StAR Initiative (Stolen Asset Recovery)

23 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2172

The series supports international efforts to end safe havens for corrupt funds by providing practitioners with knowledge and policy tools consolidating international good practice on cutting edge issues related to preventing the laundering of the proceeds of corruption. The series supports systematic and timely return of stolen assets -- the objective of the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of StAR Initiative's Advisory Board.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 23

Managing Seized and Confiscated Assets - A Guide for Practitioners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-01-18) Bostwick, Lisa; Bartlett, Nigel; Cronje, Hermione; Abernathy III, T.J.
This Guide aims to provide guidance to practitioners on asset management, from pre-seizure planning to preserving value during custody to maximizing value at disposal. It is intended to provide practitioners with the foundations to build an effective asset management function and to grow the asset portfolio to manage complex assets. Accordingly, the Guide includes recommendations and good practices derived from international studies, experience from interviews with asset management experts, and case examples. In addition, practitioners may benefit from discussions of different approaches among jurisdictions, the case examples, and the detail on managing specific asset types.
Victims of Corruption: Back for Payback
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-01-02) Falconi, Felipe Freitas; Ugaz, José; Garcia, Juanita Olaya; Soto, Yara Esquivel
Corruption harms communities and impacts the global economy. It discourages business opportunities, hinders foreign aid and investment, and exacerbates inequality. It victimizes society’s most vulnerable and marginalized individuals by affecting their ability to meet their basic needs, as well as reducing their chances of overcoming poverty and exclusion. As such, anti-corruption efforts would be incomplete if damages arising from corrupt acts remain unaddressed. This publication aims at stimulating further research and exchange on the matter by providing an overview of the current state of law and practice regarding the recovery of corruption damages; outlining the different types of legal frameworks and avenues available in different legal systems; and the respective legal barriers and other challenges that may arise.
Unexplained Wealth Orders: Toward a New Frontier in Asset Recovery
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-28) Brun, Jean-Pierre; Julien, Rita; Owens, Jeffrey; Hur, Yoonhee
Several countries have in recent years introduced the unexplained wealth order (UWO) as a tool to improve recoveries of the proceeds of crime—particularly kleptocracy, the fruits of corruption by government officials. While it is too early to be able to draw any definite conclusions as to its effectiveness in curbing corruption, the UWO contains novel ideas that are worth examining in more depth. UWOs oblige persons suspected of corruption or other serious crimes in these countries to explain the origin of their wealth and discrepancies between their legitimate sources of income and the value of their assets. UWOs are a civil, not criminal action and can be an invaluable tool in asset recovery cases in which cross-border identification and tracing of criminal and corrupt assets is a challenge for relevant investigative agencies and prosecutors. The report provides suggestions on approaches to develop similar policies and makes recommendations for future efforts to use UWOs to combat money laundering and corruption. The purpose of this study is to provide policy makers with an overview of UWO systems by placing them in the context of other asset recovery tools and drawing lessons for countries contemplating the introduction of UWO-type legislation. While the design and implementation of UWO systems are very much in a state of evolution, they may fill a gap in asset recovery systems. UWO systems, like other legal tools, depend on other legal and institutional aspects in each jurisdiction. If a country considers implementing a UWO system, it should form part of a more comprehensive whole of policies and must be adapted to the specific legal context. For example, countries that have established a strong forfeiture system based on value confiscation or civil confiscation, not requiring prosecutors to show a link between assets and a crime, may not need UWOs as much as other countries that have not.
Asset and Interest Disclosure: A Technical Guide to an Effective Form
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-28) Pop, Laura; Kotlyar, Dmytro; Rossi, Ivana
Asset and interest disclosure of public officials is a well-established tool to prevent corruption and to help strengthen integrity in public administration. Countries use it to identify unexplained wealth, prevent conflicts of interest, and promote accountability and integrity of public officials. Asset and interest disclosure is a mechanism by which public officials must submit information about income, assets, liabilities, expenditures, and other interests of the officials and their family members. This mechanism includes many elements, including the disclosure form, the scope of declarants (filing population), methods of submission (paper or electronic), procedures of submitting the form, validation and verification of the forms, publication of information, institutional set-up to deal with the disclosure system, sanctions, and others. This technical guide focuses on the disclosure form. How and what data are requested in the form represents the disclosure system's main and most important input. It also defines declarations' role in the anticorruption value chain.
Legal Persons and Arrangements ML Risk Assessment Tool: With Guidance on Assessing Risks Related to Beneficial Ownership Transparency
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06) World Bank
Legal structures are used to conduct a wide range of legitimate commercial activities and play an essential role in the global economy. In most countries, companies and other forms of legal structures can be formed easily and quickly and can gain access to the global financial system through setting up a corporate bank account, taking out corporate loans, and using other financial products. Through anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-financial crime regulatory reforms, anonymous personal bank accounts are no longer widely available, and so-called ‘shell banks’ that do not have any physical presence in any jurisdiction have been effectively outlawed. Instead, shell companies and other forms of legal structures (such as limited liability partnerships) have emerged as a primary mechanism for moving large amounts of illicit funds around the world. Corporations were originally established to shield individuals from personal liability when conducting business; they were never designed or intended to conceal ownership. But beginning in the 1970s, some offshore jurisdictions began offering to establish corporations and other legal structures that would enable individuals to open bank accounts, transfer funds, and take other actions while hiding their identities. There are four aspects of shell companies and other types of legal structures that are particularly important in the anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) context: (1) separate legal personality, (2) hiding ultimate beneficial ownership, (3) providing access to the financial system, and (4) enabling asset ownership.
