Intelligence

A Manhattan federal judge has frozen the assets of three Swiss asset managers accused of illegally profiting from trades made ahead of the $1.2 billion sale of Arch Chemicals to the Lonza Group, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Monday. The S.E.C.

What does a declassified British security service's report have to do with the South African government's utter lack of political will to pursue corruption proceeds? Many onlookers are saying it is indicative of an endemic problem experienced by those who try to recover assets on behalf of the country. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in potential restitution hang in the balance.

Investigating corruption? Get ready to be investigated yourself.

After surviving an early attempt to blunt the legislation, the soon-to-be-released European Order for the Preservation of Assets and its sister law, the European Order for the Disclosure of Assets, could be effective in the cross-border fight to take back assets, if they are enacted.

Switzerland has blocked Syrian assets worth 27 million Swiss francs ($32 million), Swiss news agency SDA reported on Sunday, citing a Swiss newspaper report that the Swiss Secretariat for Economics (SECO) confirmed. The news agency said SECO declined to comment on whether the assets of President Bashar al-Assad had been frozen. Reuters, Sunday, July 3, 2011

The sensational Central Florida case in which a young mother, Casey Anthony, is accused of killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee, is transfixing the world with bulletins not seen since the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. Anthony faces the death penalty if the six-person jury in Clearwater convicts her of the first-degree murder of which she is charged.

A pair of US politicians are battling over the recent NOAA forfeiture funds scandal, and the agency's access to these funds hangs in the balance. Senator Scott Brown's "Asset Forfeiture^* Responsibility Act of 2011" seeks to remove regulation and forfeiture authority from the embattled agency, while Senator John Kerry's  "Fisheries Fee Fairness Act of 2011" proposes to deal with the specific harms done by federal fisheries law enforcement.

The International Association for Asset Recovery’s inaugural foray into the United Kingdom – a crucial battleground in the struggle to track and recover fraud assets – was well received by the 80 attendees of the 2011 Cross-Border Asset Tracing and Recovery Conference.

When it was founded in 2008, the International Association for Asset Recovery^* immediately flagged London as a critical theater for its efforts, and the first round of those efforts culminated last week in IAAR’S 2011 Cross-Border Asset Tracing and Recovery Conference.
 

It has been two weeks since the operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and seized untold amounts of data from his Pakistani stronghold was carried out, and as the mainstream media focus on inconsequential materials like pornography found on the machines, a critical matter is unresolved: Where is the money?