Governments should take tougher action to recover stolen assets and tighten laws on money laundering, says Transparency International
LONDON, Nov 10 (TrustLaw) - Governments should take tougher action to recover stolen assets and tighten laws on money laundering, anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) said this week.
At an annual meeting in Bangkok, the network's members from more than 100 countries adopted a declaration urging governments to stop assets being stolen, prosecute those alleged to have plundered a country's wealth, and demonstrate the political will to fight corruption.
It also said nations should strengthen their anti-money laundering efforts to prevent funds illicitly appropriated from developing countries finding safe haven in banks, trusts or other types of financial institutions operating within their borders.
TI members called on leaders at the Nov. 11-12 Group of 20 summit in Seoul, South Korea, to urgently address the repatriation of stolen assets and management of frozen assets.
"Countries are experiencing difficulties tracing, seizing, recovering and repatriating assets," TI Chairwoman Huguette Labelle said in a statement. "There has not been sufficient progress on recovering the tens of billions of dollars that have been stolen by corrupt national leaders and deposited in international money centres."
A 2007 report marking the launch of the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) initiative by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank described the theft of public assets from developing countries as a "huge and serious problem".
Global proceeds from criminal activities, corruption and tax evasion are estimated at between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion per year, it said.
This week's TI declaration calls on governments to respond quickly to requests for information to move forward cases involving stolen and frozen assets. And it says financial institutions that fail to release frozen assets after receiving an order to do so should be held legally liable.
"The recommendations emphasise how important stolen assets, if promptly repatriated, are for development and explicitly address the inadequate way in which frozen assets are currently being managed," said TI Vice-Chairman Akere Muna.
The StAR report notes that every $100 million of recovered assets could fund a full set of immunisations for 4 million children or provide water connections for some 250,000 households.
G20 WORKING GROUP
Development charities have also stepped up the pressure on world leaders to crack down on secretive transactions and financial centres where illicit money can be concealed.
In a report ahead of the Seoul G20 meeting, international aid group Oxfam said leaders of the world's richest and fastest-developing nations should honour commitments they made at last year's summit in London to tackle the tax havens that deprive poor nations of "desperately needed resources".
"Sadly, tax co-operation conventions signed after the London Summit have already proved to be weak," it said, calling for an "exhaustive and objective" list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, backed up with sanctions.
At its Toronto meeting in June 2009, the G20 agreed to set up a working group on corruption tasked with making recommendations on how its member countries could best contribute to international efforts to combat graft to be considered by leaders in Seoul.
The summit declaration said they should lead by example in areas including cooperation on asset recovery and preventing corrupt people from accessing global financial systems.
TI's French branch on Tuesday said it welcomed a decision by the Supreme Court that will allow the opening of a judicial inquiry into how luxury assets, such as properties and cars, as well as bank accounts were acquired in France by three foreign heads of state - Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon (now deceased) and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea - and their relatives. This overturned an earlier court ruling that a complaint brought by TI France was inadmissible.
TI said in a statement it hoped the investigation would in time "lead to an effective exercise of the right to restitution - a right explicitly guaranteed by the U.N. Convention against Corruption which France ratified in 2005".
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
