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In this well-documented and incisive piece, Vlasic and Cooper make a strong case for the vital importance of improving international stolen asset recovery^* efforts directed at corrupt public officials, or “Politically Exposed Persons,” as they are known.

Gwent Police have seized enoug cash and assets from criminals in the past five years to fund five new jobs. Each year police forces receive a proportion of the money they confiscate from career criminals, to fight crimes that blight communities. This year Gwent seized £1.6m, £400,000 of which will fund one new post and tackle drug dealers and paedophiles. BBC, Friday, May 13, 2011

The following is an excerpt from International Asset Tracing in Insolvency^* (Oxford University Press), edited by IAAR Advisory Board member Felicity Toube QC. Toube QC will be a speaker at IAAR's 2011 Cross-Border Asset Tracing and Recovery Conference at the Waldorf Hilton in London, June 12-14.

The classic definition of a sham is to be found in the judgment of Diplock L.J in Snook v London & W Riding Invs Ltd [1967] 2 QB 786 at 802):

The United States announced Thursday that it would try to release some of the more than $30 billion in assets seized from Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to help Libyans in rebel-controlled areas, as dozens of officials met here to bolster a NATO-led military intervention that to critics appears stalled. New York Times, Thursday, May 5, 2011

With a learning track that reflected a growing demand for knowledge on the subject, the 9th Annual OffshoreAlert Conference addressed asset recovery^* with a bevy of experts detailing the challenges and victories in the fight to take back wrongly held and criminally derived wealth.

Switzerland became the first country to immediately freeze illicit funds belonging to Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi. Switzerland's newest law on restitution is the first of its kind in the world. It enables assets that have been illicitly appropriated or embezzled by dictators to be returned to countries that are no longer in a position to use judicial processes to request its return from abroad.

In this week's Quick Tip, IAAR contributor and cross-border asset recovery^* expert Kenneth Barden details the best methods to introduce and deal with foreign documents in the context of an asset recovery^* case.

In an international asset recovery^* case, it may often be necessary to introduce documents from foreign jurisdictions.  This can be problematic if not executed correctly, as some jurisdictions refuse to recognize foreign documents unless authenticated or certified in a proper manner.

Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) are specialized agencies within governments that are given the responsibility and authority to collect reports of suspicious financial transactions or activities from various reporting entities, such as financial institutions and certain designated non-financial businesses and professions.  FIUs then analyze these reports and disseminate the resulting intelligence to local competent authorities (typically, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and foreign FIUs) to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.