1.1 Background

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Introduction

1.1 BACKGROUND

Despite the growing number of grand corruption cases causing worldwide outrage and the vast amounts of stolen assets moved to foreign jurisdictions, global recovery efforts are still struggling with severe institutional, legal, and practical challenges. The proportion of successful procedures leading to the return of looted assets to rightful owners is still inadequate when compared with the estimated value of proceeds of corruption circulating worldwide.

In various international settings, countries emphasize challenges created by excessive procedural requirements and related delays in the asset recovery process, practitioners’ poor familiarity with foreign legal procedures, lack of trust between jurisdictions, and, crucially, differences in confiscation regimes.1 In its Resolution 7/1, “Strengthening mutual legal assistance for international cooperation and asset recovery,” the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) specifically called for the enactment of adequate mechanisms to, among other things, allow or expand cooperation in the enforcement of foreign seizure and restraint orders and confiscation judgments, including through raising awareness for judicial authorities and through permitting, where possible under national law, recognition of non-conviction-based seizure and freezing orders and of confiscation judgments.2

This study is part of the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative.3 Since its inception, the StAR Initiative has provided a global platform (a) to enhance countries’ ability to trace and return tainted property and (b) to prevent the laundering of proceeds from corruption offenses. It has contributed a series of publications aimed to raise awareness about the problem, examine current trends, challenges, and shortcomings in asset recovery as well as shed light on promising policy and legal tools, including those aimed to ensure seizure and confiscation of corruption proceeds in transnational cases.

Among the tools aimed at facilitating the recovery of assets illicitly moved or transferred abroad, attention has recently been directed to a legal mechanism enabling the processing of mutual legal assistance (MLA) requests through the direct enforcement of foreign confiscation orders. The concept of direct