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.
The StAR Publications Library
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.




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 Puppet Masters
This StAR report examines how bribes, embezzled state assets and other criminal proceeds are being hidden via legal structures – shell companies, foundations, trusts and others. The study also provides policy makers with practical recommendations on how to step up ongoing international efforts to uncover flows of criminal funds and …
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.
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Corruption steals from the poor. It steals the promise of a bright future.