To strengthen the capacity of East African anti-corruption agencies to investigate and prosecute international corruption and money laundering, and to enhance regional cooperation in this regard, ICAR led a regional training workshop on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery.
ICAR continues to work closely with a series of partner countries increasing their autonomy in the fight against financial crimes and money laundering as well as in recovering stolen public funds. ICAR’s current partner countries in the context of its capacity building services include Bulgaria, Romania, Tanzania and Uganda.
Researchers at the Basel Institute have finalised their study on “Corruption, Social Norms and Behaviours in East Africa”. Funded by DFID’s East Africa Research Fund and headed by Dr Claudia Baez Camargo from the Basel Institute, this research project was launched in January 2016.
In September, Ugandan prosecutors secured another conviction for money laundering by a former Swedish Embassy accountant, only a few months after the country's first ground-breaking money laundering trial. The accused, who stole almost EUR 1.9 million, was charged by the prosecution with money laundering, embezzlement, forgery and uttering a false document.
This report is part of a research project funded by the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Programme of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the British Academy.
The project has identified informal practices in selected countries in order to establish their general and specific features in comparative analysis; assess their impact based on the functions they perform in their respective economies and indicate the extent to which they fuel corruption and stifle anticorruption policies.
From 23 to 27 February 2015, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Asset Recovery Inter-Agency Network of South Africa (ARINSA), the Government of Uganda and the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) carried out a joint workshop for prosecutors, investigators and other relevant stakeholders on the recovery of proceeds of crime from wildlife and forest offences and money laundering in Entebbe, Uganda.
The Basel Institute has been awarded two new research grants; one by the British Academy as part of its GBP 4 million global anti-corruption research scheme in partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) in the context of DFID’s Anti-Corruption Evidence ('ACE') Research Programme; the second by DFID’s East Africa Research Fund (EARF).
Experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Collective Action (ICCA) were in Kigali, Rwanda on 25-27 January to support the country’s Office of the Ombudsman in developing Collective Action strategies for public-private sector cooperation to tackle corruption.
In the context of the “Strengthening Uganda’s Anti Corruption Response (SUGAR)” project, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), experts from the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) conducted a four- day training workshop on the concepts and process for conducting a Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing (ML/TF) National Risk Assessment (NRA) for representatives from governmental authorities, supervisory authorities and private sector, in Kampala, Uganda, from 19 – 22 January 2016.
Corruption is pervasive in Sub-Saharan Africa’s educational sector. The phenomenon includes not only bribery but also practices that the World Bank has labeled "quiet corruption." While anti-corruption interventions tackling such practices are typically based on assumptions of rational decision-making from classical economics, Cosimo analyses petty corruption practices through a behavioural lens.