As global efforts to recover and repatriate the proceeds of corruption intensify, a critical question remains: how are these funds being used? To address this, CiFAR has launched Monitoring Returned Assets: A Toolkit for Civil Society Organisations, a comprehensive resource designed to ensure that recovered wealth truly benefits the public and is managed with the highest standards of integrity.
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.
Efforts to recover and return stolen assets are gaining momentum worldwide—but ensuring that returned assets are used transparently and for the public benefit remains a critical challenge. Civil society organisations are increasingly recognised as key actors in monitoring asset return processes, strengthening accountability, mitigating corruption risks, and building public trust.
As COSP 11 comes to a close in Doha, its clear that the fragmented and challenging international environment is continuing to make it hard for States committed to fighting corruption through accountable, transparent and participatory methods to make meaningful headway.
This paper looks at the challenges the ecosystem faces in addressing illicit finance. Illicit finance continues to pose a significant threat to the integrity of Kenya’s real estate sector. Although Kenya has addressed gaps in its anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws and deficiencies identified in the 2022 Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) Mutual Evaluation, the system still struggles in practice.
In this blog post, we dive into how the real estate ecosystem operates for different kinds of transactions, looking at the different actors who could or should be involved in different types of property or land sales and the ways in which the ecosystem should act to prevent money laundering. The purpose here is not to identify explicitly where failings could be happening – rather it is to set out process, to assist interested parties to understand how actors interact with each other.
Our report describes the key architecture current to 2025 that operates to prevent money laundering in the real estate sector in Kenya. It discusses the major players across five different categories of actors, the ways they work and the challenges they face. In doing so, it lays out the network that seeks to prevent and address money laundering into real estate in Kenya, as well as those actors seeking to introduce illicit finance into the sector or make it easier to do so.
This paper explores AML/CFT controls relevant to the real estate sector after three years of revision since the 2022 assessment. It outlines the supervisory roles and reporting obligations that apply to buyers, sellers and key intermediaries in real estate transactions.
This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in 2025 with members of the UNCAC Coalition Asset Recovery Working Group, which assessed the availability and accessibility of asset recovery data across 15 jurisdictions, covering both major asset-returning states and countries involved in efforts to return stolen funds to their jurisdiction.
Last week we attended the Asset Recovery Working Group meeting in Vienna, that took place between the 3-5 September. In this blog we wanted to highlight what the meeting does, why its important for civil society to attend and what we wanted to, and were able to, achieve there.
← Previous
Page 2 of 9
Next →