Signatures for Sale: How Nominee Services for Shell Companies are Abused to Conceal Beneficial Owners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-04-21) Nielson, Daniel Lafayette; Sharman, Jason Campbell
This report analyzes a family of related corporate arrangements in which nominees act as agents of principals in control of shell companies. It focuses on how nominee arrangements can be abused to facilitate financial crime by obscuring the identity of those in control of shell companies and on policies designed to counter such abuses. The report draws evidence from a global mystery shopping exercise based on thousands of solicitations for shell companies, as well as marketing information from shell company providers, and journalistic and policy research on the topic. Nominee arrangements are currently both a threat and a missed opportunity for policy makers. Such arrangements are critical to corporate beneficial ownership transparency as a major but underappreciated point of vulnerability. Strengthening the regulation of nominee arrangements can enhance the transparency of shell companies and help reduce financial crime. Taking best advantage of this opportunity requires greater attention to the transparency of nominee arrangements, better practical enforcement of rules, and replacement of a single country-by-country approach in national evaluations with a more multijurisdictional perspective.
Taxing Crime: A Whole-of-Government Approach to Fighting Corruption, Money Laundering, and Tax Crimes
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022) Brun, Jean-Pierre; Julien, Rita; Waruguru, Joy; Ndubai, Joy Waruguru; Owens, Jeffrey; Siddhesh, Rao; Soto, Yara Esquivel
Taxing Crime: A Whole-of-Government Approach to Fighting Corruption, Money Laundering, and Tax Crimes examines how tax audits and investigations can lead to uncovering white-collar crime and how investigations of corruption can, in turn, lead to prosecutions of tax evasion or recovery of unpaid taxes. Prepared jointly by the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR) and the Global Tax Policy Center at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business, this report offers analysis, case studies, examples of legal and operational frameworks, and recommendations that policy makers can use to enhance cooperation between tax authorities and law enforcement agencies at the national and international levels. This study is designed to serve as a reference and source of advocacy for policy makers, but it may be useful to other practitioners as well, including law enforcement officials, investigating magistrates, and prosecutors. Specifically, chapters present strategic considerations for establishing communication channels between tax and criminal investigative agencies; suggestions for combining tax and financial crime prosecution as part of an interagency asset recovery strategy; and approaches to developing interagency information exchange at the regional and international levels. It concludes with recommendations on ways to enhance the roles of both the tax authorities in combating money laundering and corruption and of the law enforcement authorities in recovering the proceeds of tax crimes.
Automated Risk Analysis of Asset and Interest Declarations of Public Officials: A Technical Guide
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08-25) Kotlyar, Dmytro; Pop, Laura
The technical guide distinguishes the automated risk analysis from the general verification of the AID, which is a comprehensive legal procedure carried out by the staff of the verification agency. The automated risk analysis could be a part of the general verification framework. This technical guide builds on the advisory work conducted by the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR) team in different countries that use or contemplate using the automated risk analysis of AIDs and consultations with practitioners from other asset declaration systems that use some automation in their verification processes. The proposals and recommendations are not a reflection of one system’s approach to electronic risk analysis but rather include elements from different systems and build on them. The guide goes beyond describing existing approaches and proposes possiblesolutions that can solve some of the implementation challenges faced by countries. The authors adopted this approach given the limited number of countries that use automatic risk analysis in their verification process now and to allow for sharing the lessons learned from the ongoing work advising countries.
Asset Recovery Handbook: A Guide for Practitioners, Second Edition
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-12-10) Sotiropoulou, Anastasia; Brun, Jean-Pierre; Gray, Larissa; Scott, Clive; Stephenson, Kevin M.
The Asset Recovery Handbook: A Guide for Practitioners has been updated in 2020 by the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) initiative, a joint initiative of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and the World Bank focused on encouraging and facilitating a more systematic and timely return of stolen assets. Designed as a how-to manual, the handbook guides practitioners as they grapple with the strategic, organizational, investigative, and legal challenges of recovering assets that have been stolen by corrupt leaders and hidden abroad. It provides common approaches to recovering stolen assets located in foreign jurisdictions, identifies the challenges that practitioners are likely to encounter, and introduces good practices. By consolidating into a single framework, information that is dispersed across various professional backgrounds, the handbook has enhanced the effectiveness of practitioners working in a team environment. After 10 years of serving as a recognized reference for practitioners and trainers since it was first published in 2011, the StAR initiative decided to develop this updated version by incorporating developments based on the experience collected during this decade, including new legislation and case examples. This 2020 second edition emphasizes the need to utilize innovative strategies and technical tools, including in the context of international cooperation.
Going for Broke: Insolvency Tools to Support Cross-Border Asset Recovery in Corruption Cases
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020) Silver, Molly; Brun, Jean-Pierre
The cost of official corruption is high: it degrades public trust, impedes economic development, and undermines the rule of law. Countries around the world are increasingly using asset recovery measures to pursue justice in official corruption cases and restore funds to public use. Successful application of bankruptcy or insolvency law can make or break a corruption case. Going for Broke: Insolvency Tools to Support Cross-Border Asset Recovery in Corruption Cases is intended as a guidebook for asset recovery practitioners for the use of bankruptcy proceedings in their work. It is offered as a complement to our prior texts: Public Wrongs, Private Actions and Asset Recovery Handbook. Going for Broke offers practical advice to inform insolvency representatives, law enforcement officials, policy makers, and those entrusted with recovering their nations’ stolen assets about the ways in which insolvency can be effectively be employed—either to complement an existing civil or criminal asset recovery action or as a stand-alone procedure for recovery. It may also serve as a quick reference for other practitioners, including auditors, accountants, and others who deal with corruption and asset recovery.