The lack of easily accessible, comprehensive and practical information on asset recovery has been raised as one of the key problems by a large number of countries at the first meeting of the UNCAC open-ended Working Group on Asset Recovery held in Vienna in August 2007. This problem has been identified by the ICAR early on, and the Centre has consequently been working towards establishing a comprehensive online knowledge centre, to be launched at the latest by the time of the second UNCAC Conference of State Parties. The Knowledge Centre will house ICAR’s own materials, such as training documentation, practical tools and research results, as well as materials from other institutions actively involved in capacity building in related fields. Furthermore, the Knowledge Centre will provide direct access to relevant laws of jurisdictions from around the world, international treaties, bilateral treaties on MLA and extradition etc., as well as to court decisions from relevant cases. Furthermore, in collaboration with other institutions, the Knowledge Centre will establish an international database of contacts from national institutions or individuals responsible for MLA and asset recovery, as such facilitating the direct and easy communication between law enforcement and other public agencies involved in these matters.

The ICAR’s Information technology (IT) team is further responsible of assisting the trainers of ICAR in preparing any technology based training elements, and to contribute to the training activities or consultancy programs directly when elements of IT based case management systems or other IT based technologies for investigation and prosecution become relevant. In particular, over the first 1.5 years of operation of ICAR, the lack of the most basic case management knowledge, let alone tools, in most partner countries has been clearly identified, and the ICAR will continue to develop its own knowledge and services to assist partner countries in filling this gap.