Grand Corruption Without Borders: U.S. Commitment to Responsible Assets Repatriation

Fueled by revelations of the massive theft of state assets by authoritarian rulers, asset recovery has risen to the top of the global anticorruption agenda. But while article 57 of the UN Convention Against Corruption provides for the return of stolen assets to the victim state, it does not provide for transparency and accountability in their return or use. This makes the repatriation of assets to states ruled by authoritarian and kleptocratic regimes problematic: How can there be any assurance they will not be stolen again? That they will go to the true victims in the state to which they’re returned—the citizenry—rather than to those complicit in the original theft? Isn’t an opaque return, with no accountability, inconsistent with the object and purpose of the UN Convention Against Corruption?

These and other questions will be discussed by two panels of experts, using case examples of two geographically distant countries with similar governance challenges—Equatorial Guinea and Uzbekistan.