StAR supports international efforts to end safe havens for corrupt funds.
Restoring proceeds of corruption to their rightful owner is a development imperative. By returning corrupt funds, we can mobilize resources to reduce poverty and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It is also the right thing to do.
Ghada Fathi Waly, Executive Director, UNODC
StAR Publications
StAR's policy work is grounded in extensive practical expertise and innovative and in-depth knowledge products by its staff who are drawn from a number of disciplines.
Taxing Crime: A Whole-of-Government Approach to Fighting Corruption, Money Laundering, and Tax Crimes
This publication focuses on the benefits of interagency cooperation between tax authorities and law enforcement agencies working on preventing, detecting, and recovering the illicit financial flows derived from tax evasion, corruption, and money laundering. Although the magnitude of illicit financial flows is a matter of debate, their important implications for …
Signatures for Sale: How Nominee Services for Shell Companies Are Abused to Conceal Beneficial Owners
This report analyzes a family of related corporate arrangements in which nominees act as agents of principals in control of shell companies. It focuses on how nominee arrangements can be abused to facilitate financial crime by obscuring the identity of those in control of shell companies and on policies designed …
Automated Risk Analysis of Asset and Interest Declarations of Public Officials
Asset and interest disclosure by public officials has been widely used to build integrity and combat corruption. Asset and interest disclosure (AID) systems have become a universal instrument to enhance public sector transparency and accountability, and prevent and detect corruption. According to World Bank data, over 160 countries around the world have …
Asset Recovery Handbook: A Guide for Practitioners, Second Edition
Designed as a how-to manual, the handbook guides practitioners as they grapple with the strategic, organizational, investigative, and legal challenges of recovering assets that have been stolen by corrupt leaders and hidden abroad. It provides common approaches to recovering stolen assets located in foreign jurisdictions, identifies the challenges that practitioners …
The StAR Blog
And let's not mince words: we need to deal with the cancer of corruption. In country after country, it is the people who are demanding action on this issue…we all know that it is a major barrier to sound and equitable development. Corruption is a problem that all countries have to confront.
James Wolfensohn, 9th President of the World Bank Group
Upcoming Events
International Corruption Hunters Alliance 2023
The World Bank Group is pleased to announce the next gathering of the World Bank Group’s International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) Forum. The ICHA is a global g...
Date
Jun 14 - 16, 2023
Location
Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
Anticorruption for Development (AC4D) Global Partnership Forum
Corruption is a major impediment to development as it diverts resources from more productive uses and negatively affects shared prosperity by disproportionally benefit...
Date
Jun 26 - 27, 2023
Location
Washington, DC
Tax Transparency & Corruption Conference
Since 2015, the Global Tax Policy Center (WU GTPC), at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business in partners...
Date
Jul 4 - 6, 2023
Location
Vienna, Austria
Fourth GlobE Network Plenary Meeting
The Global Operational Network of Anti-Corruption Law Enforcement Authorities (GlobE Network) offers a platform for information exchange between frontline anti-corrupt...
Date
Jul 11 - 13, 2023
Location
Vienna, Austria
This year [2022] marks the 15th anniversary of StAR, the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative. In partnership with the United Nations, this initiative assists countries to achieve accountability, recover stolen public assets, and repair the damage from corruption.
David Malpass, 13th President of the World Bank Group