NEW TRENDS IN ASSET RECOVERY: THE ROLE OF DESTINATION COUNTRIES
ACADEMIC AND CIVIL SOCIETY RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Cross-border corruption is a multi-billion dollar a year challenge to democratic norms and to transparent and accountable governance. Over the past ten years, there has been an explosion of cross-border asset recovery cases, including the post-Arab Spring and post-Ukraine revolution cases, the Malaysian 1MDB case, Moldova’s Billion Dollar Bank Fraud, theOdebrecht cases across Latin America, the ongoing Abacha returns to Nigeria, the Karimova case in Uzbekistan, and Kazakh I and II, Additionally, and largely in response, there have also been a multitude of changes in how states act to prevent cross-border corruption and recover stolen assets. These include changes in beneficial ownership transparency, the targeting of enablers, the introduction of reconciliation agreements and unexplained wealth orders, the expansion of anti-corruption sanctions, and many others. They also include several new models for returning stolen assets.