition
By the end of the course, you will have hands-on tools to build and lead successful Collective Action initiatives, addressing corruption challenges through collaboration and mutual trust.
This course is ideal for:
- Private sector professionals, including compliance officers, auditors, and risk managers
- Government representatives involved in anti-corruption or procurement initiatives
- Civil society and international organisations focused on transparency, accountability, and economic development
Open-source Intelligence
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is a central element of most corruption and money laundering investigations. The information and evidence you can gather from publicly available sources can make the difference between a successful investigation and a dead end. Through a simulated investigation, this course will help you learn the basics of how to prepare, conduct and report an OSINT undertaking.
- Introduction to OSINT and the intelligence cycle;
- Preparing your research environment;
- Searching the open web and deep web databases;
- Analysing domain records to find information about websites;
- Using cached and archived records to retrieve past versions of websites;
- Gathering information from social media sites;
- Exploiting the visual and meta information of images;
- Searching online communities, investigating dark web pages and bitcoin;
- Preparing a report of an OSINT investigation.
During the course you immerse yourself in a simulated investigation into the fishing vessel FV Malaga and its owner, the organisation Mossaman Commodities. You follow open-source leads about the misuse of company structures that reveal indicators of illegal fishing and the smuggling of endangered animal parts.
The course was developed by our eLearning team in collaboration with subject matter experts from ICAR and our Green Corruption programme, with primary funding from PMI Impact. Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Ukrainian.
International Cooperation and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters
For most investigators, Excel is the tool of choice to analyse financial information. In thiscourse, you will useExcel to organise and analyse large volumes of data such as banking records, invoices, phonerecords and commercialtransactions.
- Protect your data from accidental changes
- Use simple functions to find transactions that stand out
- Unlock the power of filters to find exactly the data you are searching for
- Use subtotals to summarise your financial data instantly
- Create interactive summaries using PivotTables
You will also gain insight into typical patterns of illegal use of bank accounts, allowing you tofurther explorepossibilities to analyse financial data.
This course is self-paced. You can start, take breaks and continue at any time. It is structuredin sessions thatbuild on each other, so we recommend you start with Session 1. After successfully completing thecourse, you will beeligible for a certificate of completion Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Latvian , Bulgarian, Ukrainian,Serbian, Albanian, Romanian.
Operational Analysis of Suspicious Transaction Reports
Analysing suspicious transactions for actitiesrelated to money laundering or the financing of terrorism is a corefunction of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs).
In this course, you will learn to assess the risk of suspicious activity and analyse suspicious transaction reports(STRs).
This course was developed in co-operation with the Egmont Group ofFIUs and is based on the content of the Egmont Group’s on-site TacticalAnalysis training. It is aimed primarily at FIU analysts, but is usefulfor anyone analysing evidence as part of a financial investigation.
- Understand the core responsibilities of an FIU;
- Differentiate between information and intelligence;
- Assess the risk of suspicious activity;
- Conduct an analysis of an STR, including all steps of theintelligence cycle: creating a collection plan and hypothesis,collecting, analysing and evaluating information, and creating anddisseminating a report of your findings;
This course is self-paced. You can start, take breaks and continue atany time. It is structured in sessions that build on each other, so werecommend you start with Session 1. After successfully completing thecourse, you will be eligible for a certificate of completion.
Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Ukrainian, Bulgarian.Financial Analysis using Excel
For most investigators, Excel is the tool of choice to analyse financial information. In this course, you will use Excel to organise and analyse large volumes of data such as banking records, invoices, phone records and commercial transactions.
- Protect your data from accidental changes
- Use simple functions to find transactions that stand out
- Unlock the power of filters to find exactly the data you are searching for
- Use subtotals to summarise your financial data instantly
- Create interactive summaries using PivotTables
You will also gain insight into typical patterns of illegal use of bank accounts, allowing you to further explore possibilities to analyse financial data.
This course is self-paced. You can start, take breaks and continue at any time. It is structured in sessions that build on each other, so we recommend you start with Session 1. After successfully completing the course, you will be eligible for a certificate of completion. Languages: English, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Albanian, Serbian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian.Illicit Enrichment: A Guide to Laws Targeting Unexplained Wealth
Illicit Enrichment by Andrew Dornbierer provides a comprehensive guide to illicit enrichment laws and their application to target unexplained wealth and recover proceeds of corruption and other crimes.
Guidelines for the efficient recovery of stolen assets
A set of international good practices toenhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the asset recovery process. Languages: English, French, Spanish.
Guide to the role of civil society organisations in asset recovery
A practical guide to how civil society organisations can play a role in the asset recovery process. Languages: English, Ukrainian, Arabic.
Illegal wildlife trade and financial crime
Part 1 of the learning series explores financial crimes and supply chain vulnerabilities that facilitate the illegal trade in wildlife and thereby increase companies’ legal, financial and reputational risks. It is aimed at companies, policy makers, practitioners and law enforcement.
Illegality in the exotic pet trade
Part 2 of the Wildlife crime – understanding risks, avenues for action learning series provides companies, policy makers, practitioners and law enforcement with information and background knowledge on crime and corruption in the exotic pet trade.
Forest crime and the illegal timber trade
Part 3 of the Wildlife crime – understanding risks, avenues for action learning series explores how corruption facilitates timber trafficking and the mingling of legal and illegal supply chains.
Multi-agency asset recovery task forces
To effectively combat organised and financial crime, it is often necessary for countries to establish multi-agency asset recovery task forces. This quick guide examines their composition, the nature of cases they work on and how they can be set up. It also touches on the benefits of having such task forces in place and highlights success stories and lessons learnt from previous experience.
Corruption and human rights
Could anti-corruption benefit from a human rights perspective? How can the two communities work better together – and what are some risks and challenges? This quick guide gives a brief introduction to the ideas of the Basel Institute’s Vice-President, Professor Anne Peters, and some of our initial work at the intersection of corruption and human rights.
The disposal and sharing of assets
Asset recovery is a critical tool in the fight against corruption and organised crime. But what happens after assets have been confiscated? How can they be most effectively repurposed, in order to contribute to sustainable and equitable development? This quick guide examines the various approaches that states take to allocate, redirect or repatriate confiscated assets.
Asset recovery legislation
Asset recovery tools are integral to combating corruption, organised crime, sanctions evasion and other profit-motivated crimes. However, in many states, the range of asset recovery tools available to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies is limited.
This quick guide examines the established good practices in asset recovery legislation as well as less conventional, broader measures. It shows how states can widen their asset recovery toolkit and increase the potential for asset recovery success.
Informal networks and anti-corruption
Understand the role of informal social networks in enabling corruption, and why anti-corruption interventions should focus more on networks than on individuals.
Money laundering and sanctions evasion using the art market
This quick guide briefly explains the unique characteristics of the art market that make it vulnerable to money laundering and sanctions evasion. It also outlines steps that jurisdictions can take to prevent and combat abuse of the art trade for illicit purposes.
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Testing some concepts
Survey: Continuing Education for Professionals with the Basel Institute on Governance
This survey aim to assess the needs and interests of professionals in anti-corruption, asset recovery, compliance, business integrity, good governance and related fields for advanced continuing education.
- Trainer: Jörg Schmidt
Illicit Enrichment Alumni
How to investigate and prosecute the offence of illicit enrichment, also known as possession of unexplained wealth, using financial investigative methods like Source and Application of Funds Analysis and Net Worth Analysis, overcome legal challenges associated with the offence. This course is designed for practitioners handling corruption cases.