ECHR- ARTICLE 111

Winning the information wars: Collecting, sharing and analyzing information in asset recovery investigations



Winning the information wars: Collecting, sharing and analyzing information in asset recovery investigations

Why StAR? Why Now?

In recent years, countries as far-flung and diverse as Nigeria, Peru, and the Philippines have enjoyed some success in securing the repatriation of assets stolen by their corrupt former leaders. Success, however, has been neither easy nor quick. Consider the Philippines.

In 1986, the Republic of the Philippines filed a request for mutual assistance with the Swiss authorities in connection with the repatriation of Marcos deposits in Swiss banks. Twelve years elapsed before these deposits were transferred to escrow accounts in the Philippine National Bank (PNB) and another six years passed before the concerned $624 million was transferred to the Philippine Treasury(Scher, 2005).

In between, several major legal hurdles had to be crossed, including presenting evidence that the monies were the product of embezzlement, diversion of public property, and plundering of the public treasury. Only after the Philippine government won a ruling that the monies could be moved out of Switzerland without a final conviction of Mrs. Marcos under article 74A of the International Mutual Assistance on Criminal Matters Act (IMAC) was the money moved to the Philippine National Bank in 1998. It was released to the Philippine Treasury in 2004 following a Philippine Supreme Court decision ordering the forfeiture of the Marcos Swiss deposits in July 2003.

Quite apart from the hurdles faced by developing countries in asset recovery, at least three other sets of events have shone a spotlight on the problem of assets stolen by corrupt leaders. First, starting in 1997, several important pieces of international legislation against corruption, bribery, and transnational organized crime have been adopted(Scher, 2005). The landmark UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which came into force in December 2005, includes a chapter exclusively devoted to asset recovery, attesting to the need to address this problem urgently.

Second, the 9/11 terrorist attack of the United States in 2001 has intensified the campaign against the financing of terrorism and money laundering. The main financial centers of the world, in being seen as a safe haven for the stolen assets of corrupt leaders, criminals, and terrorists, face a higher reputational risk today than they did 10 years ago. Third, developing countries themselves are gearing up to recover stolen assets and use the proceeds to fund development programs and facilitate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Consider the 2001 Nyanga Declaration on the recovery and repatriation of Africa's wealth by the representatives of Transparency International in 11 African countries, which explicitly refers to”…Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo's address to the UN General Assembly in September 1999 calling for the creation of an international convention for the repatriation of Africa's wealth illicitly appropriated and kept abroad.”

This support was more broadly manifested during the first session of the Ad hoc Committee negotiating UNCAC, when developing countries from all regions decided to make asset recovery a high priority of the ...