In December 2025, the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (CoSP) met in Doha to discuss the latest developments in anti-corruption at the global level and to agree new resolutions to advance and detail the provisions of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
During the months leading up to the Conference and during the debates, we were closely following discussions around possible resolutions, aiming to support potential resolutions on asset recovery.
Ultimately, while there was no specific resolution on asset recovery during this CoSP, we engaged with and followed the progress of Resolution 11/8 – Enhancing inter-agency cooperation between anti-corruption bodies and financial intelligence units for effective anti-corruption and asset recovery action, which included several measures that advance our understanding of what effective asset recovery looks like:
Beneficial ownership
Paragraph 2 of the resolution keeps the focus on beneficial ownership information as a prerequisite for effective asset recovery, reaffirming standards set out in a resolution passed at the previous CoSP – Resolution 10/6 — Enhancing the use of beneficial ownership information to strengthen asset recovery. Specifically, it calls on State Parties to the Convention to promote the exchange of beneficial ownership information of legal entities and financial and non-financial institutions between agencies with a view to enhancing transparency, strengthening cooperation among competent authorities, preventing corruption and supporting the tracing, recovery and return of assets.
- While it doesn’t specifically discuss the open publication of beneficial ownership information – a point we advocate for – it nevertheless situates information sharing within the framework of enhancing transparency and effective asset recovery. We believe this supports movement towards open publication of accessible beneficial ownership information.
Interagency cooperation for asset recovery
Paragraph 6 encourages States Parties to create joint task forces, liaison mechanisms and arrange secondments in order to strengthen cooperation between anti- corruption bodies, financial intelligence units and relevant law enforcement agencies for the purposes of enhancing the identification, freezing and recovering of stolen assets.
Similarly, paragraph 9 encourages States Parties to strengthen cooperation between anti-corruption bodies and financial intelligence units in identifying, tracing, freezing, seizing, confiscating, recovering and returning assets.
Paragraph 10 then invites States Parties to support the development by anti-corruption bodies and financial intelligence units of joint operational guides and toolkits on financial tracing and asset recovery, in order to enhance the effective fulfilment by those institutions of their respective roles and effective coordination between them
- These paragraphs, taken together, point to the need to join up the dots across law enforcement, anti-corruption and financial intelligence agencies, ensuring that they work together cooperatively and not in competition, for effective asset recovery. In putting this in place.
- States Parties may also need to go beyond the operational guides as envisioned by paragraph 10 and develop asset recovery strategies or asset recovery action plans that set out the roles of different agencies and how they should work together within an overarching framework setting out their approach to asset recovery as a whole.
Data collection and data transparency
Paragraph 11 is the first of two paragraphs that we believe are big steps forward in how asset recovery data is dealt with within the UNCAC framework. This paragraph encourages States Parties to share anonymized data and good practices relating to asset recovery cases, in cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and, as appropriate, with other United Nations and intergovernmental platforms.
- While many States already do this, this is a call to further submit case data both to UNODC reports and to the StAR Initiative’s Asset Recovery Watch database. Having this data available is important to both understand what cases are ongoing and completed and to identify trends, including barriers, to asset recovery globally.
Paragraph 18 is similarly important when it comes to transparency and reflects asks we have had around national data transparency. It encourages States Parties to support the co-production by anti-corruption bodies and financial intelligence units of corruption-related dashboards, typologies, statistical bulletins, and anonymized case studies and lessons learned. The aim of this is set out as being to inform evidence-based public policy, fostering public awareness and promoting transparency in anti-corruption efforts.
- Important for asset recovery, this paragraph directly encourages the collation and publication of corruption-related data, which includes asset recovery data, and promotes the use of statistical bulletins and typologies for that data. As highlighted in our research, this is little done globally to date, with few countries publishing this data. The paragraph therefore has the potential to advance data transparency in asset recovery and make it easier for the public to understand the work governments are doing.
International cooperation
Several further paragraphs encourage greater international cooperation. This includes participation in international bodies (paras. 12 and 13), ensuring that anti-corruption bodies can access data shared internationally between financial intelligence units (para. 14), and proactively sharing information between States in transnational corruption cases to facilitate mutual legal assistance requests (para. 15).
- Although most of these provisions are already good practice in transnational corruption cases, taken together, they provide further support to the infrastructure that can detect cross-border corruption and result in the confiscation and return of stolen assets.
Conclusion
Resolution 11/8 includes several paragraphs that reaffirm or advance both asset recovery and how anti-corruption agencies and financial intelligence units work together to detect and prevent corruption. While the paragraphs highlighted above extend existing obligations and best practice in a way that would enhance the efficacy of these bodies in recovering stolen assets, particularly important is where it adds value.
In that regard, there does seem to be movement between the lines in requiring the development of asset recovery strategies and action plans and, importantly, in promoting data transparency in asset recovery.
What’s needed now is a commitment to work on these issues at the national level and real progress being made before the next CoSP to ensure that asset recovery strategies, asset recovery data transparency and other priorities are implemented nationally.