Quick guides

To effectively combat organised and financial crime, it is often necessary for countries to establish multi-agency asset recovery task forces, which could also be understood as joint investigation teams/units. The teams are made up of personnel from various agencies in the criminal justice system to effectively investigate financial crime and recover laundered assets.

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.

The relationships between corruption and human rights are complex but cry out for exploring. 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.

A quick guide by Andew Dornbierer Senior Specialist, Asset Recovery

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?

The European Union’s Directive 2014/42/EU recommends that states should:

“consider taking measures allowing confiscated property to be used for public interest or social purposes” including, for example, “earmarking property for law enforcement and crime prevention projects, as well as for other projects of public interest and social utility”.

This Quick Guide will examine the various approaches that states take along these lines – how they allocate, redirect or repatriate assets.

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.

Understand the role of informal social networks in enabling corruption, and why anti-corruption interventions should focus more on networks than on individuals.

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.