About us
CiFAR was founded in 2015 to support civil society to campaign across borders to prevent public asset theft and support accountable and transparent asset recovery.
Vision and Mission
Our vision is a world where public officials are unable to steal public money and hide it overseas. Our mission is to end cross-border corruption and to ensure transparency and accountability in asset recovery.
Our Background
CiFAR was founded in 2015 by Agatino Camarda, Laila Martin Garcia and Jackson Oldfield and formally registered as a non-profit association in Germany in May 2016. All three founders had worked in the anti-corruption field for several years, including on the issue of asset recovery and in particular in relation to North Africa.
They came together to found CiFAR after realising a gap existed in support for civil society – in a broad sense – to work on cases of cross-border corruption, both in terms of understanding how the process was supposed to operate and in making connections with civil society abroad. These issues were, and still are, particularly prominent in countries of origin, countries where the corruption originated, as the expose of large cases are often the first case local civil society has worked on.
The aim of CiFAR from the start was to address this gap and be both a capacity building and network-support organisation. In that line, since our founding we have worked to training civil society activists and journalists, networked together actors working on different parts of ongoing cases, developed tools and engaged policy makers on asset recovery reform.
While continuing in that role, we also have expanded our mandate as more and more actors have come onto the scene and as cases and returns became more varied. Our 2020-2023 Strategy envisions us to focus more on assessing new tools, imagining how returns could be more accountable and transparent, and on investigating and exposing cross-border corruption, while still staying true to our original goals.
You can read more about what we have done in our annual reports and read our Strategy to learn about what is to come.
Our Team
Our team comprises of our staff and our international board. Staff members are based in Berlin and Nairoibi, with our board made up of experts in the field of asset recovery and citizen engagement from across the world.
Our Strategy
CiFAR's strategy for 2024-2027 covers four results areas, each with specific areas of work. Within each of these areas, we set out the aims we seek to achieve. In breaking it down in this way, we aim to be as clear as possible in identifying what we seek to achieve over the four years at a strategic level.
Our Impact
We are committed to strengthening civil society and driving transparency, accountability and participation in asset recovery. On this page we highlight examples of the impact our work has. Detailed information can be found in our annual reports at the bottom of this page.
Our Finances
We demand transparency and accountability in the asset recovery process. We strive for the same for ourselves. On this page you will find information on our current projects, our financial reports and information on donors that have supported us over the years.